Worship of the female goddess as the primordial creative force on the Indian sub-continent is as old as the history of civilisation in the region. Terracotta figurines of the Mother Goddess found at various Indus Valley sites show that the notion of the primordial female spirit from which all creation has sprung, was popular in South Asia as early as 3000 BC. Through the vedic period, we see further development of this notion into male and female deities with specific roles in the pantheon. With time, the notion that male and female represented two sets of complementary forces, whose harmonious interaction sustains the universe, began to get codified in a wide variety of theological concepts – ranging from the vedantic philosophical meditations on the nature of prakriti and purush to the theological depictions of Ardhanarishwara, Yama-Yami, Lingam, Yoni etc.

Towards the end of the sixth century, there was a further shift in these ideas. With the rise of Shaktism, the female came to be viewed not just as one part of a whole, but the whole itself. At the same time, her nature underwent a transformation – from the benign mother-earth like deity to the fierce, destructive, Mahishasurmardini, who was armed with the most potent weapons of the gods in her fight against evil.

In the Shakta cosmogony, prakriti as the primordial female energy existed before purusha. It was from her that Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva were born. This conception of devi as the all pervading energy found its apotheosis in the legendary battle of devi with Mahishasura.

This was also a time of great political change in the Indian sub-continent. As the peace and political stability provided by the Gupta empire was eroded by an influx of Hun invaders from Central Asia, strife and constant warfare became the norm. A need, perhaps, may have been felt by different sections of society to unite against the invading hordes, for it was certainly reflected in the gods people worshipped. The transformed devi that emerged at the end of the Gupta period was represented as the possessor of the collective power of the various deities against a common, powerful enemy – Mahishasura – in the theological texts of the time. Not only was she a conglomeration of the energies of various deities, she was also adorned with an assortment of different weapons, traditionally ascribed to a host of different gods. By the time Devi Mahatmya – the ode to the goddess that is a central text of Shaktism spread to different parts of the Indian sub-continent in the seventh century, the benign Mother Goddess of the Indus Valley had been transformed into the fearsome Mahishasurmardini.

War like times call for war like gods.

The Warrior And The Goddess – Devi In Indian Martial History

One of the earliest instances of a warrior invoking the female goddess before heading into battle is found in the Mahabharata. In the Bhishma Parva, just before the beginning of the great battle between Kauravas and Pandavas, Arjuna is directed by Krishna to offer a hymn to Durga known as the Durga Stotra. The goddess, pleased by Arjuna’s devotion blesses him with a promise of victory over Kauravas.

Towards the beginning of the second millennium, various Rajput tribes began to assert themselves in West and Central India, carving out large kingdoms for themselves during a period of constant warfare. This period of struggle would subsequently form the subject of richly layered folklore recited by the courtly poets, known as Charans and be handed down from one generation to the next. Each story would, however, be marked by a similar narrative structure where the struggling Rajput prince, on the verge of despair is rescued by the devi who, pleased with his devotion, guides him to victory in battle against his foes and becomes the protector of his dominions.

With time, each Rajput clan began to associate themselves with a kuldevi or a clan goddess whose primary role was to protect the king and his subjects. Thus, the Rathores of Marwar (Jodhpur) have Nagannechya Mata as their kuldevi, the Sisdodiyas of Mewar (Udaipur) have Ban Mata and the Kacchwahas of Amber (Jaipur) have Jamwai Mata as their kuldevi. The kuldevi’s foremost arena of protection was the battlefield, where she guided the warrior if he was righteous, or punished him with defeat if he had been unjust to his people. This relationship of protection and patronage was formalised by the king by performing public acts of worship and sacrifice during Navratri, which were meant as a symbolic imitation of the devi’s slaughter of the demon Mahishasura. The Rajput king, thus, was not just protected by the kuldevi, he even derived his legitimacy in a real, physical sense by publicly acknowledging the kuldevi as the protector of his realm.

In the seventeenth century, the rise of Maratha power was linked inextricably to Tulja Bhavani – the family deity of the Bhosale clan of Marathas to which Shivaji belonged. Shivaji was known to frequently seek the goddess’ blessings at the famous temple located in Tuljapur, in Osmanabad district. According to legend, the goddess blessed Shivaji’s sword, promising him victory in battle. An ardent devotee of the goddess, Shivaji is believed to possess three finely crafted swords each of which he named after a goddess of war – Bhavani, Jagdamba and Tulja. According to some recent reports, at least one of these swords was made in Toledo, Spain for Shivaji by craftsmen who produced the finest swords in the known world in the seventeenth century.

Meanwhile, further to the north in Punjab, the Sikhs were forming themselves into a military order in a direct challenge to the increasingly oppressive Mughal state under Aurangzeb. In 1699, the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, laid down the foundation of the Khalsa Panth – a brotherhood of warriors sworn to the path of justice as directed by the Sikh Gurus. To extol the martial qualities that the Guru desired in his Khalsa, he invoked the primordial female spirit in her destructive, warrior, form – Chandi. By praising the exploits of Chandi as she slew demons and put an end to evil, the Guru exhorted his Khalsa to arm themselves and prepare for battle. In his famous composition known as Chandi Di Var (The Ballad of Chandi), Guru Gobind Singh poetically describes rich imagery of the blood-soaked battlefield that the Khalsa would need to be prepared to encounter in order to resolutely follow the Guru’s path.