Varahiवाराही

Vārāhī (वाराही) is the most distinctive of the Saptamātṛkā: a goddess with the head of a boar on a woman's body, the śakti of Varāha, the boar avatar in which Viṣṇu lifted the earth from the cosmic waters. The pairing gives her a double character that runs through her whole cult. Like Varāha she is a rescuer, bound to the earth and its depths; like the wild boar she is ferocious, and Indian tradition has treated her as among the most formidable and most jealously guarded of goddesses.

In the texts

In the Devī Māhātmya she emerges boar-formed from Viṣṇu's avatar when the gods yield up their powers to the Goddess, and fights against Śumbha, Niśumbha and Raktabīja striking with her tusks. Her iconography varies by text and region: she may ride a buffalo, a lion or the serpent Śeṣa, and carry the plough and the staff, the hala and daṇḍa, alongside the discus and conch of Viṣṇu. Her complexion is dark as the storm cloud, her aspect nocturnal.

In tantra

Beyond the Mātṛkā panel, Vārāhī acquired an independent and exalted position in Śākta tantra. In the Śrīvidyā tradition she is Daṇḍanāthā, the staff-bearing commander of the goddess Lalitā Tripurasundarī's armies, counterpart to the minister-goddess Śyāmalā, and receives her own liturgies. Her worship is traditionally conducted at night, and she is invoked above all as a protectress, a remover of hostile forces. Temples to Vārāhī in her own right, though fewer than those of gentler goddesses, are found notably in Odisha and the south, and her boar-faced image, disquieting to the casual eye, remains for her devotees the very face of fierce guardianship.