The Devi spoke the whole phala-shruti, the promise of fruits, with her own mouth. Her first word was itself a vow: whoever praises her daily with these hymns, mind gathered to a single point, she takes the destruction of that person’s every obstacle into her own hands. Of this, she says, there is no doubt.

Then she counted her three caritas in a single breath: the First Carita, the destruction of Madhu and Kaitabha; the slaying of Mahishasura; and the killing of Shumbha and Nishumbha. Those who sing the fame of these three, and those who on the eighth, the fourteenth, and the ninth days sing this highest Mahatmya of hers with devotion and a single mind, for them the whole harvest that follows is promised. No evil deed clings to such a devotee, and no calamity born of evil. Poverty never finds them. Neither does parting from those they love.

Such a person moves without fear of enemy, of bandit, of the king’s rod; no terror of weapon, fire, or floodwater ever finds a way to him. For this reason, the Devi says, the steady-minded should always read this Mahatmya of hers and hear it with devotion, for it is the great and supreme road to well-being. Every disturbance an epidemic breeds, and the three kinds of upheaval, those sent by the gods, those rising from the elements, and those born within, fall silent under its recitation.

Now comes the Devi’s gentlest word. Wherever this Mahatmya is read rightly and daily in a sanctuary of hers, from that place she never withdraws; her nearness stays settled there. At the offering of bali, in worship, in the fire-rite, at a great festival, this whole carita of hers deserves to be spoken aloud and heard. And whether the procedure is mastered or not, whether the bali-worship and the fire-oblation are performed knowingly or in ignorance, she receives them with love. She sets faith above skill in ritual.

The great annual worship of the autumn season, the observance that would later settle into the sharadiya Navaratri, is where the Devi binds the hearing of this Mahatmya most closely. Whoever hears it there, filled with devotion, comes free by her grace of every obstacle and grows rich in wealth and grain; no doubt attends this, she says. And whoever hears of her greatness, of her separate auspicious births, of her prowess in battle after battle, that man becomes fearless.

The fruit spreads beyond the listener himself. His enemies waste away, good fortune turns toward him, and his whole family shares the joy. For every rite of peace, for the night a foul dream comes, for the fierce afflictions of the planets, the Devi names one remedy: the hearing of this Mahatmya. She states the result along with the prescription: the disturbances and the cruel planetary torments subside, and the bad dreams men have seen turn into dreams of good omen.

It brings calm to children seized by the child-tormenting spirits, and where a community has split into factions, it is the finest means of knitting friendship back together. It drains the strength of all whose nature runs to wickedness, and rakshasas, ghosts, and pishachas perish at its bare recitation. Beneath every one of these fruits lies a single cause: this whole Mahatmya, in the end, draws the Devi’s own presence near.

Then the Devi counts out the full inventory of worship: bali, flowers, the arghya of water, incense, fine fragrances, and lamps; the feeding of brahmins, the fire-oblations, and the sprinklings, offered on through day and night. Yet the delight that a whole year of these varied offerings and gifts brings her, she receives equally from a single faithful hearing of this good carita. One hearing, she declares, weighs as much as a year of worship.

This recital of her many births, once heard, works three effects at once: it carries away sin, it bestows health, and it guards against the assaults of spirits. Whoever hears the story of her cutting down the wicked daityas on the battlefield finds that fear sown by an enemy no longer takes root in his mind. And the hymns of praise gathered into this Mahatmya, those the gods made, those the brahmarshis made, and those made by Brahma himself, carry the devotee toward an auspicious destiny.

Now the Devi paints the dangers one by one. A man ringed by wildfire in a lonely forest or on a deserted plain. A man surrounded by bandits in an empty waste, or seized outright by his enemies. A man with lions and tigers on his trail, a man hemmed in by the wild elephants of the forest, or a man whom an angry king has sentenced to death or to the dungeon.

A man on a ship spun about by a violent gale on the great ocean, or caught in a battle so terrible that weapons rain down on him from every side. In the midst of all these horrors, or ground down by any anguish at all, whoever remembers this carita of hers, that man walks free of the danger. Remembrance alone, without even a recitation, is enough. By her power the lion and its kind, the bandit, the enemy, never even reach the one who holds her deeds in memory; they turn and flee while still far off.

With this, the thread of the story returns to the hands of the rishi Medha. Her phala-shruti spoken, the blessed Chandika of fierce valor vanished on the spot before the watching gods. And the gods whose enemies she had swept away, their dread gone, took up their old dominions as before and began once more to receive their shares of the yajna.

Shumbha, that most savage enemy of the gods who had set out to unmake the world, and Nishumbha of vast prowess, both lay slain in battle at the Devi’s hands; the daityas who survived slipped down to Patala. Turning to King Suratha, the rishi gives the gist: in just this way the blessed Devi, eternal and unborn though she is, takes form again and again for the protection of the world.

It is she, Mahamaya, who casts this universe into delusion, and she who gives it birth. Asked for knowledge, she grants knowledge; pleased, she grants riches of her own accord. O lord of men, in the great hour of dissolution this entire brahmanda is pervaded by her in the form of Mahakali. When the time comes she becomes the great plague that is destruction; she, the unborn, appears as creation itself; and she it is who holds all beings in their place. Three acts, one eternal shakti.

In seasons of rise she enters people’s homes as Mahalakshmi and multiplies their plenty; in seasons of decline she comes as Alakshmi and leads the house toward ruin; the two conditions are one shakti at play. The chapter closes on the giving of boons. Praised and worshipped with flowers, with incense and fragrance, that same Devi gives wealth, gives children, gives a mind turned to dharma, and at the end an auspicious destiny: she grants it all.