Who Durga is
Durga is the goddess who cannot be beaten. Her name means the one who is hard to reach, like a fort, or hard to get past, and she is the form of the goddess who goes to war.
Her best-known story is the Devi Mahatmya's. The buffalo demon Mahisha had driven the gods out of heaven, and no god could kill him. So the gods, in their anger, sent out fire from their bodies, and the fires came together into one woman, more splendid than all of them. Each god gave her his weapon, and the mountain Himalaya gave her a lion. She rode against Mahisha and his armies, and after a long battle, as he changed from shape to shape, she killed him.
She has other stories. In the same text she fights Shumbha and Nishumbha, and Kali comes out of her forehead. In the Devi Bhagavata she weeps for nine days over a starving world as Shakambhari, and takes her name from the demon Durgama, whom she kills. On Trikuta mountain in Jammu she is Vaishno Devi, a girl who waits for Vishnu.
Sarva mangala mangalye shive sarvartha sadhike, sharanye tryambake gauri narayani namostu te: the Devi Mahatmya's hymn to the goddess, bless all, achieve all, our refuge.
In Bengal she is above all a daughter. Every autumn, at Durga Puja, she comes home from her husband Shiva's mountain with her four children, for five days, and is worshipped in tens of thousands of painted clay images; then she is taken to the river and sent home again, with tears. In the rest of India the same days are Navratri, the nine nights of the goddess, ending with Dussehra.
