Female Deities II
As in the Orient, many female deities were worshiped in India in the common era. Many Hindu male deities (devas') have a wife (devi) or wives, who are naturally viewed as goddesses. In this period, female deities became more popular than before, because people saw them as symbols of abundance and tenderness.
Laksmi, the consort of Visnu, was adopted by Buddhists as their most authentic female deity. She is a favorite subject in art; particularly famous are a painting at Yakushi-ji and a statue at Joruri-ji, both in Nara. Laksmi personifies beauty and, like Aphrodite (Venus), rose from the waves. Her son Kama, like Eros (Cupid), is the god of love. Both Kama and Eros pierce human hearts with an arrow. So close are the parallels between the Greek and Hindu myths that one is led to believe that there must have been some direct western influence.
In Vedic times (1,000-500 B.C.E.), Sarasvati was a river personified by a goddess. The area of Pakistan in which five rivers flow is called the Punjab, which literally means “five rivers.” In ancient times, though, the region had a name meaning “seven rivers.” Sarasvati was one of the two rivers that dried up due to climatic changes. Later Sarasvati became the goddess of eloquence, wisdom, and music. In Japan she has become part of folk belief and is counted as one of the seven gods of fortune (the Chinese character for the zai component of her name in translation is expressed as “wealth” rather than “learning”). Her shrines, like the one at Enoshima in Japan, still tend to be found near water, befitting her origin as a river deity.
Hariti is invoked today for the health of children and for an easy birth. In India she was originally a demon who fed on small children. Legend says that grieving villagers appealed to the Buddha to deliver them from her, and so the Buddha hid one of her ten thousand children from her. Mad with grief, Hariti searched frantically for the missing child and then, unable to find it, went to the Buddha for help, believing him omniscient. “Here you are,” said the Buddha, “grief-stricken because one of your ten thousand children is missing. How do you think the villagers, who have only two or three, feel when they lose one?” Hariti then awoke to the extent of her wrongdoing and became a deity that protected children.
Carvings found in the Punjab depict Hariti with a kind face, seated on a chair surrounded by five or six children and holding another to her breast, with other children in her lap, or surrounded by children playing at her feet. Many statues show her holding a pomegranate, a many-seeded fruit that symbolizes fertility. Pomegranates are grown widely in the dry heardand of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which suggests that the Hariti cult originated somewhere in northwestern India.
Another female deity that should be mentioned is Marici, literally “mirage,” a goddess who entered Buddhism from Hinduism. She rides before the sun, and is a personification of the sun’s rays. She also personifies the “wave of vapor,” that is, a wave of heated air on a summer street. Perhaps because of this, in Japan she became the protector-goddess of samurai, who wanted to conceal themselves like transparent vapor.
