the adjective , "fierce, violent, cruel for evil forces not for good forces ." The epithet has no precedent in Vedic literature and is first found in a late insertion to the Mahabharata, where and appear as epithets." History The Devi Mahatmyam, states C. Mackenzie Brown, is both a culmination of centuries of Indian ideas about the divine feminine, as well as a foundation for the literature and spirituality focused on the feminine transcendence in centuries that followed. One of the earliest evidence of reverence for the feminine aspect of God appears in chapter 10.125 of the Rig Veda, also called Devīsūkta. Hymns to goddesses are in the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata, particularly in the later (100 to 300 CE) added Harivamsa section of it. The archaeological and textual evidence implies, states Thomas Coburn, that the Goddess had become as much a part of the Hindu tradition, as God, by about the third or fourth century. Date Devi Mahatmyam is a text extracted from Markandeya Purana, and constitutes the latter's chapters 81 through 93. The Purana is dated to the ~3rd century CE, and the Devi Mahatmyam was added to the Markandeya Purana either in the 5th or 6th century. The Dadhimati Mata inscription (608 CE) quotes a portion from the Devi Mahatmyam. Thus, it can be concluded that the text was composed before the 7th century CE. It is generally dated between 400-600 CE. Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty dates the Devi Mahatmya to c. 550 CE, and rest of the Markandeya Purana to c. 250 CE. Philosophy The Devi Mahatmya text is a devotional text, and its aim, states Thomas Coburn, is not to analyze divine forms or abstract ideas, but to praise. This it accomplishes with a philosophical foundation, wherein the female is the primordial creator; she is also the Tridevi as the secondary creator, the sustainer, and destroyer. She is presented, through a language of praise, as the one who dwells in all creatures, as the soul, as the power to know, the power to will and the power to act. She is consciousness of all living beings, she is intelligence, she is matter, and she is all that is form or emotion. The text includes hymns to saguna (manifest, incarnated) form of the Goddess, as well as nirguna (unmanifest, abstract) form of her. The saguna hymns appear in chapters 1, 4 and 11 of the Devi Mahatmya,