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Heroic Śāktism with Chinese
Characteristics: The Female Warrior Sovereign Prophecy, the Navarātri, and a Trio of Devīs of War in the Accession of Female Emperor Wu Zhao
*†NORMAN HARRY ROTHSCHILD University of North Florida
hrothsch@unf.edu
Abstract: In a previous publication, I argued that China’s first and only female emperor Wu Zhao 武曌 (624–705) developed an assemblage of female divinities and dynastic mothers from Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist traditions that she tactically deployed at different stages of her half-century career in governance to enhance her visibility and political amplitude; this strategy effectively imbued herself with the aggregate cultural resonance, maternal
* I would like to offer my heartfelt gratitude to the Tang Studies Society for their generous 2020 Research Grant that proved vital in helping me to acquire the materials necessary to bring this essay to fruition. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewer for her/his helpful suggestions and nuanced criticism. Gra- cious thanks, too, to Stephanie Race, the Head of Research and Outreach, and Chelsea Gentry, the Library Acquisitions Specialist, from the Thomas G. Car- penter Library at the University of North Florida for finding various ways to help me obtain and access materials in the midst of a pandemic. In addition, I would also like to offer thanks to my research assistant, Lara Morello, for all of her help tracking down elusive sources.
Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 4.2 (2021): 300–449
potency, demiurgic energy, and traditional charisma of these female ancestors. It seems that I overlooked several important devīs from the Hindu tradition: the indomitable radiant warrior queens Durgā, Cundī (Ch. Zhunti 准提/準提/准胝), and Mārīcī (Ch. Molizhi tian
摩利支天).1 This paper argues that the timely confluence of ‘heroic Śāktism’2 and esoteric Buddhism—newly arrived and nascent yet influential religious and cultural currents in late seventh century China—which, in conjunction with the opportune circulation of a cryptic prophecy concerning a ‘female ruler and martial king’, enabled Wu Zhao to use this trio of Hindu goddesses as an integral part in the construction of her sovereignty— including playing a par- ticularly central role during her accession in 690. The late Antonino Forte’s brilliant translation of the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sūtra contains a number of prophecies that provide vital clues and insights into the roles that these devīs played.3
Keywords: Heroic Śāktism, Wu Zhao (Wu Zetian), Navarātri, Durgā, Mārīcī, Commentary on the Great Cloud Sūtra, vyākaraṇa DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.04.02.06
Editorial note: The author of this article, Norman Harry Rothschild, passed shortly before the article was typeset. We thank Dr. Ida Rothschild, sister of Dr.
Rothschild and a professional editor, and Kelly Carlton, one of Dr. Rothschild’s former students at the University of North Florida and currently a Ph.D. student at Princeton University, for having meticulously checked the article proofs and providing valuable editorial suggestions.
1 Rothschild, Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon, 74, fn.2 , does brief- ly acknowledge the possibility that Cuṇḍī was another Buddhist figure in the female sovereign’s eclectic assemblage of female goddesses. See 301, fn. 30.
2 This central concept in this paper is lifted from Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism.
3 Forte, Political Propaganda.
Introduction
1. Warrior Goddess Rising: Indic Origins and Development of Heroic Śāktism and the Navarātri
1.1. The Rise of ‘Heroic Śāktism’ in Sixth and Seventh Century India
1.2. The Navarātri and the Warrior Goddess
1.2a. Connecting the Warrior-Goddess Durgā to the Devīmāhātmya and the Navarātri
1.3a. Durgā 1.3b. Caṇḍī 1.3c. Mārīcī
1.4. Key Elements of Heroic Śāktism and the Navarātri Related to Wu Zhao’s Accession
1.4a. Heroic Śāktism: Warrior-goddess Connected to Sovereignty and Legitimation
1.4b. Warrior Class/Identity 1.4c. The Cakravartin 1.4d. Luni-solar Light 1.4e. Gender
1.4f. Numerology: The Power of Nine
2. Prophecy Fulfilled: Heroic Śāktism and the Navarātri in the Accession of Wu Zhao
2.1. Setting the Context: Sino-Indian Connections in the Early Tang 2.2. Prophecy of a ‘Warrior Queen’ in East Asia
2.2a. A Korean Kṣatriyan
2.2b. The Warrior Queen Prophecy in the Early Tang: A Narrow Escape for Wu Zhao
2.2c. Li Chunfeng and Wu Zhao
2.2d. A Physiognomist’s Initial Prediction of Wu Zhao’s Future Ascendancy
2.2e. The Chen Shuozhen Rebellion of 653 2.3. Cundī Enters Wu Zhao’s Pantheon 2.3a. Caṇḍī-Cundī Connection
2.3b. Esoteric Buddhism, Divākara, and the Cundī Dhāraṇī 2.4. Presence of Mārīcī in Wu Zhao’s Era
2.4a. Mārīcī’s Connection to the Ninth Day of the Ninth Lunar Month
2.5. The Harivaṃśa Hymn in a Buddhist Sūtra during Wu Zhao’s Reign
2.6. Commentary on the Meaning of the Prophecy about Divine August in the Great Cloud Sūtra
2.7. Amplifying the Power of Her Martial Wu Name
2.7a. Projecting and Embodying Warrior: Military Examinations and Martial Motherhood
2.8. Wu Zhao and the ‘Two Nines’ in the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sūtra
2.9. Wu Zhao’s Enthronement and Dynastic Inauguration on the Navamī
2.9a. Aftermath: A Poetic Evocation of Navamī in Zhongzong’s Reign?
Disclaimers on Wu Zhao’s ‘Heroic Śāktism’ and Celebrations of the Navarātri
Conclusions
1. Warrior Goddess Rising: Indic Origins and Development of Heroic Śāktism and the Navarātri
T
his paper hypothesizes that both an autumnal Hindu festival, the Navarātri, and the warrior devī Durgā (Ch. Tujia 突伽 or Yongmeng 勇猛), the primary goddess celebrated in that festival, along with her other Śāktic incarnations Cundī (Ch. Zhunti 准提), and Mārīcī (Ch. Molizhi tian 摩利支天), played important roles in the timing of the enthronement of Wu Zhao 武曌,4 China’s first4 While in most secondary scholarship she is known as Wu Zetian 武則天 or Empress Wu 武后, throughout this work I use the self-styled designation Wu Zhao that she assumed in 689. For historical records of her assumption of the name Zhao, see ZZTJ 204.6263; and XTS 76.3481.
and only female emperor, and the inauguration of her Zhou dynasty in 690. The timely arrival of nascent yet influential religious and cultural currents Śāktism and esoteric Buddhism enabled this trio of intertwined Indic warrior-goddesses to play an integral part in Wu Zhao’s unprecedented ascendancy to the imperial throne. The timing of their arrival coincided with and was likely related to a prophecy of the ascendancy of a female warrior-king (a kṣatriya). Wu Zhao’s cor- onation took place on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, the climactic day of Navarātri, an autumnal festival that celebrates and honors the divine feminine goddess/principle śakti and Durgā.
To this end, Part One of this paper examines the emergence of an Indic tradition that contemporary scholar of Religious Studies Bihani Sarkar terms ‘heroic Śāktism’; once it reached its mature phase between the sixth and eleventh centuries, this tradition of
‘warrior-centric goddess worship’ was closely linked to kingship and legitimation. This paper explores the cultic backgrounds of Durgā, Caṇḍī/Cundī, and Mārīcī—the trio of deities most closely linked to heroic Śāktism. All three can be viewed as manifestations of the divine feminine goddess/principle śakti or as incarnations of the Mahādevī, the Great Goddess. In the tradition of heroic Śāktism, goddess worship found its most potent ritual expression in the Navarātri, an autumnal festival offering the warrior devī Durgā praises and seeking her protection. The second section of Part One investigates the origins, development, and political significance of this annual celebration. The final sub-section of Part One briefly presents pivotal elements of heroic Śāktism and the Navarātri that are con- nected with the accession of Wu Zhao.
