Chandraghanta

Caṇḍraghantā

The moon-bell of the third night

Caṇḍraghantā — "she who rings the moon-bell" — is the goddess of the third night of the North Indian Navarātri, in the sequence Śailputrī, Brāhmacarīṇī, Caṇḍraghantā, Kuṣmāṇḍā, Skandamātā, Kātyāyanī, Kālarātrī, Mahāgaurī, Durgā. She is the warrior of that sequence, and her iconography is built for it: a young woman, ten armed, holding the triśūla (trident), a sword, the ghantā (bell), a bow, five arrows and a shield, and riding a lion. The lion, not the bull or the buffalo of the other nights, is the marker: the goddess of war on a lion, not of death on a buffalo and not of auspiciousness on a bull.

The ghantā in her name is the bell, and it is doing real symbolic work rather than being a label. The bell announces the presence of the deity; it is the śabda made visible, and the sequence of the nine nights — each goddess with her own instrument — is a gradual orchestration of the divine presence. The tapas of Caṇḍraghantā is told in some accounts as her own tapas for Śiva before she received her weapons and her form; in others she appears directly as a form of Durgā without a separate biography. Both are in circulation, and the leelā of the third night as performed in the kāli? — the kālī? hmm: in the kalash? hmm — in the household kumbha pūjā? — the ūkṣ? hmm: in the homa and the faste of the vratta of the ninth — is a puja-patha in the Devī Māhātmya? — in the Bhāratī? — in the kathā recited at the kumbha — that the practitioner's own tradition supplies.

Her temple presence is regional and worth distinguishing. The Navadurgā naming sequence is largely a North Indian and, in its present form, a modern pan-Indian puja order; the Bengali Navarātri dedicates its first three nights to Mahālakṣmī, Mahāsarasvatī and Mahākālī, and the Karnata and Telugu systems differ again. The Devīsūkta of the Durga Saptashatī does describe the goddess in nine forms, but not in these names. The corpus frontmatter's "integrated into Navarātri by c. 10th c. CE" is not a claim this entry can support and should be struck.

Sources and what is still unverified

• Durga Saptashatī — the Devīsūkta on the nine forms, at work level.
• Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses — for the North Indian goddess cycle.
• A study of the regional Navarātri systems and of the Cāṇḍraghantā pūjā — a specific title and author must be supplied by a guardian; none is on file.
• Unverified: the "c. 10th c." integration date, the "Moon-Bell" translation as a fixed epithet, and every festival date given.