P A R V A T I. 
720 
PARVA'TI, in the Hindoo mythology,is the confort of 
Siva, the perfonification of the deftru&ive, or rather re¬ 
novating or changing, power in their triad. The con- 
forts of the Hindoo male divinities are termed their 
fakti, which means their energy, or aCtive power. The 
The females are thus co-equal to their fpoufes, and are 
endowed with the fame attributes, and differ, fex ex¬ 
cepted, very little from them. See Matri, vol. xiv. 
A hiftory of the goddefs Parvati, under her various 
forms and names, might be extended to volumes, and 
many volumes, we may fay fcores of volumes, have, in 
faCl, been written thereon. The facred romances called 
Puranas abound in legends relating to the origin and 
proceedings, the amours, quarrels, incarnations, battles, 
See. of this all-producing, all-pervading, perfonification 
of Nature. She is faid, like her lord, to have a thoufand 
names; they are ftrung metrically together, and are re¬ 
cited by her votaries in their propitiatory adorations. 
Parvati means “mountain-born,” (he having, in one of 
her many terreftrial defeents, fprung from fuch a paren¬ 
tage, as is noticed under the article Mera. In her name 
and character of Parvati, many magnificent temples are 
eredted to her honour in different parts of India, efpe- 
cially on mountains and elevated fituations. All moun¬ 
tains, as bearing a conical form, a form naturally affum- 
ed by fire, are typical of this goddefs or her lord; he 
being a perfonification of that definitive, and, in its 
form of heat, renovating element. Throughout India, 
from Nepaul to Ceylon, and from Siam to Surat, tem¬ 
ples are raifed to this extenfively-worftiipped couple ; and 
their feClaries, under various names, ftill offer adoration 
in them. At Poona the principal temple is on a high 
hill called Parvati, or Parbutty, which gives a name to 
the quarter of the city in its neighbourhood. Dnrga is 
anotherof her names; and this name, meaning “difficult 
of accefs,” is appropriately given to hill-forts, provin- 
cially corrupted into Droog or Durgam. Chittledroog, 
for inftance, is corrupted from Situ and Durga, names 
of this goddefs, which, in compofition, and with a gram¬ 
matical copulative, mean the Hill, or Inacceffible Place, 
of Sita. Chittagong is altered from Sita Gao, or Gom, 
the Town of Sita. Much of the geographical nomencla¬ 
ture of India is thus derivable from its mythological 
perfonages. 
In her chara&er of Kaumari, or the Virgin, Parvati 
correfponds, as fhe does likewife in many other inftances, 
with the Taurican Diana. She may be identified fimi- 
larly with mofl of the female deities of Greece and Rome, 
not in name merely, but in attributes and charadler. 
Mofl: of thofe female deities are found, on minute in- 
fpe&ion, to melt into one, as do thofe of India into Par¬ 
vati; who is a perfonification of the Moon, as her con- 
fort Siva is of the Sun; co-equal emblems merely of 
“that infinitely greater Light, whence all proceeded, 
whither all muft return, and which alone can illumine 
our intellects.” This is the fubftance of the mofl facred 
text of the Hindoo feripture. See O’m. 
The attributes of Durga are confpicuous in the feftival 
called by her name Durgotfava; and, in this character, 
we are told by fir W. Jones fhe refembles Minerva, “ not 
the peaceful inventrefs of the ufeful and fine arts, but 
Pallas, armed with a helmet and fpear: both reprefent 
heroic virtue, or valour united with wdfdom ; both flew 
demons and giants with their own hands ; and both pro¬ 
tected the wife and virtuous, who paid them due ado¬ 
ration.” 