Part Two of this paper presents a number of compelling pieces of evidence that connect both heroic Śāktism and the Navarātri to Wu Zhao’s sovereignty and imperial enthronement. First, this section presents a short review of the extensive Sino-Indian commerce and in- teraction in the seventh century is presented to argue that both rising and popular Indian currents like ‘heroic Śāktism’ and the Navarātri festival were widely recognized in Tang China and greater East Asia.
The following sub-section (2.2) investigates the emergence and ongoing presence of the prophecy of a ‘martial female sovereign’ that circulated in both Tang China and Silla Korea during the early-to-mid
seventh century. A little more than a half century before Wu Zhao took the throne, a related prophecy aided the ascendancy of a Sillan queen, a Korean of the kṣatriyan caste, strongly indicating the prophecy’s connection to heroic Śāktism. Next, this section scrutinizes the respec- tive roles that two famous seventh-century prognosticators—Grand Astrologer Li Chunfeng and physiognomist Yuan Tianwang—played in prophecy’s development. Finally, this section examines the rapid rise and precipitous fall of Chen Shuozhen, a self-proclaimed female sovereign and mystic who led a rebel army against the Tang.
Part 2.3, ‘Cuṇḍī Enters Wu Zhao’s Pantheon’, examines the role that Indian Buddhist monk Divākara played in transmitting and pro- moting the cult of Cuṇḍī at a critical juncture in the mid-to-late 680s, a period of incubation when Wu Zhao, as grand dowager and regent presiding over court, explored political and ideological paths by which she might assume the throne. Divākara translated and presented several renditions of the Cundī dhāraṇī, an incantation that celebrated an esoteric Buddhist form of one of the Indic warrior goddesses.
The subsequent section examines the textual presence of Mārīcī in Wu Zhao’s era and explores the connection between this Indic god- dess of light and dawn and the ninth day of the ninth lunar month.
A variation of a hymn addressed to Durgā from the Harivaṃśa, a Hindu text originally dating from the third or fourth century, appears in the Buddhist monk Yijing’s 義淨 (635–713) Chinese translation of the Golden Light Sūtra that was presented at Wu Zhao’s court. Part 2.5 examines the implications of this text in the context of Wu Zhao’s idiosyncratic brand of heroic Śāktism.
Building on the work of Antonino Forte to translate and metic- ulously analyze Dunhuang document S.6502, the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sūtra, Part 2.6 briefly reviews the significance of this source and the pivotal role that it played in Wu Zhao’s legitimation.
This sets the stage for subsequent sections, which present the argu- ment that in addition to the two cardinal purposes of the Commen- tary—to identify Wu Zhao as the prophesied bodhisattva in a female body and as a cakravartin—the document also contained a number of related elements contained in the document that support the relat- ed ‘female warrior sovereign’ prophecy and that are consonant with heroic Śāktism.
Wu Zhao’s surname, Wu 武, means ‘warrior’ or ‘martial’. Part 2.7 examines the manifold ways in which Wu Zhao amplified the power vested in her name by using it to name places, eras of reign, and in many other contexts, to broadcast an image of her rising success and power which dovetailed with a concerted effort to engineer and work toward the fruition of the prophecy of a female warrior sovereign prophecy.
Part 2.8 looks further at the late seventh century Chinese female ruler’s calculated engineering of the warrior queen prophecy with close attention paid to the manner in which it is imbedded in the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sūtra, a piece of purposefully-engi- neered Buddhist propaganda that played a critical role in her acces- sion and enthronement. This section focuses on the idea of the ‘Two Nines’ (erjiu 二九), which served as both a reference to Wu Zhao and Gaozong and, tacitly, to the ninth day of the ninth lunar month.
Part 2.9 investigates the coincidental timing of Wu Zhao’s ascen- dancy to the throne and the inauguration of the Zhou dynasty with the Navarātri festival, both of which occurred on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month in 690. On a number of additional occasions during her short-lived Zhou dynasty, Wu Zhao inaugurated new eras and assumed titles on the ninth, culminating day of the Navarātri.
This festival marked the fruition and realization of the ‘female martial king’ prophecy, providing further evidence of the significant part that ‘Heroic Śāktism with Chinese characteristics’ played in Wu Zhao’s ascendancy and sovereignty.
1.1. The Rise of ‘Heroic Śāktism’ in Sixth and Seventh Century India
The story of goddess Durgā’s victory over buffalo demon Mahiṣāsura, Bihani Sarkar contends, developed into an expansive belief system of ‘warrior-centric goddess worship’ closely linked to political power, kingship and legitimation. Sarkar has dubbed this belief system ‘heroic Śāktism’.5 From its origins in ‘officially sanctioned royal inscriptions’
5 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 1.
from the second to sixth centuries, Sarkar traces heroic Śāktism through textual accounts of ‘the investiture of kingship by a super- natural female being’ in ‘Puraṇīc and Buddhist scriptures’ dating from the seventh to ninth centuries to illustrate the burgeoning centrality of this tradition in medieval Indian courts and royal cults; indeed, she claims that the development of this tradition was germane to and con- comitant with the rise of the early Indian kingdoms.6
Over time, Sarkar explains, ‘tribal cults’ of regional female deities evolved into ‘court cults centered in temples’. In the ‘kaleidoscopic
“new world” born from the Gupta demise [mid-sixth cent.]’, with competing medieval kingdoms, ‘the goddess was a much more cen- trally positioned, indefinably protean and pragmatic symbol’; seeking to extend their power and gain local tribes’ acceptance of local tribes, rulers worked to cultivate ‘connection with, and elevation of, autochthonous devī cults’. Following a long period of coalescence that Sarkar painstakingly charts, ‘the Gupta era cult of a single god- dess “Durgā” with roots in the Kuṣāṇa period [the Kushan dynasty, first–third cent. AD] transformed, from the sixth century onwards, into a multi-layered cult formed of particular local goddesses, many from an indigenous background, in whom she was thought to inhere and for whom she served as a grander, classical symbol’.7 By the end of the sixth century, as ‘tribal-pastoral warrior communities came into contact with larger urbanized kingdoms…the ancient monarch of the terrain, the tribal patroness’ took on a new form, one ‘amal- gamated with the established Brahminical warrior-goddess Caṇḍī/
Durgā/Bhavānī, worshipped by means of the same ritual systems, and received elite patronage from royal palace’; these kingdoms patronized and sponsored ‘local royal goddesses’, integrating ‘them with forms of Caṇḍī enshrined in Purāṇic scripture’.8 ‘From the
6 Ibid., 178.
7 Ibid., 10–11, also chap. 5, ‘Regional Cults of Goddesses Merged with Durgā’, 137–74.
8 Sarkar, ‘The Heroic Cult of the Sovereign Goddess in Mediaeval India’, 16–17. Sarkar argues that this ‘incorporation of indigenous goddesses’ is ‘part of a larger social process of state formation’ (Heroic Shāktism, 138). This is consis-
6th century onward’, Sarkar observes, Durgā effectively became ‘a metonym enfolding goddesses of particular locales…the face of these formerly faceless sylvan deities with whom she shared similarities of personality, notably her control over crises and her…interfusion of mild and wild aspects, of light and dark’.9 In short, Durgā became the most visible and widely recognized ‘brand name’ of a Mahādevī, a composite mother and warrior goddess, an amalgam of regional cults, a deity with a ‘cohesive nature,’ whose tremendous appeal and reach spanned violence and civilization, destruction and creation, darkness (moon) and light (sun), and resonated with Brahman and outcaste alike.
