Devalok
God · All traditions · Pan-India

Ratri

Also called: Night, Nisha, Vibhavari, Urmya, Nakta

The Night, daughter of the Sky and sister of Dawn, praised in one Rigveda hymn (10.127) as a bright, starlit goddess who looks out with many eyes, fills height and depth, drives off the darkness with her light and keeps the wolf and the thief away. The Atharvaveda adds four protective hymns. In the Puranas Brahma sends her into the unborn Parvati to make her dark, and she later comes out as the lion-riding Kaushiki or Ekanamsha; the Devi Mahatmya praises the Goddess as the Great Night.

night protection stars sleep

Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; Atharva-Veda Samhita, tr. W. D. Whitney, rev. C. R. Lanman (Harvard Oriental Series 7-8, 1905), Book XIX hymns 47-50; The Matsya Puranam, Part II (chapters 129-292), translated by a Taluqdar of Oudh (Sacred Books of the Hindus 17.2, 1917); The Markandeya Purana, tr. F. E. Pargiter (Bibliotheca Indica, 1904); Vedic Mythology, A. A. Macdonell (1897) · see Ratri's web

Relations 5

Ratri has form

  • Kaushiki (Form) · Night colours the unborn Parvati
    In the Matsya Purana the dark skin shed by Parvati resumes the form of Ratri and is then called Kaushiki and Ekanamsha.
  • Kalaratri (Form) Shakta
    The Night of death or dissolution; a later, fierce figure joined to the Vedic Night by name and by the use of the Ratri Sukta.

Ratri child of

  • Dyaus (God)
    Night, like her sister Dawn, is called the daughter of Heaven.

Ratri received a boon from

Ratri sibling of

  • Ushas (God)
    Night sets her sister Dawn in her place; Dawn drives off her sister Night.

Stories 4

Cited