“ As the Mountain-born Goddefs, or Parvati, flie has 
many properties of the Olympian Juno ; her majeftic de¬ 
portment, high fpirit, and general attributes, are the 
fame; and we find her on mount Kailafa, and at the 
banquets of the deities, uniformly the companion of her 
hulband.” In her charadler of Bhavani, fir W. Jones 
fuppofes the wife of Mahadeva, or Siva, to be as well the 
Juno Cinxia, or Lucina of the Romans, (called alfo by 
them Diana Solvizona, apd by the Greeks Ilythya ,) as 
Venus herfelf; not the Italian queen of laughter and 
jollity, who, with her nymphs and graces, was the beau¬ 
tiful child of poetical imagination, and anfwers to the 
Indian Rhemba, with her train of Apfaras, or Damfels 
of Paradife; but Venus Urania, fo luxuriantly painted 
by Lucretius, and fo properly invoked by him at the 
opening of a poem on Nature. Venus prefiding over 
generation, and on that account exhibited fometimes of 
both fexes, (an union very common in the Indian fculp- 
tures,) as in her bearded ftatue at Rome; and perhaps 
in the images called Herma-thena , and in thofe figures of 
her which had a conical form; for the reafon of which 
we are left (fays Tacitus) in the dark. “The reafon,” 
continues our author, “ appears too clearly in the temples 
and paintings of Hindooftan, where it never feems to 
have entered the heads of the legiflators or people, that 
any thing natural could be offenfively obfeene; a Angu¬ 
larity which pervades all their writings and converfation, 
but is no proof of depravity in their morals.” 
The fame highly-gifted author, in his Differtation on 
the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India, identifies the 
Stygian or Tauric Diana, otherwife named Hecate, aqd 
often confounded with Proferpine, with Kali, a name 
and form of Parvati, in her charadler of wife of Kal, who 
correfponds with the Stygian Jove. Human victims, as 
well as the facrifice of horfes and bulls, enjoined by the 
Veda, being in the prefent age abfolutely prohibited, kids 
are now offered to Kali, or the Black Goddefs; and, to 
palliate the cruelty of the flaughter, which gave great of-, 
fence to the Hindoo followers of milder tenets and prac-, 
tice, the Brahmans inculcate a belief, that the poor vic¬ 
tims rife in the heaven of Indra, and become the mufi- 
cians of his band. A cup, called by both Romans and 
Hindoos patera (fee Patra), a whip, or cord (fee Pash), 
a feeptre, a child, a car drawn by peacocks and by lions, 
a turreted crown, a drum (called dyndima 'both in Greek 
and Sanfcrit), a fphere, a torch, a lily or lotos, a fer- 
pent, a fpear, a bow, with other common attributes, 
might be noticed as identifying the multiform goddeffes 
in queftion. 
That the names juft noted, as well as Urania, Ifis, 
and many others, are in faCt of the fame goddefs Nature, 
under different forms, there can be no doubt. The 
Pantamorpha Mater; Dea Jana, or Diva Jana, was eafily 
made by the Romans into Diana. Devi-jenni, the teem- 
ing goddefs ; Vifwa-jenni, the all-producing, are Sanfcrit 
terms, applicable to Parvati in her character of Prakriti, 
or Nature. Juno may be derived from Yoni; Ceres from 
Sri, or in one cafe Sris; Anna Perenna, from Ana-pur- 
na, a name of Parvati, meaning, in Sanfcrit, “ abun¬ 
dance of food,” or “one who fills with food.” In this 
charadler Ihe holds a ladle. Aftarte, as well as Either, 
Alhtaroth, and the Perfian Sitara, meaning a liar, or 
fomething fidereal, may be traced to Ajhtara, another 
name of the Hindoo goddefs, derived from a legend in 
which flie was feated among eight points, and hence ap¬ 
plied to the radii of a ftar. The learned antiquary Spon 
(Mifc. Erud. Ant.) gives a print of a monument where 
Diana is called Claim; her attributes are thofe of Par¬ 
vati, one of whofe names is Kalratri, the goddefs of dark- 
nefs, the origin poflibly of its unmeaning fynonyme. See 
the Afiatic Refearches, vol. i. p. 121-275 °f the London 
8vo. edit. 
A cone, moftly a black conical ftone, is the phallic 
emblem of Siva, and of courfe of his confort Parvati. 
Weftern mythologifts tell us of a black conical ftone that 
fell from heaven ; it was placed in a temple of Aftarte, or 
the Moon, and itfelf adored as a type of the Sun. The 
Paphian goddefs was alfo anciently fymbolized by a cone. 
When Dr. Clarke, in his recently-publiflied “Travels,” 
deferibes fome antiquities of the Holy Land, we might 
almoft imagine that he was in the country of the Hindoos. 
He deferibes “ a fubterraneous conical temple, having no 
refemblance to any Chrillian temple, its fituation under 
the pinnacle of a mountain, one probably of the three 
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