The legend of Annapurna Hindu goddess of nourishment Antara Raychaudhuri Iseult Gillespie
Lord Shiva— primordial destroyer of evil,
slayer of demons,
protector, and omniscient observer
of the universe—
was testing his wife’s patience.
Historically, the union between
Shiva and Parvati was a glorious one.
They maintained the equilibrium
between thought and action
on which the well-being
of the world depended.
Without Parvati as the agent of energy,
growth, and transformation on Earth,
Shiva would become a detached observer,
and the world would remain static.
But together, the two formed
a divine union known as Ardhanarishvara––
a sacred combination
which brought fertility and connection
to all living things.
For these reasons, Parvati was worshipped
far and wide
as the mother of the natural world––
and the essential counterpart
to Shiva’s powers of raw creation.
She oversaw humanity’s material comforts;
and ensured that the Earth’s inhabitants
were bonded to each other
physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Yet a rift had grown
between these two formidable forces.
While Parvati sustained daily life
with care and control,
Shiva had begun to belittle
his wife’s essential work—
and insisted on quarreling
about their roles in the universe.
He believed that Brahma,
the Creator of the world,
had conceived the material plane
purely for his own fancy.
And therefore, all material things
were merely distractions called māyā—
nothing but a cosmic illusion.
For millennia Parvati
had merely smiled knowingly
as Shiva dismissed
the things she nurtured.
But upon His latest rebuke,
she knew she had to prove
the importance of her work
once and for all.
She took flight from the world,
withdrawing her half of the cosmic energy
that kept the Earth turning.
At her disappearance, a sudden,
terrifying and all-encompassing scarcity
enveloped the world in eerie silence.
Without Parvati,
the land became dry and barren.
Rivers shrank
and crops shriveled in the fields.
Hunger descended on humanity.
Parents struggled to console
their starving children
while their own stomachs rumbled.
With nothing to eat, people no longer
gathered over heaped bowls of rice,
but withdrew and shrank
from the darkening world.
To His shock and awe,
Shiva also felt the profound emptiness
left by his wife’s absence.
Despite His supreme power,
He too realized that He was not immune
to the need for sustenance,
and His yearning felt
bottomless and unbearable.
As Shiva despaired
over the desolate Earth,
He came to realize that
the material world
could not be so easily dismissed.
At her husband’s epiphany,
the compassionate Parvati
could no longer stand by
and watch her devotees wasting away.
To walk among them
and restore their health,
she took the form of a new avatar,
carrying a golden bowl of porridge
and armed with a jewel-encrusted ladle.
As word of this hopeful figure spread,
she was worshipped as Annapurna,
the Goddess of food.
With the arrival of Annapurna,
the world blossomed anew.
People rejoiced at fertility and food,
and communed together to give thanks.
Some believe that Annapurna first appeared
in the sacred city of Kashi,
or the Place of Freedom,
on the banks of the Ganges—
where she opened a kitchen
to fill the bellies of the people
until they could eat no more.
But it was not only mere mortals
who were served at her feast.
Humbled at the scenes of earthly pleasure
blooming all around him,
Lord Shiva himself approached the goddess
with an empty bowl
and begged for food and forgiveness.
For this reason, the supreme deity
is sometimes portrayed as a poor beggar
at the mercy of Annapurna;
holding her golden bowl in her left hand,
while the right forms the abhaya mudra––
a gesture of safety and assurance.
With these symbols,
this powerful avatar makes it clear
that the material world
is anything but an illusion.
Rather, it is a cycle of life
that must be sustained—
from the feeding of open mouths
and rumbling bellies,
to the equilibrium of the Earth.