The Durga Festival, Calcutta

Durga slays the Demon, oil painting, 19th C. 

unknown artist, Victoria Memorial collection, Calcutta

Finding himself in old Calcutta just after the monsoon season, the present author is confronted with the pervasive cultus of the goddess Durga whose great festival, the Durga Puja, falls in late October, a moon following the equinox. The city is alive with preparations. Throughout the streets the people of various neighbourhoods are building ‘pandals’ – bamboo houses – to accommodate statues of the goddess which are shaped by the artisans of the potter’s quarter in the suburb of Kurmatuli. At the end of the festival the statues will be carried in procession to the river, thrown in and left to dissolve and be washed out to sea.

The question arises as to what exactly the festival is about? It is one of the largest festivals in India, one of the most popular and significant festivals among the Hindoo. It celebrates, in short, the victory of goddess Durga over a buffalo demon, a straightforward defeat-of-evil affair, but the symbolism – as with everything Hindoo – is multi-layered, complex and mysterious. The author has spent the better part of a week here attempting to understand and unravel these mysteries.  It is not an easy feat. The available texts either confound matters or rehearse the obvious, and colloquial opinion is only helpful for providing popular, naïf understandings, often revealing in themselves but never complete.

A good account of the mythology that is enacted in the festival, which is a good starting point, is found in the celebrated novel City of Joy. Here is a summary of the same:

Hundreds of thousands of years ago a terrible demon ravaged the earth, throwing the seasons into confusion. He was the demon of ignorance and the gods could not destroy him.

Brahma, the Creator, declared that only a son of Shiva could defeat the demon. But Shiva’s wife was dead and Shiva had retired into an ascetic life so it was unlikely he would ever bare a son.

The gods appealed to Kama, god of love and desire for help. So Kama, along with his wife Voluptuousness, and his friend Springtime set out to sway Shiva.

They found Shiva meditating at a foot of a mountain and in a moment that he was off guard Kama shot him with a jasmine arrow that no one can resist.

Shiva began to think of Ouma, daughter of the Himalayas. Eventually they married and she took the name Parvati, “daughter of the mountain.”

But the demon continued to bring chaos to the earth and by the time a son of Shiva might help it would be too late.

Desperately, the gods concentrated all their powers into a single breathe of fire and concentrated it upon Parvati. Out of Parvati’s head came Durga, “she who is beyond attainment”. (This name refers to the idea that the highest mountains are out of reach.)

In order to combat the demon in all ten directions Durga has ten arms, each with one of the weapons of the gods. Her father, Himalaya, King of the Mountains, gave her a lion to ride upon. The Moon gave her a round face. Death gave her black hair. Her skin was the color of Dawn.

The demon appeared as a huge buffalo accompanied by an army. The goddess, riding her lion, pounced and a cosmic battle followed. The roar of the buffalo made the worlds tremble. He uprooted mountains with his horns.

The battle raged for three days. Often Durga was on the point of defeat. But on the evening of the third day she drank the liquid of the gods and sank her trident into the breast of the monster.

Mortally wounded, the demon tried to escape from the buffalo body. From the buffalo’s mouth came a warrior hero brandishing a scimitar. Acting quickly, Durga decapitated him.

At this Durga turned completely black and became known as Kali, “the black one” – as black as Time that consumes everything.

Heaven and Earth resounded with songs of joy and cheers of victory.

The victory of Durga over the demon is celebrated with a four day festival (Durga Puja) in Calcutta every year at the end of monsoon (at a new moon near the autumn equinox.)

The potters of the city make clay sculptures of the goddess. These are then placed in pavilions (canopies) called “pandals”, with various neighborhoods competing to construct sumptuous pandals in streets and crossroads.

At the end of the festival people lead their statues of Durga in procession to the river Ganges where the statues are thrown in, to dissolve and be washed out to sea.

****

The other place to find revealing information is in traditional iconographical depictions. For this purpose the author went to the India Museum and the Victoria Memorial - two very fine art collections in Calcutta. Where texts fail, the text of icons fills the gaps. The iconography varies over time and according to artist but a careful study of the basic features eventually starts to throw light upon an otherwise opaque symbolism. As it happens, one picture in particular - modern, not traditional - proves to be extremely telling. It is an oil painting in the so-called 'Dutch Bengali' style by an unknown artist from the late 19th C. (see above.) and now hanging in the 'Calcutta' room at the Victoria Memorial. Whoever the artist was, they had great insights into the symbolism of Durga and her festival and have presented those insights in a format that is more stark and apparent than in the more complex forms of the traditional icons. Notes on this goddess, her iconography, mythos, and festival follow:

