Goddess Hariti: The Joy and Terror of Childbirth

Pregnancy and childbirth bring death as well as new life. The goddess Hariti, found in the Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain pantheons, represents the ambivalence of this experience. From unwanted pregnancy to miscarriage and infant death, people with uteruses experience deep vulnerability in reproduction. Women appeal to gods and spirits to ensure healthy pregnancies, prevent or abort unwanted ones, and guard infants against illness and accident. Hariti is one such deity.

Hariti is a yakshini, a nature spirit, arising from animist belief systems in South Asia. Some of her earliest mentions occur in Buddhist texts.¹

In some versions of the story, a young woman miscarried a longed-for pregnancy. She later died and was reborn as a yakshini named Hariti. She was still filled with grief and rage from the miscarriage in her previous life, so she made it her mission to kidnap other women’s children. She mothered 500 children of her own by the yaksha Panchika and fed them the human babies she took. Some texts called her Bhutamata, the “mother of demons.”² Women in ancient South Asia hoped to appease this angry deity to keep their children safe.

According to Buddhist myth, Hariti then met the Buddha and accepted his dharma. She renounced her child-snatching ways and became a protector of all children. Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains worshiped her. Hariti traveled across India and Southeast Asia with Buddhism and Hinduism. She melded with local mythology and iconography to assume many forms.³

People across Asia understood the joys and sorrows of motherhood differently. Hariti’s representations are as varied as the times and places in which she found popularity.

Hariti Enters the Archaeological Record

By the time Hariti sculptures entered the archaeological record, she had already been reformed through Buddhism. Images of Hariti first appear during the Kushan period in Gandhara, a region in the northwest of present-day Pakistan.

The Kushans, who ruled from the second century BCE to the third century CE, patronized Buddhism.⁴ Gandhara was an imperial crossroads where many groups traded, such as Parthians (from what is now Iran), Greeks, and groups from the Indian subcontinent.⁵ As a result, Kushan Buddhist art is syncretic. It mixes representations of local spirits with iconography borrowed from Greek and ancient Iranian deities.

A silver rondel is one of the earliest known depictions of Hariti.

The piece demonstrates syncretism in Hariti’s iconography. Art historians sometimes call her seated position, cradling her infant, the “Magna Mater” or “great mother” posture.⁶ It is common in mother goddess representations across cultures.⁷

The swans and lotuses shown surrounding Hariti, as well as her heavy jewelry, tie her to Hindu deities such as Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity.⁸

A stone carving of Hariti demonstrates Greek, Iranian, and Hindu influences. Her voluminous body and draped garment reflect conventions of Hellenistic sculpture.⁹

Historians argue that Hariti is related to the Greek goddess of good fortune, Tyche, as well as Ardochsho, a Kushan goddess with Iranan influences.¹⁰ In Kushan art, the goddess often raises her palm to the viewer in what seems to be the abhaya mudra, a convention of Hindu iconography that reminds the viewer to be without fear.

Hariti is sometimes shown alongside a male figure. This may be her consort Panchika, who fathered 500 children with her. The male figure could also be Kubera, king of the yakshas, a Kushan and Buddhist deity of good fortune and wealth. Some traditions equate Panchika and Kubera.¹¹

Hariti’s Influence Spreads

Starting in the Kushan period, Buddhist monks kept idols of Hariti in their monasteries. Visitors gave Hariti offerings. Buddhist monasteries were often centers of medical knowledge, and offered care for pregnant people.¹² Hariti may have symbolized both general abundance and specific protection for pregnancy and childbirth.¹³

South Asian Hindus and Jains also adapted the worship of Hariti. Jains referred to Hariti as Bahuputrika.¹⁴ The goddess’s popularity spread alongside both Buddhism and Hinduism. She gained new names as she traveled and syncretized with local goddesses. Artists as far afield as India, Indonesia, and China drew on local conventions to represent her.

India

Rulers of the Pala empire, which extended from current-day central India through current-day Bangladesh, supported Buddhism. Their patronage encouraged a unique school of Buddhist art, which included sculptures of Hariti.¹⁴ Sculptures of Hariti typically sat in temple niches to be worshiped by devotees.