During the late sixth and seventh century, a pivotal juncture in the maturation of heroic Śāktism, ‘literature on devīs in Sanskrit, the lan- guage of the cultivated, began to appear in voluminous quantities’, bringing about, in the Indian intellectual and cultural sphere a pro- liferation ‘of formulations on the subject of who or what Śakti was, and the appropriate method of her propitiation, formulations that appeared in esoteric Tantric and exoteric Purāṇic writings’. As Sarkar capably frames it, in the Devīmāhātmya, a text discussed in detail below, ‘Purāṇic myth and popular religion viewed Śakti as incarnated in a singular female god-head who adopts various regional forms and whose primary agency is a valiant king or warrior’.10
Sarkar’s coined ‘heroic Śāktism’ evokes a vision of triumphant sovereignty featuring a strong ruler who was invested by and who
tent with Liu Xinru’s observation that the development of Śāktism was acceler- ated as the ‘female deities of tribal societies, especially the matriarchal ones, were assimilated into the Brahmanical pantheon’ (Liu, Silk and Religion, 29).
9 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 138.
10 Sarkar, ‘The Heroic Cult of the Sovereign Goddess’, 18. In another publi- cation, Sarkar notes that, ‘though Purãnic passages on the festival of the goddess abound, they are dispersed, patchy and difficult to date given that the Purãnas themselves are mostly protean and composite texts that have mutated and grown over periods of time’. See Sarkar, ‘The Rite of Durgā in Medieval Bengal’, 328.
This underscores the difficulty involved in tracking the transmission and spread of the cult of the Mahādevī.
identified with the goddess—a leader capable of protecting her or his realm and engaging in effective military action. This idea that a female divinity invested the first ruler and granted ‘all the emblems of sovereignty’, as Sarkar frames it, ‘guided the way royal power was commonly expressed by forming the main conceptual patterns for medieval kingship’. In essence, the goddess served as the wellspring and rallying point of royal authority.11
Although on the surface the goddess at the heart of ‘heroic Śāk- tism’ ‘present[ed] a “Durgā” identity, there are other layers embed- ded in their syncretic personalities’. To assume the goddess is Durgā, Sarkar cautions, ‘would be to disregard these other forms. However, what is common among all these goddesses is that they seem to have been always connected to royal power’.12 Durgā and two other prima- ry forms of the goddess, Caṇḍī and Mārīcī, will be examined in Part I.3 below.
1.2. The Navarātri and the Warrior Goddess
Rising in popularity and prominence at the same time as the warrior goddess it celebrates, the Navarātri—literally ‘nine’ (Skt. nav) ‘nights’
(Skt. rātri)—is an autumnal festival that celebrates and honors the divine feminine goddess/principle śakti and/or the potent deity that is its embodiment. Calendrically, the Navarātri is situated at ‘an as- trologically auspicious time to worship the goddess’.13 In its eventual mature form, the festival begins with the onset of Āśvina, the seventh month, with ‘a burst of creative energies and a celebration of life’, on the day of the new moon at the conclusion of the ‘most inauspicious time of the year…the dark, waning phase of the moon’ when funerary rites are performed and the Sun is moving southward. From a season of withering crops, a deathly ebb-tide, Durgā’s rise and triumph over the buffalo demon Mahiṣāsura marks a renewal, a transition from
11 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 177–78.
12 Ibid., 206.
13 Wilson, ‘Kolus, Caste, and Class’, 241. Wilson’s study examines Tamil cele- bration of the festival.
‘the period of death, chaos, and disorder into one of creation, life, dharma, and order’.14
Sarkar traces the festival’s origins and early development back to an autumnal popular apotropaic ceremony from the third century AD ‘that pacified danger and publicly exhibited the heroism of rulers’, placating harmful demons and spirits. Beginning in the sixth century, elements from the ‘Brahminical military festival of Āśvina’
were incorporated. Sources on the Navarātri (or Navarātra), like the later Devīpurāṇa, remark that the goddess is honored to ‘acquire sovereignty’ and to ‘increase the kingdom’s prosperity and power’.15 Sarkar characterizes the early development of the Navarātri—a syn- cretic celebration with ‘Tantric and Purāṇic ritual features’16 —in the following manner:
From a relatively small-scale festival in the Gupta empire it devel- oped into a rite of civil sanctification performed by upcoming king- doms around the 6th century, from which time Purāṇic accounts of the Śākta Navarātra begin to emerge. This was the time when, in the process of kingdoms forming, local goddesses thought to hold terri- torial power over them were merged into Durgā and attained their classical identity.17
By the seventh century, with this emergent notion of ‘heroic Śāktism’
at its core, the Navarātri emerged as the single-most important festal ritual of kingship—a critical annual consecration of the king—in medieval India. Sarkar argues that the cult of Nidrā, the goddess of sleep and death, also known by the Rātri (night) of Navarātri, was enfolded into the growing cult of Durgā between the third and fifth centuries. This goddess of darkness was born on the ninth day as the ninth portion of Viṣṇu; she received sacrifices on the Navamī, the
14 Narayanan, ‘Royal Darbār and Domestic Kolus’, 292–94.
15 Devīpurāṇa, 50.81, see Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 221, fn. 27.
16 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 226.
17 Ibid., 270.
ninth day.18 This day also marks Durgā’s great victory over buffalo demon Mahiṣāsura—who had vanquished all of the other gods and usurped their preeminent position.19 Sarkar notes that the myth cycles that recount Durgā’s annihilation of and triumph over demons
‘collectively embody the symbolic language of Indian kingship and royal power’.20 In some regions, on this culminating victorious day, kings invoked the goddess and ceremonially undertook ‘symbolic conquests of other lands’.21
Over time, as the ‘royal goddess became more sanitized and sub- sumed by caste’, she ‘was made into a kṣatriya deity’, associated with warrior-kings. The Sahyādrikhaṇḍa (part of the Skanda Purāṇa) records an ancient genealogy that identifies goddesses as the source of a lineage of kṣatriyas.22 Most important for the rulers of new com- peting medieval kingdoms in India, she represented heroic power and promised to sanctify kingship, warding off danger, bringing about civic order, and leading ruler and nation in the military conquest of enemies. Indeed, the king effectively transformed into a conduit channeling the energy, the śakti—the female potency, capability, and power—of the goddess. For rulers and earthly worshippers of
18 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 56. For the larger evolution of Nidrā into Durgā, see chap. 1, ‘The Cult of Nidrā-Kālarātri’, 41–69.
19 Roy, Traditional Festivals, 1:304; Shah, Hindu Culture and Lifestyle;
Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 96. In different places, the festival is known by dif- ferent names. In Bengal and other parts of North India, it is known as Durgā pūjā (Durgā worship); in Karnataka (southwestern India) the final day is called Dasarā. See Fuller & Logan, ‘The Navarātri Festival in Madurai’, 79.
20 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 13.
