The Festival of Durga

This weekend, the Bengali community of San Diego observes its most prominent festival, Durga pooja. Durga is the mythical representation of female power that comes to the aid of an agrarian society, at the beginning of the harvest season, in a ten-limbered form, brandishing deathly weapons, to vanquish the dark evils (the dark buffalo-headed demon, Asura) of flood, storm and pestilence. Durga is portrayed astride a lion, dismembering the decapitated Asura. While the legend of Durga likely harkens back from the Dravidian era (~3000BC), sculptures at the height of the Pallava dynasty in southern India (~500-800AD), noted for their exquisite naturalism and brilliant ability to depict motion and weight in stone carvings, most memorably rendered the rush of Durga (http://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/1860/flashcards/784444/png/mahishasuramardini-cave.png), the Amazon goddess, wielding bows and arrows and other lethal weapons, towards the Asura, her arms supple, body in a liquid rush, her face that of a charming young woman whose lines of eyes and lips and the turn of her chin you can recognize readily among Southern Indian women of today. Here in the photo, a few Bengali women hold a screen around the deity while in the background Sanskrit verses announce the power of the female force reaching a crescendo.