DURGĀ HINDUISM. In classical Hindu mythology the goddess Durgā is one of the principal forms of the wife of the great god Śiva. She is particularly celebrated for her victory over the buffalo demon Mahiṣāsura. At a higher level of abstraction she is considered to be the energy (śakti) of Śiva. Ultimately she is Devī, the Goddess, whose myriad names and forms are merely transient and adventitious disguises that overlay a unitary spiritual reality.

Most modern scholars have sought to find the ultimate origin of the goddess worship of Hinduism in the prehistoric Indus Valley civilization centered in what is now Pakistan. This theory is plausible, but the evidence for an important goddess cult in the Indus civilization is inconclusive, and the historical links of such a cult with classical Hinduism are impossible to document. Preclassical Vedic literature mentions numerous goddesses, but they...