CONCERNING THE NAME DURGA

The name, we are told, means 'Invincible' but more exactly it signifies “difficult of access” or “she whom cannot be attained”. In this sense it refers to high places such as mountain tops in the first instance, but by extension it refers to hill fortresses. The suffix –durga or –durgam (also –droog) is found in the names of many Hindoo hill fortresses. So the name refers to defence. She who is well defended. She who is guarded. In this sense, therefore, she is related to the Greeks' Pallas Athene, (her virginity meaning "she who cannot be attained") and noting that the Acropolis in Athens is therefore a “durga” (hill fortress) in this sense. The goddess Durga is, in general, or at least in this aspect, a Hindoo cognate of Pallas Athena, and her defeat of the demon is a direct parallel to Athena's slaying of the giants. Same mythology. 

THE TIMING OF THE FESTIVAL

In Bengali the festival is sometimes called 'The festival at the wrong time' - and for good reason. In the Hindoo scriptures Durga's slaying of the demon is associated with the months of March and April, i.e. with the spring. From the 16th. C. onwards, though - having something to do with the arrival of the British? - the people of Calcutta began celebrating the festival in the autumn. The festival, therefore, has been displaced. One equinox has been swapped for another. To understand the original symbolism of the festival we must understand it as a vernal feast rather than autumnal. The cause of the displacement is a matter of controversy, but it is important to realise that it has happened. The Durga Puja is, in fact, a spring festival, albeit now celebrated in autumn. Originally it concerned the triumph of light over dark (winter). In the modern displacement it concerns the restoration of order after the chaos of the monsoon. 

BASIC MYTHOLOGEM

Pushing aside all the extraneous layers of symbolism, the basic mythologem here is what in many other traditions takes the form of the slaying of a dragon. It is essentially the same mythos as the Christian myth of St. George slaying the dragon. In the Hindoo version, the dragon is a buffalo, and the 'Earth' (Geo = george) is the Earth goddess Durga. This much is clear. The monster is slain. Order is restored. And not merely social order, but cosmic order. 

DURGA’S ARMS

It is clear from the traditional icons that Durga does not really have ten (or more) arms. More correctly, she has two arms PLUS an array of further arms which represent the additional powers bestowed upon her by the various gods. The relevant numerical symbolism, that is, is 10 = 2 + 8. The two arms, clearly enough, represent night and day. The eight arms (sometimes 8 + 8, but usually sets of eight) are the eightfold division of the zodiac.

COSMIC PARALLELS

The Dark Moon is to the lunar cycle what midwinter is to the solar cycle. That is the essential symbolism here. So, the New (reborn) Moon is to the lunar cycle what the spring (rebirth) is to the solar cycle. The whole symbolism of the Durga Pooja is soli-lunar. Note that the unknown painter of the oil painting from the Victoria Memorial (see picture at top of page) understands exactly this. It is a crucial clue that is missing from earlier depictions. The modern painter has at last made it explicit. In this context, the buffalo – like the dragon in similar traditions – is the light-devourer. Without the light of the moon/sun man is left in ignorance and chaos. The restored light of the New Moon/Spring Sun is order restored. This, in essence, is what this entire festival is about. By extension of these parallels it also concerns the passage of Ages, i.e. the great cosmic seasons of the Yugas which are to the whole cycle what the annual seasons are to the solar cycle, and so on.

Note also, importantly, that the Victoria Memorial painter has the lion = white and the buffalo = black. Day and Night. Midnight is to the daily cycle what midwinter is to the annual cycle, and so on.

One of the most important iconographical clues in this scene is the scimitar wielded by the warrior hero who springs from the neck of the buffalo. This very obviously signifies the birth of the crescent moon. In the best depictions this is very plain. The buffalo is the darkness of the absent moon. The warrior hero with the scimitar is the new crescent. Some artists very deliberately make the scimitar resemble the crescent moon. 

MOUNTAIN SYMBOLISM

The mountain symbolism found throughout the mythos concerns the celestial axis. It is by virtue of the adherence of the axis that the cosmic order is restored – just as it is by virtue of deviation from the axis the order suffers period disruption.

A FURTHER POINT

In the nineteenth century oil painting, notice that Durga and the warrior demon's eyes meet. This is mythologically correct. All the divine powers are marshalled in Durga, including the erotic. The warrior demon is attracted to her. (The author owes this observation to Mdme. Mireille-Joséphine Guézennec, the Vedic scholar, who he met over breakfast one morning in the Blue Sky Cafe in Sutter Street.) 

*****

Below: Traditional images in the India Museum (Asiatic Museum), Calcutta.

yours,

Harper McAlpine Black