Mahalaya Amavasai, Navaratri
Every month there is a night called amavasai (new moon). It is the night when you can’t see the moon in the sky. The entire world becomes dark on that particular night. Darkness also represents the bad elements in the world. Hence all the bad things come out on this amavasai night. Whenever you heard about ghosts, evil etc you would also have heard that such things comes out only during amavasai. Or such things become more powerful only in the amavasai night. This is due to darkness surmounting everywhere.
Light represent the good and darkness always represent the evil. So when the world becomes dark naturally in amavasai night evil forces comes out in search of fulfilling their wishes. Amavasai comes every month. But mahalaya amavasai comes once a year. Mahalaya amavasai is the most powerful of all amavasais. Every year mahalaya amavasai falls a day before the navaratri festival starts. Mahalaya amavasai is the day / night when the evil forces dances without any control. That is why houses have to be kept clean before mahalaya amavasai.
Woman usually clean the entire house and keep the house with divine things such as sambrani thoopam etc. When sambrani thoobam is spread throughout the house all the good elements spread inside the house. And when houses are kept clean gods reside there. Thus making the evil forces stay away from the houses on the mahalaya amavasai.
However those people who were affected by such evil forces may find the bad effects more on mahalaya amavasai time. Those people should never loose hope. They must keep themselves and their houses clean and stay pious and close to gods. Slokams or Stotram must be told by them each day in the morning and evening. The 100 stanza abhirami anthathi is powerful and contains the essence of almost all Devi slokams. Singing the mahishasura mardhini slokam during navaratri is special.
Mahishasura (Buffalo Demon) who underestimated the female gender sought a boon from Brahma that no man should be able to kill him and only a female could kill him. His underestimation of the female gender went wrong with the goddess. He also got the boon that each drop of his blood that falls on the soil shall give life to many mahishasuras. When mahishasura heard that a beautiful girl was doing penance he asked her to act according to his wishes. The girl who did penance was not an ordinary girl but the mother of the universe. Devi warned him to run away or he will be dead. The rakshasa who was in a mad mindset started to fight with the girl. The fight lasted for nine days and nine nights. Devi asked durga to drink each drop of blood that comes out of mahishan’s body. Finally Devi killed mahishan. The rakshasa’s death made devas sing the mahishasura mardhini slogam a 20 stanza slokam in Sanskrit. It made goddess to come to her original calm form and thus 9 nights are celebrated as navaratris.
Mahishasura mardhini’s (Sakthi’s) victory over the evil mahishasuran marks the holy day vijayadasami. Vijaya means victory. Dasami means 10th day. The 10 th day that mark the victory of Devi over mahishasuran is vijayadasami. On this auspicious day business houses start writing their accounts. Parents join their little kids in school on this auspicious day so that every thing they do in future would also be victorious. Anything that you start on Vijayadasami is bound to succeed with the blessings of goddess.
September 28, 2008 Mahalaya Amavasai
September 30, 2008 Navarathri begins
October 08, 2008 Saraswathi / Ayutha puja
October 09, 2008 Vijaya Dasami
The mahishasuramardini image displayed in this page is a resized version of the public domain licensed image from wikipedia. Public domain images can be used for any purpose of choice (including both commercial and non commercial). The original mahishasuramardini / durga image from Wikipedia page.
