Shashthiषष्ठी

Shashthi is the goddess of children — of birth, of surviving infancy, and of the anxieties of the first weeks.

Her name is simply the ordinal: ṣaṣṭhī, the sixth. She is the sixth lunar day, and she is worshipped on the sixth day after a birth, which across most of northern and eastern India is one of the most widely performed domestic rites there is — the chhathi, on which the mother and the newborn are brought out, the room is cleaned, the child is named in many communities, and the goddess is worshipped.

In Bengal she is far more than that. The Bengali calendar has a Shashthi in almost every month — Jamai Shashthi, Aranya Shashthi, Neel Shashthi, Ashoka Shashthi, Durga Shashthi, Lotan Shashthi, Chapra Shashthi — each with its own occasion, and each kept by women for the welfare of children. No other goddess in India has that density of observance.

Her image, where there is one, is of a woman holding an infant, and her mount is a cat.

And behind her there is something else. Shashthi belongs, historically, to the class of child-seizing powers — the grahas of early Indian medical literature, the matrs of the epic's Skanda cycle — who were feared rather than loved, and who were propitiated so that they would leave children alone. The Saptamatrika page describes the transformation of that class into mothers. Shashthi is the figure in whom both halves are still visible at once.

Two strata, both still present.

The seizers. Early Indian medical literature has a well-developed category of bāla-grahas — the seizers of children — female powers who afflict infants with named conditions and against whom specific rites are prescribed. The Kashyapa Samhita, the paediatric text of the Ayurvedic corpus, and the Uttaratantra of the Sushruta Samhita both treat them at length, and they include Revati, Jataharini and Shashthi among the figures involved. The Mahabharata's Skanda material describes the same class: numerous, unnamed or loosely named, associated with cremation grounds and crossroads, and dangerous specifically to the very young.

These are not benign figures and the rites against them are rites of keeping away.

The negotiation. In the epic's own account, the Mothers come to the newborn Skanda and ask to be permitted to take children as their food. They are refused and instead given a place — a share of worship, and the office of protecting children rather than seizing them, provided they are honoured. The Saptamatrika page sets this out because it is the clearest thing the tradition says about what happened to the whole class.

Shashthi is the one who most obviously came through that door. She is still worshipped at the moment of maximum danger — the sixth day after a birth, historically a point of very high infant and maternal mortality — and the logic of the observance is recognisably propitiatory.

Skanda's connection. She is repeatedly linked to Skanda — as his nurse, as a member of his retinue, and in the Brahmavaivarta and some Puranic material as Devasena, his wife, herself identified as a portion of Prakriti and named Shashthi because she is the sixth part. The Murugan page carries Devasena; Bengali practice has little interest in the identification and treats Shashthi as a mother in her own right.

The Grihya Sutras. The sixth-day rite is old and is prescribed in the domestic ritual literature, where the jatakarma and naming sequence sits.

And Chhathi Maiya. The great Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh solar festival, Chhath, is named from the sixth day (chhath from ṣaṣṭhī), and its presiding goddess is Chhathi Maiya, addressed as Surya's sister. The identification of Chhathi Maiya with Shashthi is popular and widespread, and the two cults are not the same: Chhath is solar, is performed standing in water at sunset and sunrise, and is kept for the family's welfare generally. This page records the connection of name and number and does not merge the traditions.

A woman with a child. The whole of it. She is shown seated or standing, richly dressed, with an infant on her lap or arm, and sometimes several children around her. There is no weapon, no fierce attribute and no ornament of the cremation ground — which, given her origins, is itself informative.

The cat. Her vahana in Bengal, and one of the genuinely unexplained features of Indian iconography. The reasons offered are practical and none is textual: cats are in the house; cats have many young; cats carry their kittens; cats are also known to take them. Given the goddess's history the last reading is the most suggestive and is nowhere stated. The tradition does not explain the cat, and this page does not either.

