Varahiवाराही

Varahi is a goddess with the head of a boar on a woman's body, and she carries a plough and a pestle.

She is the shakti of Varaha, Vishnu's boar avatar, and the fifth of the Saptamatrikas — the Seven Mothers who emerge from the gods to fight in the Devi Mahatmya. That is how most people meet her: fifth from the left on a temple wall, identifiable at a glance because she is the only one of the seven with an animal's face.

But she is the one Matrika who did not stay in the row. In Srividya — the Tantric tradition of Lalita Tripurasundari — Varahi is Dandini or Dandanatha, the commander-in-chief of the Goddess's forces, with her own chariot, her own retinue and her own vast literature. Where Matangi is Lalita's minister, Varahi is her general. Both of those pages carry the pairing.

Her worship is nocturnal and largely initiatory, which is why a goddess carved on temple walls across India is at the same time comparatively little known. The material that matters is transmitted under diksha, and this page describes the tradition without setting out its practice.

Two things about her are unusual enough to state at the outset. Her weapons are agricultural implements — she shares the plough with Balarama — and her face is that of an animal associated with ploughing, digging and rooting things up. And she is, in the Srividya reckoning, a goddess whose office is military command, which is not a role Indian goddesses are often given in the abstract.

As a Matrika. In the Devi Mahatmya's eighth chapter, faced with Raktabija, the gods send out their powers in female form. From Varaha comes Varahi — varāha-rūpiṇī, boar-formed, with a boar's face, carrying the discus and the plough. The Saptamatrika page sets out the whole scheme and the anomaly at the end of it.

The older layer. As with the Matrikas generally, she is older than that account. Varahi images are attested from the Kushana period and are standard by the Gupta; the Matsya and Varaha Puranas and the Vishnudharmottara give her iconography; and the Matrikas as a class belong to a stratum of dangerous, child-afflicting powers that predates their Puranic tidying. That history is the Saptamatrika page's subject.

The Srividya expansion. The transformation that makes Varahi a major deity happens in the Lalitopakhyana, the section of the Brahmanda Purana that narrates Lalita Tripurasundari's war against Bhandasura. There, Varahi is Dandanatha — the holder of the danda, the staff of command and of punishment — and she leads the Goddess's army from the Kiri Chakra chariot, with Shyamala or Matangi as the minister and the sixteen nityas in the ranks.

This is a considerable promotion. A figure who in the Devi Mahatmya is one of seven becomes, in the Srividya system, one of the two great functionaries of the supreme Goddess — and acquires a Varahi Tantra, a Vartali mantra tradition, a sahasranama, and an initiatory practice of her own.

Vartali. Her Srividya name, from a bija in her mantra, and the one used in that literature. Dandini, Dandanatha, Panchami and Bagalamukhi-adjacent epithets belong to the same body of material. She should not be confused with Bagalamukhi, the Mahavidya, though some regional traditions bring them close.

Why nocturnal. Her prescribed worship is at night, and the texts say so plainly. The reason given is that hers is a fierce and protective office rather than a boon-granting one — the commander is called on when something is coming, not when something is wanted — and the discipline attached to her practice is correspondingly strict.

The boar's head. Her defining feature and the only animal face among the Seven Mothers. Dark, tusked, with the snout raised. Sculptors treat it as a portrait of a boar rather than a mask.

The plough and the pestle. Hala and musala — and this is the detail worth pausing on. They are farming tools, and the only other major figure in this encyclopedia who carries them is Balarama. A boar roots up the ground; a plough opens it; a pestle pounds what comes out of it. The set is agricultural through and through, which sits oddly with her fierce reputation and is probably the older stratum showing.

The staff. Danda — the rod of command and of punishment — in her Srividya forms, from which Dandini and Dandanatha come.

Other hands. A sword, a shield, a noose, a goad, a skull-cup; the count runs from four to eight and beyond.

The buffalo. Her usual mount. Some Srividya forms give her a chariot instead, and a few Nepali and eastern images place her on a Garuda — an inheritance from Varaha, and startling when first seen.

Seated, heavy, and pregnant in some images. A number of eastern Indian Varahis are shown with a full belly, and the fertility register is unmistakable.

In the Matrika row. Fifth of seven, between Vaishnavi and Indrani, and the easiest of the set to identify.

Not Varaha. He is Vishnu with a boar's head and he is lifting the earth. She is a goddess with a boar's head and she is carrying a plough. The Varaha page is separate.

Varahi the Matrika. Fifth of the Seven Mothers; her commonest appearance.

Vartali / Dandini / Dandanatha. The Srividya commander, with her own mantra tradition and sahasranama. In that system she and Matangi are Lalita's two great officers.

Swapna Varahi. The form invoked in connection with dreams, and one of the better-known minor practices attached to her.

Kirata Varahi and Maha Varahi — regional and Tantric variants, the first fierce and hunting-associated.

Barahi. The Nepali form, one of the Ashta Matrika of the Kathmandu Valley, with her own temple and her own place in the valley's protective circuit. The Barahi temple on the island in Phewa Lake at Pokhara is among the most visited shrines in Nepal.

Varahi Amman. The Tamil form, worshipped in a number of temples in Tamil Nadu, often at night and often with an initiatory tradition attached.

In Buddhism. Vajravarahi — the diamond sow, a wrathful dakini with a boar's head emerging from the side of her own head — is a major deity of Tibetan Vajrayana and a consort of Chakrasamvara. She is historically connected to this figure and belongs to a different religion with a different practice; the two should not be captioned as each other.

Not Bagalamukhi, and not Chhinnamasta, though Tantric literature brings all three into proximity. Each has a page here.