21 Narayanan, ‘Royal Darbār and Domestic Kolus’, 288. Numerous regional variations of the Navarātri came to be celebrated. This is one of the fundamen- tal underlying ideas in the collection of essays on this seasonal celebration. For example, Ute examines the Navarātri as ‘an event that displays and negotiates cul- tural values relevant’ to different performers and audiences, one that is ‘under- stood in different ways’ in different regions. See Hüsken, ‘Ritual Complementar- ity and Difference’, 190.
22 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 129.
the goddess, the Navarātri marked the perfect time to connect with her immeasurable potency and power. At this particular auspicious calendrical and astrological junction, Durgā and other forms of the goddess were most approachable; the proximity, or even the interpen- etration of the earthly and celestial realms made this the optimal time to contact this divine presence.23
The ‘profoundly intimate and revelatory experience’ conjoining goddess and ruler was best achieved on the ninth day of the Āśvina, the Navamī, on what became the culminating day of the Navarātri festival. This personal connection between sovereign and deity became a critical part of the ‘celestial power’ that formed the basis of the ruler’s authority.24
C. J. Fuller and Penny Logan also assert the paramount religio-po- litical importance of the festival, arguing that the Navarātri ‘reiter- ated the king’s role in maintaining an ordered society and cosmos, and renewed and re-emphasized his personal relationship with the deities’. They contend that, ‘there can be no doubt that the festival
23 Luchesi, ‘Navarātra and Kanyā Pūjā’, 310. Though his study is focused on more recent times, Hillary Rodrigues describes the collective sense of awe and reverence that marks this arrival of the goddess: ‘everyone, both male and female, is made unmistakably aware—through her ubiquitous embodiments on display—of the presence of the Divine Feminine…. all celebrants are akin to her children, able to play freely and securely under the watchful and protective pres- ence of the Cosmic Mother’; see Rodrigues, ‘Conclusion’, 325.
24 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 1–40, ‘Introduction’, and her dissertation, ‘The Heroic Cult of the Sovereign Goddess’, 8–11 and 109–10. Sarkar (‘Heroic Cult’, 12–15) identifies a ‘premature phase’ from the second to sixth centuries, when this tradition of heroic Śāktism was taking nascent shape, evidenced, for instance, by the presence of stone images of the sovereign-goddess slaying the buffalo demon or the coins under Candragupta, a fourth century ruler of the Gupta dynasty, featuring a lion-riding goddess. This image of Durgā as a lion-rid- ing goddess may well be understood as an evolution of the cult of the Kushan/
Iranian protector-goddess Nana; for more on this possible prototype of Durgā, see Ghose, ‘Nana’, 97–112. Ghose suggests Nana was assimilated into the cult of Durgā during the later stages of the Kuṣāṇa period (97).
of Navarātri…is centrally concerned with the themes of kingship and sovereignty…. [it] eclipsed any other single event as the most prominent ritual of kingship across India’.25 In a similar vein, Hillary Rodrigues contends that the invocation of the devī at the festival held
‘the promise of expanded or successful sovereignty, as well as auspi- cious beneficence or fertility for the patron, and for one’s community or kingdom’.26
Under royal patronage, ‘the goddess-centric Navarātra’, the autum- nal festival that venerated this composite goddess, progressively grew in significance. Sarkar characterizes this seasonal celebration as a:
rite of heroic and civic glory par excellence. Annually celebrated, for if not disaster would strike, the Navarātra marked the occasion when the ritual of the court was publicly shared by all citizens, when god- dess, king, and state were constituted as one energized entity. The regular performance of this rite, its association with cyclical patterns of time and seasons, fertility, abating the hunger of primeval spirits, its inclusion of tribal celebrations…suggest that systems of mediaeval state devīpūjā were but transformed continuations of the older, tribal goddess-centric modes of honouring kingship...rising from local cults of clan goddesses.27
Like the great warrior devī it celebrated, a deity at once the provider and the slayer, the Mother and the Warrior, the Navarātri festival developed into an amalgamation of elements from the Brahmin- ic-Sanskrit center and the ‘wild, occultic, and dangerous’ periphery, through this process becoming the ‘grandest and most complete expression’ of the Pan-Indic imperial cult of Śakti.28
Among the competing kingdoms in sixth and seventh century India, the cult of the Great Goddess politically and culturally became mainstream Indic culture: as Sarkar frames it, ‘heroic Śāktism had
25 Fuller & Logan, ‘The Navarātri Festival in Madurai’, 99 and 108.
26 Rodrigues, ‘Bengali Durgā Pūjā’, 207.
27 Sarkar, ‘The Heroic Cult of the Sovereign Goddess’, 34.
28 Ibid., 34–36, 43, and 46–47.
crystallized from a peripheral faith to a religion of state or Imperial power where political might was figuratively understood and ritu- ally cultivated by a kingdom as Śakti’. In essence, Śakti—which had grown to ‘pan-Indic eminence’—was an integral component of po- litical power.29 Without the sanction of the goddess—whom Deva- datta Kālī describes as a ‘beneficent and awesome deity’ possessing an immeasurable ‘universal creative power’, a powerful divinity who can be ‘conceptualized only as the creator, sustainer, and destroyer of the universe’30—a ruler’s sovereignty and legitimacy were compromised.31
To gain this vital divine sanction, during the Navarātri, the king would perform ‘rites of self-identification whereby the body of the worshipper was transformed into the body of the goddess’—so that the ruler, her or his person invested with the divine potency of the goddess, effectively became a ‘mahābala, a man [or woman] of super-human might, unvanquished in the onslaught of battle, or indeed under any duress’.32 Thus, Sarkar terms the Navarātri, ‘the politically most important enactment of the cult of the sovereign goddess’. She explains that this annual ceremony served as a ‘public expression’ of the relationship between devī and ruler, a festival that marked the ceremonial transference of ‘power and kingship from sov- ereign-goddess to king’. Helping to bring military success and protect the realm from disaster and disease, ‘the autumnal nine nights festival of the cult of the sovereign goddess was therefore essential for the periodical rejuvenation of the entire kingdom…[a] time that the affinity between Śakti and the ruler was singularly evoked, and tem- poral power was made sacred’.33
The festal veneration of Durgā in the Navarātri has its origins in the early Puranic classics, and is connected to the Rāmāyana,
29 Ibid., 20.
30 Kālī, trans., In Praise of the Goddess, 11.
31 Sarkar, ‘The Heroic Cult of the Sovereign Goddess’, 18–20.
32 Ibid., 10 and 10, fn. 6.
33 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 211. The entire seventh chapter, ‘Navarātra’, is de- voted to exploring the connection between heroic Śāktism and historical, political, social, and cultural dimensions of the festival.
the story of Prince Rama’s victory over the demon-king of Lanka, Rāvaṇa; in the epic story, Rāma only gains victory after worship- ping Durgā and being granted a boon from the goddess. According to Hindu ritual calendars, the culminating victorious day of the Navarātri marks both the day that Rāma killed Rāvaṇa and Durgā triumphed over Mahiṣāsura the buffalo demon. In an appendix to the Mahābharata, a hymn to the goddess called the ‘Durgā Stava’, the Pāṇḍava brothers praise and worship Durgā, and perform a rite in which they store their weapons and battle gear in a śamī tree;
the goddess grants them a boon and as a result, they ultimately gain victory over their rival cousins. In another appendix to the Mahābhārata, a hymn known as the ‘Durgā Stotra’, Prince Arjuna praises Durgā, who ultimately grants him victory in battle.34 Thus, in both of these seminal Hindu classics Durgā is a warrior goddess associated with a benevolent warrior’s triumph over evil, with a warrior-king’s righteous recovery of lost territory; invocation and adulation of the goddess that lead to martial triumph developed into an integral part of the Navarātri.35
34 Simmons & Sen, ‘Introduction’, 3–4; Ludvik, Recontextualizing the Praises of a Goddess, 7–8 and 7–8, fn. 19. For a full description of the ruler’s ritual vic- tory march to the śamī tree on the culminating day of Navarātri that ‘inaugurat- ed the medieval military season by re-enacting the Mahābhārata Paṇḍava ritual after their period of exile’, see Simmons, ‘The King of the Yadu Line’, 64; and the sub-chapter ‘Royal and Military Background’, in Einarsen, ‘Navarātri in Bena- res’, 141 and 153, fn. 3.
