The Goddess as Supreme: Seven Hundred Verses

The Devi Mahatmya ("Glory of the Goddess"), also called the Durga Saptashati ("seven hundred verses to Durga") or Chandi Path, is the foundational scripture of Goddess-worship (Shaktism) in Hinduism. Embedded in the Markandeya Purana and generally dated to around the fifth or sixth century CE, its roughly seven hundred verses tell three linked mythic episodes in which the Goddess, as Durga, does what the male gods cannot: she slays the buffalo-demon Mahishasura, and she destroys the demons Shumbha and Nishumbha and their generals. Its real force is theological.

The text is the first in Sanskrit to present the feminine divine not as a consort or an aspect of a male god but as the supreme reality itself, Mahadevi, the great Goddess, the power (shakti) underlying the cosmos, of whom all other goddesses are forms. It remains a living liturgy: recited in full during the autumn festival of Navaratri and Durga Puja, its verses are among the most widely chanted of all Hindu scriptures.