Navratri: The Nine Nights, and What Is Recited

Navratri is nine nights given to the Goddess. That is the short answer, and most explanations stop there. The longer answer is more useful: the nine nights are not an anniversary of a single event, there is more than one Navratri in the traditional year, and the nine nights have a specific text attached to them — a text that is recited in a specific order, most of which is rarely explained.

The name itself is simple: nava means nine and rātri means night. The Goddess honoured is Devī, worshipped above all as Durgā — understood in the Shakta tradition (the tradition that treats the Goddess, Shakti, as the supreme reality) as the power behind creation, preservation and dissolution.

This page explains the structure. It gives no dates. The tithi on which each Navratri begins shifts every year and is reckoned differently in different regions, and a wrong date on a fast day is a real failure, not a small one. For dates, use a panchang published by an authority you trust. What follows is the part that does not change.

If the terms are new: a tithi is a lunar day, explained in What Is a Tithi?, and a panchang is the traditional almanac, explained in What Is a Panchang?

There is more than one Navratri

The traditional year marks four. Two are widely observed and two are not:

• Chaitra Navratri, in spring, at the turn of the lunar year. It ends in Rama Navami, the celebration of Rama’s birth.
• Sharada Navratri, in the month of Ashvina, in autumn. This is the one most people mean when they say “Navratri”. It ends in Vijayadashami.
• Two Gupta Navratris — in Magha and in Ashadha. Gupta means hidden; these are kept quietly, and largely by practitioners of tantric and shakta lineages rather than as public festivals.

The same nine forms are invoked each time. The difference is season and setting, not deity. (Practice within the Gupta Navratris is lineage-specific and varies; some practitioners centre them on other forms of the Goddess, such as the ten Mahavidyas.)

For what is recited at the end of the spring Navratri, see Ram Navami: The Birth of Rama and What Is Recited.

The nine names, and where they come from

The sequence of nine is not folklore. It is stated in the Devi Kavacham, the armour-hymn recited before the Durga Saptashati. Verses 3 to 5 name them in order:

प्रथमं शैलपुत्रीति द्वितीयं ब्रह्मचारिणी ।
तृतीयं चन्द्रघण्टेति कूष्माण्डेति चतुर्थकम् ॥ ३॥

prathamaṁ śailaputrīti dvitīyaṁ brahmacāriṇī ।
tṛtīyaṁ candraghaṇṭeti kūṣmāṇḍeti caturthakam ॥ 3॥

The first is called Shailaputri, the second Brahmacharini, the third Chandraghanta, and Kushmanda the fourth.

The verses that follow complete the list. In full, the nine are:

1. Shailaputri — śailaputrī, daughter of the mountain. The Goddess as Parvati, daughter of Himavat, the Himalaya.
2. Brahmacharini — brahmacāriṇī, the one who holds to the vow. Commonly understood as Parvati in her period of austerity.
3. Chandraghanta — candraghaṇṭā, she who wears the moon as a bell — usually pictured with a bell-shaped half-moon on her forehead.
4. Kushmanda — kūṣmāṇḍā. Her name is often explained in devotional tradition as linking her to the cosmic egg (aṇḍa) at the beginning of creation.
5. Skandamata — skandamātā, mother of Skanda, the war-god also called Kartikeya.
6. Katyayani — kātyāyanī, a name associated in tradition with the sage Katyayana.
7. Kalaratri — kālarātri, the night of time: the fiercest of the nine in appearance.
8. Mahagauri — mahāgaurī, the great luminous one.
9. Siddhidatri — siddhidātrī, giver of attainment.

One form to a night, in that order. The custom of assigning a colour to each day is modern and regional; the names and their sequence are not.

If you want the nine told as a story rather than a list, AdiVeda has that separately: Nine Nights: The Nine Forms of the Mother. The nine are also praised together in the Navadurga Stotram.

The text of the nine nights

The recitation at the centre of Navratri is the Durga Saptashati — also called the Devi Mahatmya (“the glory of the Goddess”) or Chandi Path (“the reading of Chandi”). Its name means seven hundred verses, and that is roughly what it is, arranged in thirteen chapters. It does not stand alone: it sits inside the Markandeya Purana, narrated by the sage Markandeya.

Inside that frame there is a second one. A king named Suratha, who has lost his kingdom, and a merchant named Samadhi, who has been cast out by his family, meet in the forest hermitage of the sage Medhas. Both are still tormented by attachment to what they have lost, and they ask the sage why. His answer is the Goddess: the power that binds beings in illusion is also the power that frees them. The three battle narratives are told to them as that answer, and the final chapter returns to the king and the merchant.

Its thirteen chapters are not a single narrative. They divide into three caritas — “episodes” — each presided over by a different form of the Goddess:

• Prathama Charitra — chapter 1 alone, the slaying of Madhu and Kaitabha, two demons born while Vishnu lies in cosmic sleep. Presiding form: Mahakali.
• Madhyama Charitra — chapters 2 to 4, the defeat of Mahishasura, the buffalo demon. Presiding form: Mahalakshmi.
• Uttara Charitra — chapters 5 to 13, the campaign against Shumbha and Nishumbha. Presiding form: Mahasaraswati.