While the Vījayadaśamī is technically the tenth victorious day, in some textual traditions (the Kālikā and the Bṛhaddharma) it is on the Navamī, the ninth day of the ninth lunar month that Rāma would kill Rāvana thanks to a boon from Durgā, and the tenth day, Daśami, that his victory would be celebrated.
35 In Hindu Goddesses, Kinsley remarks, ‘Durgā’s association with military prowess and her worship for military success undoubtedly led to her being as- sociated with both sets of epic heroes [Rāma and the Pāṇḍava brothers] in the medieval period’ (109). For more on Durgā in the Mahābhārata and Ramaya- na, see also Manna, Mother Goddess Caṇḍī, 81–83, and Sarkar, ‘The Heroic Cult of the Sovereign Goddess’, 122–25. It is difficult to date these two hymns in the
Given that one of the major contentions in this essay is that Wu Zhao, influenced by heroic Śāktism, framed herself as a female war- rior-sovereign it is important to emphasize that the Navarātri was not just a harvest festival; it was also closely associated with the kṣatriya (warrior-king) class and connected to Durgā’s role as a warrior queen and Goddess of Battle. On the culminating day of the festival, there was often a ‘review of arms’, marking the ninth day of Āśvina as ‘the beginning of the traditional military campaigning season, coinciding with the end of the south-west monsoon’.36 Reflecting on the mili- tary assemblage and triumphant parade, Sarkar explains:
Stimulated by this courtly appropriation [of the festival], military rituals either blessing the army and weapons or prognosticating victory emerged as the most important feature of the goddess’s Navarātra, performed with great pomp on Navamī [the ninth day].
However, in contrast to sanguinary sacrifice, these rituals were not it seems an archaic constituent of the Navarātra. They appear rather to be derived from Brahmanical military traditions performed annu- ally in the month of Āśvina. Such calendrically performed military rituals blessing the king’s army and weapons, such as the lustration
Mahābhārata, the ‘Durgā Stava’ and ‘Durgā Stotra’. Rather than calling them
‘appendixes’, Kālī remarks that they were ‘interpolated into’ the text (In Praise of the Goddess, 21). For more on these hymns, see Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, sub- chapter ‘The Eulogy to Durgā in the Mahābhārata’, 53–56. Sarkar remarks that while it is ‘difficult to ascertain the date of composition’, the hymns in the Mahābhārata likely date to the fourth century (56). Sarkar also remarks that from the sixth century onward, especially in the Deccan, Kashmir, and Bengal, Durgā generally appears ‘in royal crises when indeed her powers were most sought after’ (190).
36 Fuller & Logan, ‘The Navarātri Festival in Madurai’, 99. Zotter, ‘Conquer- ing Navarātra’, 496–97, remarks that this ritual inauguration of the ‘season of warfare’ is set on Vijayadaśamī, the ‘Victorious Tenth’ (day) following the ninth and final night of the festival, and that ‘achievement and maintenance of victo- rious rule through worship of Durgā formed part of the master narrative’ of the Śāha dynasty in eighteenth and early nineteenth century Nepal (509).
of the troops and state animals (nīrajana), which would later become necessary components of Caṇḍī’s autumnal worship, were already well-established as civic ceremonies performed on Navamī in Āśvina, before the appropriation of the Sākta Navarātra by the early mediae- val kingdom.37
Clearly, from an early juncture, military muster developed into an important component of the Navarātri.
Sarkar acknowledges that the Navarātri was the ‘politically most important enactment of the cult of Durgā’ because the festival’s ceremonies that marked Durgā’s triumph over Mahiṣa served to transfer ‘power and kingship from sovereign goddess to king and thence to all citizens’, a public expression and ‘the visible climax of the relationship between goddess and ruler’.38 A central festival in South Asian courtly life, the Navarātri served as an annual cer- emonial confirmation of the king’s sovereign authority—power that the goddess conferred.39 As the ‘prime festival of kings, rulers, and warriors’, there were, and still are, wide-ranging traditions associated with the Navarātri—it was a harvest festival, a martial celebration inaugurating the season of warfare, a festal celebration of śakti—divine, demiurgic female power, and an annual marker of the triumph of good over evil.40 Primary festal elements included the killing of demons, elevation of daughters and mothers, veneration of the goddess, celebration of the military force, and amplification of royal authority.41 In their study of festival, Moumita Sen and Caleb Simmons claim that the Navarātri ‘served as the yearly affirmation
37 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 222.
38 Ibid., 210.
39 Simmons & Sen, ‘Introduction’, 4–5.
40 Ibid., 1.
41 Ibid., 1. For a basic review of these festival elements, with a particular em- phasis on the military aspect, see Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 106–15. The goddess Caṇḍī, another name/form of Durgā, see below, is invoked at the outset of au- tumnal hunting expeditions—hunting being closely connected to military exer- cises (Manna, Mother Goddess Caṇḍī, 88–91).
of the king’s power to rule, which was granted from the goddess’.42 How much more poignant if the ruler to whom this divine au- thority was granted was a woman who might be understood as an incarnation of the goddess!43
1.2a. Connecting the Warrior-Goddess Durgā to the Devīmāhātmya and the Navarātri
Dating to the fifth or sixth century AD, the Devīmāhātmya, a work that Devadatta Kālī terms ‘the primary text of the Śākti tradition’—
one that ‘united many and diverse strands of Indian myth, cult practice, and philosophy’ to fashion a ‘great hymn of glorification that proclaimed an all-encompassing vision of the Great God- dess’—marked the realization of a longer process that brought this Mahādevī to the Indian cultural mainstream.44 According to Thomas Coburn, who translated the Devīmāhātmya into English, the text represents an effort to develop an integrated Sanskrit account of var-
42 Ibid., 4–5.
43 Indeed, in modern Indian politics, several female candidates have been rep- resented/represented themselves as incarnations of Durgā. Artist M.F. Husain portrayed Indira Gandhi as Durgā. And within the last decade, in West Bengal Mamata Banerjee was—in keeping with the theme of the Durgā pūjā, ‘change’—
represented as standing for ‘śakti, the embodiment of divine feminine energy.
The LED tableaux laid out in the street leading up to the pandal showed por- traits of Mamata Banerjee in blinking lights…the ultimate portrait…was the goddess herself’ (in Sen, ‘Politics, Religion, and Art in the Durgā Pūjā of West Bengal’, 108–09).
