Durgā's Lion — The Mount Who Fights Beside the Goddess

Most mounts carry their god quietly. Durgā's lion (siṁha, सिंह) is different: in the scriptures it joins the battle. That is why the goddess is called Siṁhavāhinī, "she who rides the lion", and why images of Mahiṣāsuramardinī so often show the lion biting or clawing the buffalo-demon while the goddess strikes.

The Devī Māhātmya (part of the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa) tells how the gods, beaten by Mahiṣāsura, poured out their anger as light, and the light took the form of the goddess. Each god then gave her a gift: Śiva his trident, Viṣṇu his discus, Indra his thunderbolt. In the same list, Himavat, lord of the Himālaya, gives her a lion to ride. The scene is in the second chapter of the text, the start of the Mahiṣāsura episode.

In the fighting that follows, the text describes the lion shaking its mane and attacking the demon armies on its own. The mount is a warrior in its own right. For more on this episode, see Is the Goddess supreme over the Trimūrti?.

Classical sculpture, from Mahabalipuram to Ellora, shows a lion. Many popular pictures, especially in North India (the Sherāṅwālī Mātā, "mother who rides the lion"), show a tiger instead, and Bengali Durgā Pūjā images often give the lion a horse-like face.

There is no single scripture that settles this. Different regions simply painted the great cat they knew. Some later stories link the tiger to Pārvatī's austerities, but these are regional traditions, not part of the Devī Māhātmya.

These readings are common in Śākta teaching. They grow out of the story but are not stated outright in the text:

• Power that serves. The lion is the strongest of beasts, yet it carries the goddess. Raw power becomes good when it is ridden by wisdom.
• Courage. The goddess sits calmly on an animal everyone else fears. Her devotees ask for that same fearlessness.
• The ego tamed. Some teachers read the lion as pride or anger, mastered and turned to protect dharma.

During Navarātri the lion is part of nearly every image of the goddess, and many Devī temples place a lion before the shrine the way Śiva temples place Nandi. For how the lion fits among the other gods' mounts, see Why every god rides something.

• Devī Māhātmya (Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa), chapter 2: the goddess formed from the gods' light; Himavat's gift of the lion; the lion in battle.
• Verse numbers differ between editions, so the episode is named rather than numbered.
• Lion vs tiger and the readings in "How the lion is read" are regional and interpretive tradition, not quotations.