Shashthi
Shashthi, Shashti, Soshthi or Chhathi is a Hindu goddess, venerated in India and Nepal as the benefactor and protector of children. She is also the deity of vegetation and reproduction and is believed to bestow children and assist during childbirth. She is often pictured as a motherly figure, riding a cat and nursing one or more infants. She is symbolically represented in a variety of forms, including an earthenware pitcher, a banyan tree or part of it or a red stone beneath such a tree; outdoor spaces termed Shashthi Tala are also consecrated for her worship. The worship of Shashthi is prescribed to occur on the sixth day of each lunar month of the Hindu calendar as well as on the sixth day after a child's birth. Barren women desiring to conceive and mothers seeking to ensure the protection of their children will worship Shashthi and request her blessings and aid. She is especially venerated in eastern India.
Also known as Chhathi Maiya, the sixth form of the deity Prakṛti and Surya's sister is worshipped during Chhath. It is celebrated six days after Deepavali, on the sixth day of the lunar month of Kartika in the Hindu calendar Vikram Samvat. The rituals are observed over four days. They include holy bathing, fasting and abstaining from drinking water, standing in water, and offering prasad and arghya to the setting and rising sun. Some devotees also perform a prostration march as they head for the river banks.
Most scholars believe that Shashthi's roots can be traced to Hindu folk traditions. References to this goddess appear in Hindu scriptures as early as 8th and 9th century BCE, in which she is associated with children as well as the Hindu war-god Skanda. Early references consider her a foster-mother of Skanda, but in later texts she is identified with Skanda's consort, Devasena. In some early texts where Shashthi appears as an attendant of Skanda, she is said to cause diseases in the mother and child, and thus needed to be propitiated on the sixth day after childbirth. However, over time, this malignant goddess came to be seen as the benevolent saviour and bestower of children.
Iconography
Shashthi is portrayed as a motherly figure, often nursing or carrying as many as eight infants in her arms. Her complexion is usually depicted as yellow or golden. A Dhyana-mantra – a hymn describing the iconography of a deity, upon which a devotee of Shashthi should meditate – describes her as a fair young woman with a pleasant appearance, bedecked in divine garments and jewellery with an auspicious twig laying in her lap. A cat is the vahana upon which she rides. Older depictions of Shashthi may show her as cat-faced, while another reference describes her as bird-faced.In Kushan era representations between the first and third centuries CE, she is depicted as two-armed and six-headed like Skanda. A significant number of Kushan and Yaudheya coins, sculptures and inscriptions produced from 500 BCE to 1200 CE picture the six-headed Shashthi, often on the reverse of the coin, with the six-headed Skanda on the obverse. Shashthi is also pictured in a Kushan-era Vrishni triad from the Mathura region, surrounded by Skanda and Vishakha. In Yaudheya images, she is shown to have two arms and six heads that are arranged in two tiers of three heads each, while in Kushan images, the central head is surrounded by five female heads, sometimes attached to female torsos. Terracotta Gupta era figures from Ahichchhatra show the goddess with three heads on the front and three on the back.
The folk worship representation of Shashthi is a red-coloured stone about the size of a human head, typically placed beneath a banyan tree such as those usually found on the outskirts of villages. The banyan may be decorated with flowers or strewn with rice and other offerings. Shashthi is also commonly represented by planting a banyan tree or a small branch in the soil of a family's home garden. Other common representations of the goddess include a Shaligrama stone, an earthen water pitcher, or a Purna Ghata – a water vase with an arrangement of coconut and mango leaves – generally set beneath a banyan tree.
Evolution and textual references
The general consensus among scholars of Hinduism traces the origins of Shashthi, like Skanda, back to ancient folk traditions. Over the course of the early centuries BCE, the Vedic fertility goddess of the new moon, Sinivali-Kuhu, and Shri-Lakshmi, the Vedic antecedent of Lakshmi, were gradually fused with the folk-deity Shashthi. This merger created a "new" Shashthi that was associated in various ways with Skanda. From her origins as a folk goddess, Shashthi was gradually assimilated into the Brahmanical Hindu pantheon, and ultimately, came to be known in Hinduism as the Primordial Being and Great Mother of all. The fifth century text Vayu Purana includes Shashthi in a list of 49 goddesses, while a Puranic text calls her "the worthiest of worship among mother goddesses." However, the long-standing universality of her worship has led scholar David Gordon White to challenge the classification of Shashthi as a folk goddess, observing that Shashthi has been worshipped on the sixth day after childbirth by "all Hindus: rural as well as urban people, since the Kushan era."In textual references, Shashthi is often depicted as closely connected to Skanda. An early textual reference dating to 8th–9th century BCE relates Shashthi to the six Krittikas who nurtured and nursed Skanda. Sometimes regarded as an aspect of the goddess Durga, she is also called Skandamata. The 3rd to 5th century text Yajnavalkya Smriti describes Shashthi as the foster-mother and protector of Skanda.
