Who is Parvati?

I was delighted to be named Parvati. I knew her story from reading the Tulsidas Ramacharitamanas, in which Shiva narrates the story of Rama to his wife, Parvati. It starts with Parvati’s previous incarnation as Sati.

Shiva and Sati lived peacefully atop Mount Kailash until Sati’s father, Daksha, put together a great sacrifice, but did not invite Shiva. Even though Sati hadn’t been invited to the ceremony, she went anyway. When her father insulted Shiva in front of her, she immolated herself with the internal fire of yoga.

With a grief-stricken Shiva withdrawn from the world, the gods didn’t know what to do with the demons that were driving them from their heavenly abodes, so they consulted the Great Mother, Adi Shakti, who told them that only a son of Shiva could conquer the demons. She herself took form as Parvati, the daughter of King Himachal (the king of the mountains and the personification of the Himalayas) and Queen Mena. Parvati literally means “daughter of the mountain.”

When the king asked a sage for a prophecy about his daughter’s future, the sage said Parvati would win the unfailing love of her husband and bring glory to her parents. However, her husband would be an ascetic. Parvati understood that ascetic to be Shiva. Even when she was only a young girl, Parvati was determined to win Shiva’s heart. She visited his cave to bring him fruit, swept the cave floor, and decorated it with flowers, but he wouldn’t budge. She did not give up. Instead, she became an ascetic in the forest and performed greater austerities than many of the greatest sages had ever done. The energy of her meditation was so powerful it attracted the attention of the gods.

Now Shiva’s deep meditation had to be interrupted. Kama, the God of Love, fired five flower arrows of desire at Shiva’s heart, and Shiva awakened. Shiva and Parvati married and had two children: Ganesh (here is the story of how he got his elephant head) and Skanda, the warrior who successfully waged war against the demons.

The union of Shiva and Parvati was indeed a marriage made in heaven, although there are wonderful tales of their occasional spats. Parvati awakened in Shiva a concern for the world. She asked him questions and he would reveal the wisdom he had gathered through his meditation, thus channeling his ascetic energy for the good of all mankind. Parvati symbolizes the virtues that are highly regarded in the Hindu tradition of marital devotion, fertility, asceticism, and power. She is the perfect synthesis of the ascetic and the householder ideals.  

On a more archtypal level, when Parvati is pictured with Shiva, she is his active power, his shakti.  When Shiva is represented as a lingam (a phallic symbol) she is the yoni (the womb and regenerative power). On her own, she is the incarnation of Adi Shakti, the Great Mother, the primal generating energy of the whole cosmos.

Here is a mantra for Parvati.