In Bengali domestic practice the cat is not an abstraction: harming a cat is avoided in households keeping her observance, and children are told the cat is Shashthi's.

The aniconic forms, which are commoner. A stone smeared with vermilion under a banyan; a grinding stone; a decorated earthen pot; or simply a place at the foot of a tree — the shashthi tala. Far more Shashthi worship is done at these than before any image.

The fan and the winnowing tray. In some Bengali rites she is associated with a fan (pankha) and with domestic implements, in the same register as Shitala's broom and winnowing fan.

In Bengali pat and folk painting, and in the Shashthi pata.

Not Shitala, and not Manasa. Three eastern Indian goddesses of specific household dangers — disease, snakes, and the survival of children — worshipped by the same women in the same courtyards. Related in register, distinct in cult, and each with a page here.

Shashthi of the sixth day. The post-natal rite; the most widespread form.

Devasena. Skanda's wife in the Puranic identification; the Murugan page carries her.

The Bengali Shashthis, which are effectively a calendar of their own:

• Jamai Shashthi — in Jyeshtha. A son-in-law is invited, fed elaborately and given gifts; the mother-in-law fans him and blesses him. One of the most widely kept Bengali domestic festivals, and its connection to a goddess of children is through the daughter's welfare.
• Aranya Shashthi — the forest Shashthi, on the same day in much of Bengal, kept under a tree.
• Neel Shashthi — in Chaitra, before Charak; mothers fast for their sons.
• Ashoka Shashthi, Lotan Shashthi, Chapra Shashthi, Durga Shashthi — the sixth of Navaratri, when the Goddess's bodhan is performed and the Durga Puja begins.

Chhathi Maiya. The Chhath goddess, connected by name and number. See Origins.

Shashthi as the sixth tithi. In the almanac, and in the general auspiciousness of the sixth day, which is why several unrelated observances fall on it.

Skandamata. The fifth Navadurga, Skanda's mother — a different figure from Skanda's wife, and not Shashthi. The Navadurga page carries her.

Regional names. Satti, Chhathi, Shashti, Chhati Mata across the Hindi belt; Shashthi Devi in Odisha and Assam.

She has very little narrative, and the reason is characteristic: her worship is domestic and recurring rather than commemorative, and rites that are performed every time a child is born do not need a founding story.

What there is:

The negotiation with Skanda. Told in Origins. The Mothers ask to be allowed to take children; they are given worship and the office of protection instead. It is the tradition's own account of the transformation, framed as a bargain rather than a conversion, and it is considerably more candid than a later theology would have been.

The Brahmavaivarta's Shashthi. That text makes her the sixth portion of Prakriti, the presiding deity of children, and the wife of Skanda, and tells a story of a king — usually Priyavrata — whose child is stillborn, and to whom the goddess appears in a celestial form, restores the child, and prescribes her worship on the sixth day. Whatever its date, it is the closest thing she has to a charter narrative, and it establishes the sixth-day rite by precedent.

The cat and the stolen offering. A widely told Bengali domestic tale: a woman who blames a cat for stealing food, or who mistreats a cat, loses her children one after another — until she understands that the cat is Shashthi's, propitiates the goddess, and they are restored. It is a household story with a household moral, and it is how a great many Bengali children first hear the goddess's name.

Jamai Shashthi's origin story, in which a woman who secretly eats fish blames the household cat, is cursed, and must keep the observance and honour her daughter's husband — a comic domestic narrative that carries one of Bengal's largest family festivals.

And the silence in the medical texts. The Kashyapa Samhita's treatment of child-afflicting powers is not narrative at all; it is clinical, listing presentations and prescribing rites. Read beside the Puranic mother with an infant on her lap, it is the most instructive thing about her — the same figure, described by two professions, four centuries apart.

The sixth day after a birth. The central observance, performed across northern, eastern and central India. The mother and infant emerge from the birth room; the room and the house are cleaned; the goddess is worshipped with vermilion, flowers, sweets and a lamp; women of the household and neighbourhood gather; songs are sung; and in many communities the child is named. In parts of North India a thali, paper and a pen are left out overnight so that the goddess may write the child's destiny.