Raktabija. The Devi Mahatmya's set-piece, in which she fights among the Seven. The Chamunda and Saptamatrika pages carry it.

Bhandasura and the war. Her great narrative, from the Lalitopakhyana. Bhandasura is generated from the ashes of Kamadeva after Shiva burns him — which is a direct link to the Kamadeva page — and grows into a power the gods cannot meet. Lalita Tripurasundari manifests to destroy him and raises an army.

In that army Varahi is the commander. She rides the Kiri Chakra, a chariot of her own; she directs the divisions; she destroys Bhandasura's forces and several of his generals; and the text describes her in explicitly military terms — as the one who executes what the Goddess decides. Shyamala, the minister, handles counsel; Varahi handles force.

The division of labour is the interesting part. Indian literature has many fierce goddesses. It has very few with a portfolio — and Srividya gives its supreme Goddess a cabinet, with a general and a minister, and puts a boar-faced woman with a plough in the senior military post.

The plough and the earth. No single narrative explains her agricultural weapons, and the honest position is that they are unexplained. What can be said is that a boar, a plough and a pestle all do the same thing — they open the ground — and that a goddess equipped entirely with implements for breaking earth is either a fertility figure who acquired a fierce reputation, or a fierce figure whose weapons were drawn from the only heavy tools the society had. The sources do not decide, and neither does this page.

Why her stories are thin. Much of her material is initiatory and is not narrated in public texts. The Varahi Tantra and the mantra literature are practice manuals rather than story collections, and what is transmitted under diksha stays there. This encyclopedia carries no initiatory material — the same decision recorded for Bagalamukhi and Tripura Sundari — and the resulting thinness of this section is a consequence of that, not a gap in the tradition.

At night, and under initiation. Varahi's worship is prescribed for the night, and its serious forms are diksha-transmitted. Practitioners describe a strict discipline; the mantras, the nyasa and the procedure are not printed here and are not printed in responsible published sources either.

Publicly, as a Matrika. Where the Seven Mothers receive worship as a set — in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Odisha — she receives offering in the row.

In Srividya. As Dandini, invoked in the Panchadashi and Shodashi systems' subsidiary worship, in the Lalita Sahasranama's verses naming her, and in the Varahi mantras of that tradition.

In Nepal. Barahi is one of the valley's Ashta Matrika and receives regular public worship, with her own jatra and her own place in the circuits of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur — a far more public cult than she has in India.

In Tamil Nadu. Varahi Amman temples keep night worship; the Ashtami and Navaratri observances are the busiest.

Animal offering was historically made to her and continues at some shrines with substitutes at others. Stated plainly, no procedure.

Swapna Varahi practices concerning dreams are widely discussed and are initiatory. DharmSetu records that they exist and makes no claim about outcomes, and sets out no method.

DharmSetu records these observances as practised and makes no claim about outcomes.

Varahi Deula, Chaurasi (Puri district, Odisha) — ninth or tenth century, and one of very few temples in India dedicated to a single Matrika. The image is seated, heavy, boar-faced, with the fish and the skull-cup, in a khakhara style temple of a kind Odisha built for fierce goddesses. Among the most remarkable and least visited temples in eastern India.

Barahi Temple, Phewa Lake, Pokhara (Nepal) — a two-tiered pagoda on a small island in the lake, reached by boat, and one of the most visited shrines in the country.

The Ashta Matrika temples of the Kathmandu Valley — Barahi has her station in each of the three cities' protective circuits.

Varahi Amman temples of Tamil Nadu — including shrines at Chennai, Thanjavur and Tirunelveli, several with night worship.

Chausath Yogini temples — Hirapur and Ranipur-Jharial (Odisha), Bheraghat (Madhya Pradesh) — where she appears within the Yogini system.

Matrika panels at Ellora, Elephanta, Aihole, Badami and Osian, where she is fifth in the row.

Srividya centres and the Shakta mathas of the south, where Dandini is worshipped as part of the larger system rather than independently.

The Matrika who left the row. Six of the Seven Mothers are, outside the panel, essentially names. Varahi is the exception: she acquired a Tantra, a sahasranama, an initiatory tradition, a command in the Goddess's army, and temples of her own. Understanding why is not possible from the sources, but the fact is worth stating, because it means the Saptamatrika set was never as uniform as its sculptural treatment suggests — one member had somewhere else to be.

A goddess with a job title. Srividya's arrangement is unusual and underappreciated. The supreme Goddess has a minister and a commander, and the roles are distinct and consistently maintained: Matangi counsels, Varahi executes. Placing a boar-faced woman with a plough in the senior military post is a specific choice, and it gives Shakta theology something most pantheons lack — an account of divine power as organised rather than merely immense.

Tools, not weapons. Her plough and pestle are the strangest thing about her, and the most suggestive. She is armed with the implements of agriculture, and her face is that of the animal that turns soil. Whatever the historical route, the result is a goddess of overwhelming force whose equipment is what a village actually owned — which puts her closer to Shitala's turmeric and Khandoba's bhandara than to Durga's borrowed divine armoury.

Night, and what is not written here. A great deal of Varahi material is initiatory, and this page has declined to reproduce it — the same decision the Bagalamukhi and Tripura Sundari pages record. The consequence is that her Legends section is short and her Worship section describes rather than instructs. That is a decision, not a gap, and it should not be treated as something a later editor ought to complete.

More public abroad. In India she is a wall carving and a night practice. In Nepal she is Barahi: a temple on an island that people take a boat to, one of eight goddesses holding the corners of three cities, with a public festival. The same pattern the Saptamatrika page notes for the whole set holds sharpest for her — the goddess is a carving in one country and a place people go on a Saturday in the other.