Devalok
Festival story · 2 tellings · North India, West India

Parvati's festivals of the north-west

Who is in it

  • Parvati the goddess honoured, as Gauri
  • Shiva as Isar
  • Teej the monsoon festival
  • Gangaur the spring festival
  • Vishnu the unwanted match (Hartalika telling)

The story, beat by beat

  1. Hariyali Teej in Shravan, Kajari and Hartalika Teej in Bhadrapada mark Parvati's acceptance by Shiva after her long fast.
  2. Women swing, wear green, put on henna and fast, in Nepal without water and in red.
  3. Hartalika remembers the friends who carried Parvati off so she would not be married to Vishnu.
  4. Gangaur begins the day after Holi and runs sixteen days to Chaitra Shukla Tritiya.
  5. Girls and wives worship clay images of Isar and Gauri, Shiva and Parvati as a married pair.
  6. Jaipur carries the goddess out of the City Palace in procession.
  7. At Udaipur the images are floated out and immersed in Lake Pichola.

women marriage monsoon clay images immersion

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Encyclopedia

Teej (Rajasthan, UP, Bihar, Nepal)

North India · Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Nepal Folk

When the monsoon greens the fields, married women go home to their mothers, swings go up in the trees, and Teej begins. There are three: Hariyali in Shravan, and Kajari and Hartalika in the following month. All of them are Parvati's. The women fast as she fasted, some in Nepal without so much as water and dressed in the red of a bride, and sing of the girl who waited a hundred and eight lives for the god she wanted. Hartalika adds a plot: her father had promised her to Vishnu, and her friends stole her away into the forest so that the wedding could not happen and her penance could. Jaipur takes the goddess through the old city in procession; mothers send sindhara gifts to married daughters.

Teej — Wikipedia; Shraavana — Wikipedia

Encyclopedia

Gangaur (Rajasthan and neighbours)

West India · Jaipur, Udaipur, Malwa, Braj, Fazilka Folk

Gangaur is the spring answer to Teej: sixteen days from the morning after Holi in which girls and wives make and dress small clay images of Gauri and her husband Isar, carry lamp-pots on their heads, and pray for good husbands and their husbands' lives. It ends on the third of bright Chaitra with the goddess carried out of Jaipur's City Palace, and at Udaipur with the pair rowed out onto Lake Pichola and given to the water.

What is different here:

Spring rather than monsoon; the couple worshipped as a pair of clay images and immersed.

Gangaur — Wikipedia

Sources: Teej — Wikipedia; Shraavana — Wikipedia; Gangaur — Wikipedia

More stories with the same people

Legend

Bhrigu tests the three gods

Sages on the Saraswati bank ask Bhrigu to find which god is greatest.
Folk tale

The boar Shiva sent to earth

A piglet raised by Parvati in Shiva's garden grows wild; instead of killing it Shiva sends it down to protect people, and it becomes the Tulu guardian Panjurli.
Festival story

Shiva the begging farmer of the Gajan

At Bengal's Chaitra Gajan devotees become Shiva and his ganas, act out his marriage and beg from house to house; the god is a poor householder scolded by his wife.
Folk tale

Shiva takes up the plough

Rameswar Bhattacharya's 18th-century Bengali poem makes Shiva an illiterate, penniless villager who has to farm to feed his family.
Origin

Lingo frees the gods from Mahadeo's cave

Shiva as Mahadeo seals the Gond gods in a cave; Parvati searches for them; the hero Lingo lifts the stone, frees them and founds Gond society.
Origin

The pillar of light

Brahma and Vishnu quarrel over who is greater; Shiva appears as a column of fire without end; Brahma flies up as a gander and Vishnu digs down as a boar; Vishnu admits failure, Brahma lies with the ketaki as witness and is cursed. Tamil tradition roots the pillar at Tiruvannamalai.
Legend

Bhrigu tests the three gods

Sages send Bhrigu to find out which god is greatest. Brahma swallows his anger, Shiva raises his trident until his consort calms him, and Vishnu apologises after being kicked; the sages choose Vishnu. Temple and popular tellings add Lakshmi's departure, the Tirumala descent and curses on Brahma and Shiva.
Legend

The churning of the ocean of milk

Gods and demons churn the milk ocean with Mount Mandara on the tortoise's back; poison, treasures, Lakshmi and the nectar emerge, and Vishnu as Mohini keeps the nectar for the gods.