It is among the most consistently performed domestic rites in India, and it is conducted almost entirely by women, without a priest.

The Bengali Shashthi calendar. Listed under Forms. Jamai Shashthi in Jyeshtha is the largest — a household festival on a considerable scale, with a substantial meal.

Under the banyan. The village shashthi tala, where women gather on the sixth of a fortnight, tie threads, and make offerings. No image, no priest, and no Sanskrit.

Fasting for children. Mothers fast on her days for the wellbeing of sons and daughters — Neel Shashthi and the Shashthi vrata generally.

Durga Shashthi. The sixth day of Navaratri, on which the Durga Puja formally begins with bodhan.

Chhath. Connected by name and number; see Origins. The Adityas and Surya pages carry that festival.

A necessary statement. Shashthi's domain is childbirth and infant survival, and the rites described here are religious and social practice. DharmSetu makes no claim that any observance affects the health of a mother or a child, and nothing here is medical advice. Antenatal care, skilled attendance at birth, immunisation and prompt treatment of newborn illness are what have changed infant and maternal mortality in India, and the decline over recent decades is very largely attributable to them.

Almost none, and that is the correct answer for her. Shashthi is worshipped in birth rooms, courtyards and under trees, and the absence of buildings is a description of the cult rather than a gap in it.

Where something exists:

Shashthi talas — the village shrines under banyan and bakul trees across West Bengal, Bangladesh, Odisha and Assam. Usually a stone, a platform and a tree; sometimes a small structure. There are a very large number of them and almost none is notable individually, which is the point.

Shashthi shrines within Devi temples across eastern India, and a Shashthi image in many Durga Puja pandals.

Kalighat and the Bengali Shakta temples carry her within the larger complex.

Chhath ghats — the riverbanks of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh at Kartik, where Chhathi Maiya is addressed. A related but distinct observance; see Origins.

Skanda temples of the south, where Devasena — identified with her in the Puranic material — has a shrine beside Murugan. The Murugan page carries those.

The honest summary: she is among the most worshipped and least built deities in India, and she is worshipped in the one room of the house that almost no religious architecture addresses.

A goddess of the sixth day, and what the sixth day was. Before the twentieth century, the first week after a birth was the period of highest risk to both mother and newborn, and the sixth day was the point at which a household could begin, cautiously, to believe that the child would live. A religion that placed its principal child-goddess exactly there was not being arbitrary. The rite is sited at the moment of maximum fear.

Both halves, still visible. Most of the child-seizing powers of the early literature were converted, over centuries, into benign Mothers, and the conversion covered its tracks. Shashthi did not quite lose the earlier layer: she is in the paediatric texts as something to be warded off and in the Puranas as a woman holding an infant, and the two descriptions have never been reconciled. She is the best single illustration in this encyclopedia of what the Matrikas were before they were mothers.

A religion of women, without a priest. Her worship has no Sanskrit liturgy, no officiant, no temple and no public festival in most of India. It is conducted by women, in courtyards, for children, and it is performed more often than most of the great temple cults in this encyclopedia. Any account of Hindu practice built from temples and texts will miss it entirely — which is a general problem, and she is the sharpest example of it.

Names that are numbers. Shashthi is an ordinal. So is Chhath. A tradition that named its goddess of children after a day on a calendar was locating her in time rather than in place or in person — and it is the same instinct that produced Ratri, night, and Ashtami observances, and the entire structure of the tithi. She is less a person than an appointment that has to be kept.

And the cat. Unexplained, and worth leaving unexplained. A goddess whose history is the taming of powers that took children, whose mount is an animal that is famously both a mother and a killer of its own young, and about which the tradition says nothing at all. This page has resisted supplying the reading, because the sources do not, and because the most interesting thing here is that nobody ever wrote it down.