All religions collect substances from the mundane reality and manifest those in their scriptures and narratives. But considering this process very insignificant, labeling it anthropomorphic will be imprudent. The religions mainly deal with the Anthropon (Greek term; singular Anthropos) or human beings whose target is to convey some messages to them. How could those generate tangible messages and be connected with them if they do not contain anthropomorphic elements? In human history especially in the Middle East and India, the mythic narratives have become the sources of the scriptural narratives, which later turned into metanarratives and played the roles to produce legal codes for the social laws and orders.
The above introduction has been written to enter into the chapter of Parvati. Among the Hindu Goddesses, Parvati’s significance is paramount. She is “Jagajjani”, the Mother of the Universe; therefore the Supreme Being among the Matrika idols. In the Indian subcontinent, some goddesses are local, areal; so they are finally finite and parochial. People of other localities find it difficult to locate and assimilate them. Of course, Hinduism’s modern movements tried to readdress them, visualizing them to be some varied manifestations of a single deity. But some Goddesses have crossed the local boundaries and anyway evolved as all-pervading beings. Parvati is one of them. She is the complementary force of Shiva, a Supreme Deity of the Hindu divine order. But when Parvati resides with Shiva in the Kailas Mountain, she is his Hladini Force – the force of ecstasy and joy. But this ecstasy is not meant to trivialize her; she gives strength and vigor to Shiva – the Supreme Yogi, as he contemplates the vast universe. Till now the story sounds like Vaishnavite. But it is not so unilinear.
Duality or complex nature is a common trait of the Hindu goddesses; it is visible in many instances. But the dual or more characters have synergized their momentum in problematic phenomena. Because of necessity, she is amorous and amorphous. She is joyous, she is fierce, she is filled with motherly love, and again she is a son killer. It is because she is Kali, Chandi, Durga, Shyama and many more– and through all these manifestations she kills the demons or asuras. These demons are also her children as she is the mother of everyone. And because of who she has appeared with this fierce manifestation, either human beings or the deities, they are also her children. This is her problem-solving mechanics. Parvati’s varicose presence knows no bounds. She is present in Shaivism, Shaktism, Tantrism, and also in Bhaktism. She has been prevailing from an acute to an obtuse angle, whatever the devotees want to discover in her and however, they want and like to address her.
The Pancharatra movement developed in the third century BCE in India. It was a Vaishnavite Bhakti movement; principally its central character was Vishnu. But later this overarching movement embraced and assimilated a lot of deities and emerged as a colossal movement. Hinduism is essentially either monolatry or henotheism or both at a time. Monolatry is a concept when the devotee worships a god or a goddess but does not avoid the existence of other deities. Henotheism denotes such a system, where the other deities are acknowledged but a certain God or Goddess is considered to be the principal God or Goddess to the devotees or worshippers. This is the basic complexity of understanding Hindu pantheism. When Shaivas are praising and eulogizing Shiva, they are not discarding or avoiding other gods and their female consorts. The Viashnavas do the same thing, their God is Vishnu. The Shaktas consider Goddess Kali to be the pivotal force of the Universe. To the Ganapatya community, Ganesha is the Supreme God. Nimbarkacharya of the twelfth century redefined Vaishnavism, where Radha and Krishna turned out inseparable and Srichaitanya epitomized this concept in Bengal and Odisha in the 15th century. This was started through the Pancharatra movement. In many cases, Shiva glorified Vihnu and his Aavatar Sri Krishna; subsequently, Radha was extolled as inevitable. But from the Hindu legacy this concept is nothing new. Samkhya philosophy tells us of the dualistic connotation of the universe; it appeared as Purusa and Prakiti. In Manu Samhita (also known as Manusmriti), in Devi Bhagavatam we already explored that the cosmic force is divided into a male and a female being; but actually, they are one. Samkhya narrates it in a more complex way. Let us confine ourselves to Yin and Yang – the paternal and the maternal cosmic forces; where they are addressed as father and mother from a cosmic level. Yin is passive, so is Purusa. Yang is active, the fierce transformer; and Prakiti is so. The Devi Shakti or the Goddess Force is that turbulent transformer in Hinduism. When she kills the demons, she is rowdy, and unruly, but not unconscious. She moves heaven and earth to bring peace. Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “I must be cruel only to be kind.” The ethics is inbuilt here. Parvati is an archetypal manifestation of ethics. This is how the Pancharatra movement assimilated other deities and produced a balanced henotheism and/or monolatry. She is also Sati and Gaudi – two forms with sublime beauties; the first one sacrificed her to safeguard the dignity of her husband. Again, in Sri Sri Chandi, a part of the Markandeya Purana, she appeared with her macabre and ghoulish features to kill Mahishasura – the king of the demons. In Narada Pancharatra this same Parvati is patiently learning about the sublimity of Vishnu from Shiva, her divine consort (4th night, 2nd chapter). Have we reached the quintessence of the storyline of this narration? A mother is also a caring sweetheart of her husband. But when her children face dangers, she becomes another being. A loving mother can even sacrifice her own children if they become vicious against common welfare. Her transformation is very easily traceable from her manifestation as goddess Meenakshi; the tutelary goddess of Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Here at first, she was at first a demon killer. But later she became the hladini force of Sundareswarar, her husband, another manifestation of Shiva (Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition by David R. Kinsly, 202-3).
