The holy festival of Navaratri is an amalgamation of various themes, with
the common theme of the victory of good over evil. According to some legends,
Vijayadashami or Dusshera is celebrated on the day Lord Ram kills Ravana.
Demon king Mahishasura had Lord Brahma's boon that, he would
be unconquerable by any male form. According to a Puranic legend, the mighty
demon defeated the gods and their king, Indra. They then approached Brahma,
Vishnu and Shiva, who decided to destroy the demon. So they all combined their
energies, and gave rise to Shakti and appealed to Goddess Durga to come to their
aid.
Equipped with lethal weapons and riding a ferocious lion, the
Goddess in all her awesome majesty, destroyed the evil one without much ado.
The 10th day, on which the goddess kills Mahishasura, is celebrated as Dusshera
or Vijayadashami as the victory of good over evil. Dusshera (tenth day) is one
of the significant Hindu festivals, celebrated with pomp and fervor all over
the country.
On the tenth day, the Vijayadasmi day, colossal effigies of
Ravana, his brother Kumbhkarna and son Meghnadh are placed in vast open spaces.
Rama, accompanied by Sita and his brother Lakshmana, arrive and shoot arrows
of fire at these effigies. The result is a deafening blast, enhanced by slogans
of triumph.
In burning the effigies the people are asked to burn the evil
within them, and thus follow the path of virtue and honesty. On this day in
the famous Ramleela grounds in Delhi, huge effigies of the ten-headed demon
king Ravana, Meghanath, his son, and Kumbhakarna, his brother, stuffed with
explosive materials are torched by an arrow to symbolize the ultimate triumph
of good over evil.
North Indian Belief:
Lord Brahma of the trinity Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva, granted
Mahishasura the "buffalo demon," or simply Mahisha (buffalo) a boon
that protected him from any man in the world, and can only be killed by a woman.
Empowered by this gift, Mahishasura underestimated the strength of any woman
to a man and considered himself to be ultimately immortal. He set out to conquer
the world, heaven and the world, and brought about the defeat of Indra king
of deities.
At the pleading of Indra, the king of the Gods, Lords Brahma,
Vishnu and Shiva created Durga, the female through and amalgamation of their
own shakti or divine power. Endowed with the trinity's shakti, Durga proved
to be a formidable opponent who fought Mahisa for nine days, beheading him on
the tenth. The nine nights simply translated Navratri, symbolize the nine days
of battle, while the tenth day, vijayadashami-literally means the victorious
tenth day of conquest.
This great epic is recounted and celebrated slightly differently
in various regions taking on different forms and names. In West Bengal Navratri,
and Vijayadashami are respectively celebrated as Durga Puja and Dasara. In South
India the festival includes other female deities an dedicates three days of
the festival to Lakshmi, the female archetype of wealth and fortune, and another
three to Saraswathi, the female archetype of learning, music and knowledge.
In northern India it takes the form of the great epic Ramyana where Rama, an
incarnation of Vishnu is victorious over the evil king Ravana.
Eastern Indian Belief:
Daksha, the king of the Himalayas and the plains, and his wife,
Menaka, had a daughter called Uma. Uma, right from her childhood, started worshipping
Shiva as her would be husband. Shiva, being pleased with the worship of Uma,
came to marry her. Daksha did not like this tiger-skin clad groom with ash &
dirt spread over all of his body. Uma got married to Shiva but was prevented
by her father from moving to Kailash, the abode of Shiva.
Daksha, later on, arranged for a 'yagna' where everyone except
Shiva was invited. Uma, feeling ashamed of the behavior of her father and shocked
by the attitude towards her husband, committed Sati (the woman immolates herself
in a burning pyre). Shiva came to know about this and went to Daksha's house.
He lifted the body of Uma on his shoulders and started dancing madly. With the
supreme power dancing, the World was on the verge of destruction. Narayana,
another SuperGod, came forward as a saviour and used his 'Chakra' to cut the
Body of Uma into pieces. Those pieces started falling off from the shoulder
of the dancing Shiva into different parts of the World.
Shiva was finally pacified when the last piece fell off from
his shoulder. Narayana revived Uma for a new life. Daksha, who was extremely
sorry about his misdeeds, prayed for mercy and was finally forgiven. The places
where the pieces had fallen are known as the 'Shakti Piths' or energy pits,
few of these places being Kalighat in Calcutta, Kamakshya near Guwahati among
others. Ever since peace was restored, Uma, with her two children, Ganesh, Kartick,
and in two more forms Saraswati and Laxmi and with her two 'sakhis' (companions)
- Jaya and Bijaya, comes to visit her parent's home each year during the season
of 'Sharat' or autumn when Durga Puja is celebrated.