This is why the Saptashati can be read as one text and also broken into three: a reader who cannot complete all thirteen chapters in a day will often complete one carita.

Several of its episodes are told as stories on AdiVeda: the Goddess born from every god’s power, the slaying of Mahishasura, and Kali and Raktabija, from the Uttara Charitra.

The order a path is read in

A Saptashati recitation — a path, “a reading” — is not thirteen chapters on their own. It is framed, before and after, by hymns whose function is procedural — they open the text, protect the reader, and close the reading properly. The order below is the one most widely followed; lineages differ in details, and if you have a family or guru-given krama (sequence), follow that instead.

1. Devi Kavacham — the armour
2. Argala Stotram — the bolt
3. Keelaka Stotram — the pin
4. Ratri Suktam — the Vedic hymn to Night, Rigveda 10.127
5. Chandika Dhyanam — the visualisation
6. Chapters 1 to 13 — the Saptashati proper
7. The three Rahasyas — Pradhanika, Vaikritika and Murti, which explain what the narrative has just shown
8. Devi Suktam — Rigveda 10.125, the Goddess speaking in her own voice
9. Aparadha Kshamapana Stotram — asking pardon for errors in the recitation

What the framing hymns are for

The names describe the job each one does. A kavacha is armour: the Devi Kavacham places the reader under the Goddess’s protection, form by form. An argala is a bolt, and a kīlaka a pin or peg — images of fastening and unfastening, which traditional explanations connect with opening the text so that the recitation that follows can bear fruit. The dhyāna gives the reader a picture of the Goddess to hold in mind before the chapters begin.

The three rahasyas — “secrets” — come after the story. They step back from the battles and explain who the three presiding Goddesses are and how they relate to one another, which is why they belong at the end rather than the beginning. Many households also repeat the Navarna Mantra, the nine-syllable mantra of the Goddess, within the reading.

The last hymn in the list, the Aparadha Kshamapana Stotram, is worth noticing. A tradition that builds a hymn specifically for the mistakes made while reciting is a tradition that expects you to make them. Getting the pronunciation wrong is not a disqualification.

AdiVeda publishes all twenty-three of these texts in Devanagari with IAST transliteration and English: the complete Durga Saptashati.

What the tenth day is

Navratri does not end on the ninth night. It ends on the tenth day — Vijayadashami, the tenth of victory. In the Ramayana tradition the same day marks Rama’s defeat of Ravana; in the Devi tradition it marks the end of the Goddess’s campaign. Both readings are old, and both are held at once in most of India without anyone finding it a contradiction.

How the nine nights are kept

Around the recitation sits a great deal of household and regional custom. Common elements include installing a sacred water-pot (kalasha) on the first day, keeping a lamp burning, fasting or eating simply, and honouring young girls as forms of the Goddess towards the end of the nine nights. In some regions the nights are marked with community dance and music; in others with large public images of Durga. These practices vary widely by family and region, and none of them replaces the others.

If you are keeping the nine nights

Nothing in the tradition requires more than attention. If you can read one chapter a night, read one chapter a night. If you can only read the Kavacham, read the Kavacham. If you have never read any of it, the first chapter is a reasonable place to begin, and the Devi Suktam is short enough to learn.

A simple nine-night plan, for someone reading on their own, might look like this — adapt it freely:

• Each night, begin with the Devi Kavacham.
• Read the Saptashati a carita or a chapter at a time — for example chapter 1 on the first night, chapters 2 to 4 over the next nights, and the Uttara Charitra across the rest.
• Close with the Aparadha Kshamapana Stotram.

Some readers who cannot manage the full text recite the shorter Siddha Kunjika Stotram instead; it is traditionally associated with the Saptashati.

Elsewhere in the library, on the nine forms specifically: the Navadurga Stotram. More broadly: Durga Chalisa, Mahishasura Mardini Stotram, Jai Ambe Gauri, and the ten Mahavidyas, whose texts belong to the same shakta stream. All of AdiVeda’s texts for the Goddess as Durga are gathered on the Durga page.

Sources

• The nine names and their order: Devi Kavacham, verses 3–5.
• The Saptashati itself: the Devi Mahatmya section of the Markandeya Purana, narrated by the sage Markandeya — the attribution carried on every one of AdiVeda’s thirteen chapter pages. (Chapter numbering within the Purana differs between printed editions, so none is given here.)
• The carita divisions and their presiding forms: stated in the Saptashati’s own chapter colophons, reproduced on each chapter page.
• Ratri Suktam = Rigveda 10.127; Devi Suktam = Rigveda 10.125.

How AdiVeda sources and checks its texts is set out in the verification methodology.