However, later texts identified her as Devasena, the consort of Skanda, including the epic Mahabharata wherein Shashthi -the daughter of Prajapati- is betrothed by the god-king Indra to Skanda. She is also identified with goddesses Shri, Sinivali, and Kuhu in this text. The scripture Padma Purana also describes Shashthi as the wife of Skanda. In the 7th century text Kadambari, the images of Skanda and Shashthi are also said to have painted together on the wall of a palace lying-in chamber of the queen.
Scriptures and folk traditions also connect Shashthi and Skanda in numerous indirect ways. The Mahabharata, finalised around the 4th century CE, describes a relationship between the infant Skanda and the Matrikas, a group of female deities who embody the perils that afflict children until the age of sixteen. The Encyclopaedia of Hinduism identifies this textual account as a source of the modern-day practice of mothers worshipping Shashthi until their child reaches the age of sixteen. In the Mahabharata, Shashthi is described as an attendant of Skanda who behaves malevolently by causing disease. Skanda is furthermore said to have 18 malevolent spirit-followers collectively known as the skanda graha, one of whom – Revati – is given the epithet "Shashthi." This association of Revati with Shashthi is reiterated in the 5th century text Kashyapa Samhita, wherein Shashthi is also identified as the sixth form of Skanda and a sister of the five Skanda deities. Like Skanda, Shashthi is occasionally depicted with six heads, in which form she is also known by the epithet Shanmukhi.
Shashthi is historically associated with a variety of other deities. The second century BCE composition Manava Grhya Sutra identifies Shashthi with Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. It also describes the Shashthi-kalpa rite was performed on the sixth lunar day of every fortnight invoking Shashthi to provide sons, cattle, treasures, corn, and the fulfilment of wishes. The scripture Padma Purana, composed between the 8th and 11th centuries, describes Shashthi as the daughter of Indra. Texts written over the last 500 years, such as the Brahma Vaivarta Purana and the Devi Bhagavata Purana describe Shashthi as the daughter of the creator-god Brahma. In addition, she is associated with Mula-Prakriti, the universal female energy said to be composed of six aspects: one of these, typically the sixth aspect, is said to be Shashthi.
Over time, the characterisation of Shashthi underwent a gradual evolution. Aforementioned folk traditions originating between the 10th and 5th centuries BCE associated the goddess with both positive and negative elements of fertility, birth, motherhood and childhood. However, between the 4th century BCE and the 5th century CE, a shift occurred in which Shashthi was increasingly depicted as a malevolent deity associated with the sufferings of mothers and children. The fifth century text Kashyapa Samhita calls Shashthi by the epithet Jataharini and provides a list of the malevolent activities in which Shashthi is believed to engage, including her practice of stealing foetuses from the womb and devouring children on the sixth day following birth. For this reason, the text recommends that she be propitiated through worship in her honour on this day in the lying-in room and on the sixth day of every fortnight thereafter.
Eventually, Shashthi came to represent all goddesses and forces responsible for causing diseases in children and their mothers, who needed to be propitiated on the sixth day after childbirth to prevent these illnesses. Consequently, Shashthi came to personify the sixth day of a child's life. The sixth day of the lunar fortnight is itself called Shashti, a name derived from the name of the goddess. The Yajnavalkya Smriti, composed during Gupta rule between the 3rd and 5th centuries CE, describes the rites of Shashthi Puja in which Shashthi is worshipped on the sixth day after childbirth to ensure the protection of the newborn baby. According to one explanation for the worship of Shashthi on this day, folk belief associates this critical time in an infant's life with great susceptibility to diseases related to childbirth, such as puerperal fever and tetanus, and that worship of Shashthi is performed to help ward off these diseases.
Over the past 1500 years, the characterisation of Shashthi gradually shifted toward that of a benevolent and protective figure. In Banabhatta's 7th century work Harshacharita, Shashthi is called Jatamatr, while the Kadambari by the same author calls her Bahuputrika, meaning "having many children". Shashthi's evolution mirrors that of the demoness Jara of the Mahabharata and a similar Buddhist goddess, Hariti: all of them are characterised in early texts as malevolent goddesses, but over the course of time these deities transform from devourers of children into their saviours and protectors.