44 Kālī, In Praise of the Goddess, 12. In Heroic Shāktism, Sarkar—who terms the text ‘the locus classicus of the Durgā-myth’ (138)—remarks that the Devīmāhāt- mya ‘implicitly articulated the myth of civilization through its metaphor of the goddess, the king, and the merchant’ (132). She dates this text from a slightly later era: ‘most likely the eighth century’ (138). Although the text came to exist inde- pendently, the Devīmāhātmya also appears as a thirteen-chapter section of one of the Purāṇas.
ious regional myths and conceptions of cults of a Mother Goddess, effectively ‘crystallizing’ earlier traditions.45
The text—an interwoven fabric of ‘diverse threads of an already ancient memory’ to create ‘a dazzling verbal tapestry’ redounding to the glory of the great Hindu goddess46—features a great autumnal pūjā (prayer of devotional worship) for Durgā, where these deeds of the goddess are recited (i.e. the Devīmāhātmya is ritually chanted) for the nine nights of the Navarātri. The impressive deeds include three separate mythic triumphs over demons, including the well-known account of the Great Goddess’s victory over the buffalo-demon Mahiṣa.47 While a Great Goddess with many names wages battle to defeat demons, maintain order in the cosmos, and grant boons to those who offer praise and adulation, ‘Durgā emerges as the supreme savior’.48 Emphasizing the importance of this text, Sarkar has remarked
45 Coburn, Devī Māhātmya. This text forms a thirteen-chapter section (chaps.
81 to 93) of the Mārkaṇdeya, generally accepted as one of the eighteen great early Sanskrit Purāṇic texts (Coburn, 1 and 51). Coburn remarks that the ‘text has an independent life of its own’ appearing in numerous contexts outside and beyond the Mārkaṇdeya (51–52). The Devīmāhātmya is often viewed as a text created as the ‘culmination of a long, earlier process’ involving ‘integration of fragmented evidence for Goddess-worship in archaeological remains and in Vedic and epic lit- erature’ (53). For a succinct review of Coburn’s translation and work, see Erndl, Victory to the Mother, 22–30.
Kālī offers a similar remark on the composite ‘mosaic-like’ nature of this text, observing that the Devīmāhātmya ‘encompass[ed] the beliefs and practices of prehistoric agriculturalists, tribal shamans, ancient city dwellers, and nomad- ic pastoral clans…’. Kālī has also recognized the widespread popularity of the Devīmāhātmya compared to the rest of the Mārkaṇdeya. See Kālī, In Praise of the Goddess, 4 and 12.
46 Kālī, In Praise of the Goddess, xvii. Kālī remarks that the authorship is un- known and that the text originated in northwest India (xvii).
47 For a detailed account of these triumphs in the Devīmāhātmya, see, Devī Māhātmya, ‘The Myths’, 211–49.
48 Shaw, Buddhist Goddesses in India, 313. Shaw dates the text to the sixth century.
that the hymn ultimately conveys ‘the idea of war goddess as imperial metaphor’, with savior and demon-queller Durgā presented as ‘an image of the king himself in his most potent form, the cakravartin’, the universal, wheel-turning monarch.49
The public declamation of the text was also called ‘reciting the Caṇḍī’ (caṇḍīpaṭhā), as the goddess at the center of the text—most often referred to as Caṇḍī or Durgā—represents the female embod- iment of ‘divine power and truth’.50 Underscoring the overlap of these two goddesses, the Devīmāhātmya is also called both the Seven Hundred Verses Dedicated to Durgā (Durgāsaptaśadī) or the Seven Hundred Verses Devoted to Caṇḍī (saptaśadī).51
As mentioned above, the Navarātri marks the most effective time for a ruler to access, through ritual and worship, the goddess Durgā, and to invoke her ‘primordial, universal, all-pervading’ śakti to re- inforce her or his sovereignty.52 The Devīmāhātmya, Sarkar claims,
‘was regularly recited in court during the festival, and the values of heroism presented in it, along with the image of the king and the deeds of Durgā, the king-of-all-kings, were viewed as glorified reflec- tions and reinforcements of the monarch’s own values and image’.53 The connection made through this invocation of the goddess, served
49 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 13 and 132–34.
50 Manna, Mother Goddess Caṇḍī, 74. In the following sub-section the con- nection between Durgā and Caṇḍī will be amplified.
51 See Shankar, ‘The Internal’, 219 and 230, fn. 1.
52 Einarsen, ‘Navarātri in Benares’, 141.
53 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 184. Rodrigues (Ritual Worship of the Great God- dess, 296) identifies Durgā as the primary deity toward whom both ruler and sub- jects offer their devotion at the Navarātri:
The monarch for whom the people have gathered in a display of service, loyalty, and devotion. In their numbers, and in their visible and verbalized sentiments of revelry and unity, they have a vision (darśana) of their own power, and with it the certitude of being victorious in any undertaking.
This vision of the victorious power (vijayā śakti) that permeates the com- munity of worshippers, binding them in a union characterized by joy and fearlessness, is implicitly a view of the manifest form of the Goddess.
as a renewal and confirmation of the ruler’s sovereignty.
Because of the association of both text, Devīmāhātmya, and festival with victorious conquest, Astrid Zotter terms the Navarātri
‘the paradigmatic festival of the warrior/royal estate’.54 In traditional Indian groupings of festival and caste, the yajñopavīta renewal of the sacred cord was the festival of the Brahmins, Diwali the celebration of the Vaiśya (merchants), Holī for the Śūdras, and Durgā’s Navarātri for the Kṣatriyas.55 In essence, both the signature text of the Navarātri and the celebration itself bear out the claim of Fuller and Logan that,
‘The goddess is self-evidently a warrior and, in the myths, if she is not exactly a monarch herself, she is none the less acting for the king of the gods, whose place has been usurped by the king of the demons’.56 Durgā and the other deities associated with the Mahādevī and wor- shipped in the festival—clearly fierce goddesses of triumphant con- quest—conferred upon and transferred to earthly rulers a measure of their aura of invincibility and power.
1.3a. Durgā
The ‘bewilderingly composite deity’ Durgā developed over centuries through a curiously eclectic commingling of ‘traditions usually taken to be mutually distinct—the Tantric, the tribal, the Purāṇic, the Śaiva, the Vaisṣṇava, the Jaina, the Buddhist, [and] the local’.57 David Kinsley characterizes Durgā as a ‘great battle queen’ who combats and bests demons to ‘protect the stability of the cosmos’. Images of Durgā in battle became common around the fourth century and by the beginning of the seventh century the ‘cosmic queen, warrior god- dess, and demon slayer’ became ‘a well-known and popularly wor- shipped deity’.58 In keeping with this chronology, Thomas Coburn
54 Zotter, ‘Conquering Navarātra’, 493.
55 Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. 5.1, Vratas, Utsavas, and Kāla etc., 200.
56 Fuller & Logan, ‘The Navarātri Festival in Madurai’, 92.
57 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 272–73.
58 Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 95–96 and 105. In Heroic Shāktism, Sarkar records three known inscriptions of Durgā from seventh century India, one in
argues that there is strong evidence for a ‘flourishing cult of Durgā’
around the time the Devīmāhātmya first circulated (sixth century), including a temple devoted to her at Aihole (modern-day North Kar- nataka) and a late Gupta era seal of a lion-riding goddess.59
A scene in the Skandapurāṇa, a sixth century text, makes manifest Durgā’s emergence as a mainstream devī, subsuming the martial function of the older Vedic war god Skanda:
Holding her scepter with none but the king of gods, Indra, bearing the parasol behind, fanned by the Guardians of the Directions, she [Durgā] sat resplendent as Empress on the throne, the picture of the paradigmatic ruler, the cakravartin at the centre of all life and divinity.60
The eclectic nature of the goddess, though, elevated her to something greater than a mere goddess of war: she became a sovereign-protector capable of ‘safeguarding a community from death-giving dangers such as drought, cataclysms, earthquakes, and the onslaught of harm- ful demons’.61
Benefitting from its wide-ranging powers and growing cultic in- fluence, rulers patronized the ‘expansive cult of Śakti’ and the potent goddess at its nexus, Durgā, with her ‘all-encompassing, pluralistic
Kudarkot (a Harṣa vassal in modern-day Uttar Pradesh in North India) and one in Badami (southwest coast, Cālukya kingdom) (22), and one from Rajasthan, dated 625 (p. 193). And early eighth century ruler in Himachal, Maruvarman, commissioned a statue in a form of Durgā represented as a triumphant ‘scep- ter-bearing regent’ (121).
