[paragraph continues] Mena, viz. Aparna, Ekaparna, and Ekapatala. These three performing very great austerity, such as could not be performed by gods or Danavas, distressed [with alarm] both the stationary and the moving worlds. Ekaparna (one leaf) fed upon one leaf. Ekapatala took only one patala (Bignonia) for her food. One (Aparna) took no sustenance; but her mother, distressed through maternal affection, forbade her, dissuading her with her words u ma (Oh, don't). The beautiful goddess, performing arduous austerity, having been thus addressed by her mother, became known in the three worlds as Uma. In this manner the contemplative goddess became renowned under that name. All these three had mortified bodies, were distinguished by the force of contemplation, and were all chaste, and expounders of divine knowledge. Uma was the eldest and most excellent of the three. Distinguished by the force derived from deep contemplation, she obtained Mahadeva [for her husband]."

Several of the names under which Uma is now known and worshipped are to be found in the older writings of the Hindus, though at that time they did not refer to Siva's wife. Uma, as we have already seen, was "Wisdom;" Ambika was a sister of Rudra; Durga "in a hymn of the Taittiriya Aranyaka is an epithet of the sacrificial flame; and Kali, a word which occurs in the Mandaka Upanishad, is the name of one of the seven flickering tongues of Agni, the god of fire." [**]

Uma is called the mother of Kartikeya, and in a certain sense of Ganesa too; but it is not at all clear whether it was really as Uma or in her succeeding birth as Parvati that she had these children.

The "Kurma Purana" [**] has an account of Uma's creation which takes us back, a stage anterior to her birth as a daughter of Daksha. "When Brahma was angry with his sons for adopting an ascetic life [and refusing to perpetuate the human race], a form half male and half female was produced from that anger, to whom Brahma said, 'Divide thyself,' and then disappeared. The male half became Rudra, and the female, at the command of Brahma, became the daughter of Daksha under the name of Sati, and was given in marriage to Rudra, and when she subsequently gave up her life on being treated with disrespect by her father, she was born a second time as the daughter of Himavat and Mena, and named Parvati."

It should be noticed that although Uma is called the wife of Siva, it is understood that she represents the energy or active power of that deity; she assumed a body in order that she might be united to him in due form; in like manner Vishnu's energy became incarnate in Lakshmi, Sita, etc.

PARVATI.