Shasthi Goddess,

By Natalia Boniewicz

According to the Hindu mythology, Shasthi is a beneficial goddess who looks after the children and protects them from any kinds of danger. That is also she who assist the childbirth, helping the midwifes. As a giver of fertility and protector of the children, Mother Shasthi, as she is commonly named, is not only worshipped with a big honor, but also treated with a very warm affection by Indian women. She is identified as a woman of golden skin and abundant shapes, mount on the cat with a baby in her arms. However, in Bengali villages she is usually represented by a stone painted in red and situated under the banyan tree in the outskirts of the village, by the branch of Banyan tree poked in the courtyard or by a clean pitcher. The goddess was worshipped on the sixth and twenty first day after the birth of a child, as well as, on the sixth day after the New Moon by the young unmarried women. Those women who had lost their children worship her everyday.

Edited by Ven Sophorn, IKAS
Santiniketan, March 11, 2010