59 Coburn, Devī Māhātmya, 120.
60 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 83. For more on the process of Durgā supplanting war god Skanda, see Sarkar’s chap. 3, ‘Taking over Skanda (c. 6th to 7th Cen- tury)’, 97–114. Sarkar’s chart on 107 illustrates how Skanda’s roles and deeds—
including the triumphant consecration by Indra and the signature victory over buffalo demon Mahiṣa—in the Āranyakaparvan (fourth cent. BCE to 1st cent.
CE) became attributed to Durgā (Kauśikī) in the sixth century Skandapurāṇa.
61 Ibid., 113.
personality’. Between the seventh and eleventh centuries, as ‘heroic Śāktism’ grew to ‘pan-Indic resplendence’, imperial lineages wor- shipped the devī and grew her cult with their enthusiastic patronage.
Warrior-kings from around the Indian subcontinent paid reverence to the goddess, who was represented as a ‘scepter-bearing regent’.62
In the Devīmāhātmya, Durgā is the ‘supreme form’ of the goddess.
She is the primary source to whom the ruler appeals, the goddess he or she invokes, for—as Thomas Coburn puts it—Durgā is unassail- able, ‘the great protectress from worldly adversity’.63 One hosanna in the text reads; ‘Protect us from terrors, O Goddess; O Goddess Durgā, let there be praise for you!’64 Another calls out, ‘O Durgā, called to mind, you take away fear from every creature’.65 Overall the text, as David Kinsley frames it, ‘underlines Durgā’s role as the upholder and protector of the dharmic order’.66
In Sarkar’s analysis, the frame-story in the Devīmāhātmya of a disenfranchised king who—after hearing an ascetic relate the story of Durgā’s triumphs over demons, fashions an idol in her likeness and worships her—recovers his kingdom, ‘had as much of an impact as, if not greater than, the tale of the goddess itself’. In short, the Devīmāhātmya communicates the idea that rulers who show due admiration to the devī through hymns and worship can conquer territories and achieve universal sovereignty. ‘Investiture by the god- dess’, the belief in Durgā granting kingdoms or land, Sarkar explains, became ‘a staple of proper kingship’.67
62 Ibid., 116–17 and 121. This idea is revisited throughout chap. 4, ‘Patron- age, Civilization, and Heroic Śāktism’.
63 Coburn, Devī Māhātmya, 116.
64 Devī Māhātmya, chap. 11.22 (91.22 in the Mārkaṇdeya), translation from Coburn, Devī Māhātmya, 116.
65 Devī Māhātmya, chap. 4.16 (84.16 in the Mārkaṇdeya), translation from Coburn, Devī Māhātmya, 116.
66 Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 101.
67 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 112–15. Remarking upon the frame-story within the text, Sarkar observes, ‘The Devīmāhātmya presents the goddess as restoring power not only to a king but also to a merchant, Samādhi. In this way the agents
1.3b. Caṇḍī
Like Durgā, Caṇḍī underwent a process of ‘domestication’ and main- stream Hinduization to evolve from a ‘disorderly devī’ to the ‘deifica- tion of the female principle’, Śakti.68 Sarkar argues that in the era of warfare that followed the fall of the Gupta dynasty in the early 540s, the ‘need for a religion and ritual system particularly benefiting mil- itary state-expansion…was fulfilled by the rise and spread of the cult of the martial Caṇḍī and royal goddesses assimilated with her who blessed the onset of battle, in particular the potentially dangerous march (yātrā) leading to armed confrontation’. Thus, ‘a number of royal dynasties…saw in the Imperial Caṇḍī’s conquering exploits the apotheosis of the ideal Hindu sovereign’.69 In the Devīmāhātmya, dating from this era, Caṇḍī (or Caṇḍikā, ‘the violent and impetuous one’), a term previously absent from Sanskrit texts, appears in this guise as a powerful martial goddess twenty-nine times.70
While Durgā is ‘historically the most important’ of the names borne by the Mahādevī, Sarkar notes that Caṇḍī or Caṇḍikā are among her most popular epithets.71 Indeed, as that text exalting the Great Devī spread eastward to Bengal, it became—eponymous to the goddess—known as the Caṇḍī.72 Caṇḍī was closely connected to—
and was often thought of as another incarnation of or name for—
Durgā. Sibendu Manna, in his comprehensive study Mother Goddess Caṇḍī, repeatedly refers to the devī as ‘Durga alias Caṇḍī’ or ‘Caṇḍī
representing the main processes behind building kingdoms, governorship and commerce are shown to profit from the goddess’ (183–84).
68 Sengupta, ‘Domestication of a Disorderly Devī’, chap. 12.
69 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 19.
70 Coburn, Devī Māhātmya, 94–95 (also see his larger sub-chapter on the epithet Caṇḍikā). Sarkar remarks that Caṇḍīkā is a ‘Śaiva name for the goddess’, indicating that she is more closely associated with Shiva worship (Heroic Shāk- tism, 65).
71 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 14.
72 Kālī, In Praise of the Goddess, 13.
alias Durgā’, reflecting the interchangeability of the two goddesses.73 Her name Caṇḍī, derived from Caṇḍa, means ‘fierce’ or ‘violent’.74 Catherine Ludvik, in a similar vein, notes that Caṇḍī, ‘fierce one’, is another name for Durgā.75
Like Durgā, Caṇḍī is a cultic goddess, a potent devī, the embod- iment of female primordial cosmic power, śakti, who represents the syncretic ‘assimilation of broad-based heterogenous elements’
of center (Brahminic and Vedic tradition) and periphery (fierce goddesses of mountain tribes of the Himalayas and Vindhyas).
Both are ever-victorious war deities, often depicted with eighteen arms, who destroy demons and benevolent mother goddesses who succor devotees, bringing happiness and relief in times of peril and distress.76 In early medieval India, ‘amazonian Caṇḍī’ is often iconographically represented ‘as a tempestuous demon-slaying sovereign’.77 In origin, Durgā and Caṇḍī essentially share roots as one and the same devī—as the great goddess celebrated in the Devīmāhātmya and other Vedic and early medieval texts. Over time, however, Durgā remained predominantly a Hindu goddess, whereas Caṇḍī, particularly in her Chinese incarnation, became incorporated into esoteric Buddhism.
73 See Manna, Mother Goddess Caṇḍī.
74 Ibid., 91.
75 Ludvik, ‘Harivaṃśa Hymn’, 716.
76 Manna, Mother Goddess Caṇḍī, 75–76, 80, and 222–223. Manna remarks,
‘the primitive form of Caṇḍī is the result of the syncretism of a mountain-god- dess, worshipped by the forest-born dwellers of the Himalaya and Vindhyan regions; a distinct but remarkable goddess usually propitiated by the nomad- ic shepherds; the vegetation spirit conceived as a female; and lastly a victorious war-goddess’ (222).