Artists depicted Hariti surrounded by her children, with the large breasts, small waist, and thick, jeweled girdle typical of Hindu goddesses associated with prosperity and fertility. She assumes a seated posture with one leg out, called lalitasana. The posture is a mark of royalty and sacredness in both Buddhist and Hindu iconography.¹⁵

Indonesia

Traders, traveling scholars, and priests brought Hinduism to Indonesia by around the 1st century CE.¹⁶ Some Indonesian rulers began to favor Hinduism by the fourth century CE.¹⁷ Monks used maritime trade routes to spread Buddhism to Indonesia by the fifth century CE, if not earlier.¹⁸

Hariti traveled with them. Artists depicted the goddess’s Indonesian Hindu form, Men Brajut (also spelled Brayut), in temple art of the Majapahit Empire.^{19 20}

Men Brajut’s iconography also includes small children and infants. Her image adorned temples in East Java.²¹

Indonesian artists represented Men Brayut and her husband Pan Brayut (Panchika) as protectors of children. Yet they often included some demon-like features, demonstrating that the couple’s yaksha origins remained important to their worshippers.²²

Chinese Buddhism

Traveling monks brought Buddhism to China in the second century CE. Buddhism entered a rich mix of local spiritual practices, including Confucianism and Daoism.²³ By the sixth century CE, Buddhism was very popular in China.

Chinese Buddhists called Hariti “Guizimu,” or “mother of demons.” In Chinese myth, Guizimu often has 10,000 children with Panchika, rather than 500.

In China, the story of Guizimu’s conversion to Buddhism became a popular theme for painting.²⁴

In the story’s popular telling, local mothers in Rajgir in northern India, terrorized by Guizimu’s child-stealing, complained to the Buddha. The Buddha kidnapped and hid one of Guizimu’s children beneath his alms bowl in order to teach her a lesson. Guizimu went wild with grief. She tried to lift the alms bowl by force, but couldn’t.

Guizimu recruited an army of other demons to lift the bowl. They also failed. It was only when Guizimu renounced child-stealing and accepted Buddhism that she could lift the bowl and be reunited with her child.

Colonial India

Even after Buddhism lost influence in India around the 12th century CE, images of Hariti remained popular in Hindu art and folk traditions. Her status as a mother goddess made her ever-adaptable in popular imagination.

Mathura Hariti

In this terracotta plaque, perhaps from a temple, we can recognize Hariti from the child in her hands. She lifts her foot to pull a thorn from it, a common pose of yakshinis, apsaras (heavenly feminine spirits), and other youthful beauties in Indian art.²⁷

Sitala, Mother of Pox

Worshippers appealed to Hariti to protect babies from childhood illnesses.²⁸ In some regions of South Asia, worshippers considered her a protector of children against smallpox.²⁹

Because of this, some scholars and worshippers equate Hariti with Sitala Devi, the north Indian goddess of smallpox.^{30 31} Sitala is also associated with malaria, blood infections, and other contagious diseases.

Sitala possibly started as a local adivasi (tribal or indigenous) goddess whose worship was adapted by local Buddhists.³² She remains largely a folk goddess, worshiped on the local level to prevent and cure disease.

Artists of the Bengali Kalighat school painted Sitala Devi. The goddess sits in lalitasana, signifying she is sacred. Her vahana, or vehicle, is a donkey, considered an inauspicious animal.

In some depictions, Sitala carries a broom to sweep illness—either away from or toward humans. She carries a jug of water to wash away illness and hydrate the sick. When Sitala does bring disease, people hope to appease her so she’ll grant relief. This practice evokes the dual nature of Hariti as both afflictor and protector of children.

In 2020, many Sitala devotees prayed to her to eradicate COVID-19.^{33 34} Some Hindus consider COVID-19 itself a goddess. They worshiped her in the hopes of ending the pandemic. Others saw COVID-19 as a demon. For example, many of the potters who make idols for the yearly celebration of Durga Puja in West Bengal in 2020 replaced the image of the demon Mahishasura with the demon “Coronasura.” They hoped the Hindu goddess Durga would crush the coronavirus demon.³⁵

This dual representation of coronavirus is similar to that of Hariti herself. Are Coronadevi, Sitala, and Hariti deities or demons? Or, as many Dalit, adivasi, and anticaste activists argue, are demons simply the deities of marginalized people, who have not been accepted in the elite pantheon?

Hariti Today

Sitala Ma represents the core contradiction of Hariti. She is both the illness and the cure; both the deity who snatches children and the one who protects them. She must be adored in order to prevent her wrath.

While smallpox has been eradicated, the goddess’s work isn’t over. The COVID-19 pandemic has painfully illustrated that humans remain vulnerable to the whims of disease. At the same time, widespread inequality in healthcare make unwanted miscarriage and infant death persistent fears. Even with the best modern medicine, pregnancy and childbirth still carry an aspect of fate.

Neither the Buddha, in his efforts to tame Hariti, nor modern medicine, in its efforts to eradicate disease, have been able to eliminate the ambivalence of childbirth. Ultimately, all who give birth remain at goddess Hariti’s whim.