The problem had been growing for years. Mahishasura — the buffalo demon, the shape-shifting demon whose primary form was a great dark buffalo — had performed austerities that yielded him a specific boon: he could not be killed by any man or any god. Any male being in the three worlds was immune from killing him.
His boon had a gap in it, as these boons often do — the gap left by assumption. He had not mentioned women when specifying what couldn’t kill him, because the idea that a woman could be a threat to him was so remote from his self-conception that it didn’t even rise to the level of something worth asking for protection against.
Mahishasura conquered the three worlds. Indra’s heavens fell. The gods were driven out of their positions, their functions interrupted, their domains occupied by the buffalo king’s armies. For a hundred divine years the gods wandered, homeless and diminished, performing the functions they could manage from outside their proper domains and doing badly at it.
They went to Brahma, who sent them to Vishnu and Shiva together. And before those two divine presences, the gods let their frustration become visible. Their combined anger and grief and determination rose from the assembly as something visible — as light, the texts say, each god emanating a brightness of power that gathered in the space between them.
The light gathered. It condensed. It took form.
A woman appeared.
She was immense and radiant, her eighteen arms extended in all directions, her face simultaneously serene and fierce with the serenity and ferocity of someone who is completely at peace with the necessity of what they are about to do. Each god recognized in her something of his own power contributing to the whole: Shiva’s face, Vishnu’s arms, Brahma’s feet, Indra’s waist, the weapons of each god placed in each of her hands.
Shiva gave her his trident. Vishnu gave her his discus, the Sudarshana Chakra. Varuna gave her his conch. Agni gave her a spear. Yama gave her his rod of death. Vayu gave her a bow and arrows. Indra gave her his thunderbolt. Kubera gave her a mace. Brahma gave her a string of beads and a water pot. The mountain Himavan gave her a lion as her vehicle.
She was armed, mounted, and complete.
When Mahishasura’s messengers brought word that a woman was in the field with an army challenging his forces, his response was what the narrative had predicted: dismissal that became curiosity that became attraction. He sent generals first — Asiloma, Vidalaksha, Baskala — and each was destroyed. He sent armies, and the armies were destroyed. The lion devoured the demons and the goddess was everywhere her weapons needed to be simultaneously, her eighteen arms the expression of a divine multitasking that no single warrior could achieve.
Finally Mahishasura came himself, shape-shifting through various forms — buffalo, lion, elephant, man — each form as the previous one failed. The battle moved across the earth and sky, the demon cycling through his transformations with desperate creativity.
The goddess pursued him through every form. Finally she caught the buffalo form with her foot on its neck, her trident poised, and as Mahishasura tried to shift to human form she drove the weapon through him — catching him between forms, in the transitional moment when the shape-shifting was most vulnerable.
He fell. The heavens opened. The gods who had been watching from above rained flowers on the battlefield and on the goddess who stood in the middle of it, her eighteen arms lowered now, the lion calm beneath her.
This is Durga — the one who is beyond the reach of difficulty, the one who is herself durgam, the difficult crossing, the impossible fort. She is not one god’s power but every god’s power combined into a single purpose. She is the answer that arises when every individual solution has failed and what is required is a synthesis beyond any one being’s capacity.
She is celebrated every year in Durga Puja, the great autumn festival of Bengal and beyond — ten days in which the goddess comes home, is worshipped, and returns to the mountains. The coming and going is the rhythm of her nature: she appears when she is needed, she destroys what needs to be destroyed, and she returns to the source when the work is done.