77 Sarkar, ‘The Heroic Cult of the Sovereign Goddess in Mediaeval India’, 8.
1.3c. Mārīcī
Mārīcī, meaning ‘shining’ or ‘mirage’ in Sanskrit, is ‘the proper name of the Indian goddess of the sun’.78 The name, originally appearing in the Rg Veda, can also be understood as ‘ray of light of the sun or moon’.79 Miranda Shaw describes the goddess in evocative fashion:
Mārīcī, ‘Lady of Brilliant Light Rays’, rises on the horizon as dawn each day. At first blush, she appears to be a delicate, gentle maiden, but on approach she reveals her full glory as a dazzling battle queen, brandishing flashing weapons…. relentless and invincible, pursuing all that threatens well-being—destructive demons and humans, aggressive foes, and mortal perils of every kind.80
In David Hall’s study of the goddess, he convincingly argues that the two identifying traits of Mārīcī are her strong association with bril- liant light (‘sometimes expressed in stellar or solar symbolism’) and her martial character.81
A radiant goddess associated with sun, moon, and stars, Mārīcī was called ‘the Buddhist Caṇḍī’—indeed she was, according to David Hall, ‘so closely associated with the cult of the warrior goddess Caṇḍī, that the character and names of the two goddesses became practically interchangeable’. In addition, she became amalgamated with Durgā, and seems to have emerged from the same prolific wellspring, the rising matrix of Śāktism, in fifth and sixth century India.82 Miranda Shaw observes that ‘the Hindu goddess Durgā, in her all-conquering Mahiṣāsuramardinī form’ likely served as a ‘divine
78 Buswell & Lopez, ‘Marīcī’, 533.
79 Chaudhuri, Hindu Gods and Goddesses in Japan, 116–17. Chaudhuri notes that initially Mārīcī was a male deity, one of the ten mind-born sons of Brahma, in India.
80 Shaw, Buddhist Goddesses of India, 203. Shaw devotes an entire chapter to Mārīcī, 203–23.
81 Hall, The Buddhist Goddess Marishiten, 19.
82 Ibid, 21–22 and 25–26.
prototype’ for Mārīcī, inspiring her development into a ‘battle queen’: in textual description and iconography, they both brandish a similar array of weapons in their many arms and share a similar
‘martial pose’.83 Indeed, Shaw even speculates that the ‘hierophany of Mārīcī—armed for battle against demons, dangers, and delusion’, might be understood as ‘a Buddhist response to the strong appeal of Durgā’.84
Borne by currents of Śāktism, Mārīcī rapidly ascended from a regional cultic god/goddess in fifth-century north and northwest India to become a pan-Asian esoteric Buddhist devī by the late sev- enth century. Dhāraṇī, spells that connected the worshipper to the goddess and her abilities through repetitive invocation, helped spread her popularity.
1.4. Key Elements of Heroic Śāktism and the Navarātri related to Wu Zhao’s Accession
As China’s first and only female emperor Wu Zhao explored the via- bility different conceptions of sovereignty in the decades leading up to her accession to the imperial throne in 690, looking to disparate sources to become China’s first and only female emperor. This article argues that heroic Śāktism provided one of those sources of inspira- tion. This sub-chapter provides a brief introductory description of the five aspects of heroic Śāktism that Wu Zhao drew upon to help amplify her claim to the throne. The specific manners in which she utilized and deployed these elements will be explored in Part 2.
1.4a. Heroic Śāktism: Warrior-goddess Connected to Sovereignty and Legitimation
Heroic Śāktism—worship of female warrior goddesses that helped to legitimate and amplify sovereignty in early medieval India—had much to offer Wu Zhao, both in her idiosyncratic campaign to
83 Shaw, Buddhist Goddesses of India, 215.
84 Ibid., 218.
become emperor and as female sovereign. Bihani Sarkar explains that during the formative period (fourth to seventh centuries) of heroic Śāktism:
The figure of the sovereign-goddess in the period simply represented a deity for all kings. Their sectarian affiliation did not seem to have mattered much, for only one specific spiritual credential was de- manded…—the worship of a devī, identified under various names and appearing in common in several religious traditions.85
Therefore, it is important to recognize the syncretic, blurry nature of the nascent wave of Śāktism, of worship of this great amalgamated devī, that arrived in Tang China and during Wu Zhao’s short-lived Zhou dynasty in the second half of the seventh century. Early Chi- nese reception of heroic Śāktism was complicated further by the dominant and multi-layered presence of Buddhism in this era. Still, this paper will show that Wu Zhao was aware of the trio of devīs—
Durgā, Caṇḍī, and Mārīcī—at the heart of heroic Śāktism, and em- ployed the religious and political energies to amplify her sovereignty.
1.4b. Warrior Class/identity
‘It was in war’, Sarkar contends, ‘both in its defensive and combative aspects, that a goddess’s potency was most sought after’. Numerous literary and inscriptional accounts attest to the practice of worship- ping the Mahādevī at the time of the Navarātri just before embarking on military expeditions.86 Although scripture, Sarkar maintains, indicates that ‘democratic’ Durgā reached out to all castes, ‘even those deemed outsiders or reprehensible’, in practice worship of the goddess tended to bring the greatest benefit to the kṣatriya, particular to a warrior-sovereign.87
While Wu Zhao never served as a general, her surname Wu 武
85 Sarkar, ‘The Heroic Cult’, 21–22.
86 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 193.
87 Sarkar, ‘The Rite of Durgā in Medieval Bengal’, 337.
means ‘martial’ or ‘warrior’, a fact that she repeatedly employed to her religio-political advantage, often to show that she fulfilled a prophecy with origins connected to heroic Śāktism.
1.4c. The Cakravartin
The idea of the cakravartin—‘the universal monarch who possesses the seven jewels of sovereignty and sets in motion the wheel of righ- teous rule’88 —is at the heart of Indic kingship. In the sixth-century Skandapurāṇa, Durgā is depicted as ‘the cakravartin at the centre of all life and divinity’. Indra, the King of the Gods, ‘adopted her as his sister, commanding her to protect the entire universe, to favour dev- otees, to conquer the foes of the gods, to roam the worlds praised by the hordes of Siddhas’. Bihani Sarkar noted that the Devīmāhātmya, the elaborate hymn of praise to Durgā chanted on the Navarātri,
‘conveyed the idea of the war-goddess as imperial metaphor: she is an image of the king himself in his most potent form, the cakravartin
“the one at the centre of the circle”—unifying vassal states as she unifies smaller goddesses, granted power and light by the gods and appointed by them to restore Dharma, the pristine true order’.89
1.4d. Luni-solar Light
Set at a seasonal juncture when the sun begins to wane, the Na- varātri, Raj Balkaran observes, ‘pays homage to the cycles of dark and light upon which the cosmos was founded, cycles expressed through the rhythms of nature, oscillating between night and day, summer and winter, full and new moon’.90 Balkaran demonstrates that the Navarātri celebrates the strong connection between the goddess, Durgā, and the Sun, pointing out that the waning autumnal
88 Wong, Buddhist Pilgrim-Monks, 74. Though post-Vedic in origin, cakra- vartin is not a distinctively Buddhist term. There is also a long history of its wide utilization in Hinduism and Jainism.
89 Sarkar, Heroic Shāktism, 13 and 132–34.
90 Balkaran, ‘The Splendor of the Sun’, 23.
