Nirrti is the Hindu Goddess of destruction and death. She dwells in desolate places, watching for people who are hungry or in mourning. She wears dark clothes and has messy hair. Offerings to Nirrti are often black, such as black grain and stones, or diseased and malformed animals, and were usually intended to keep her away from rituals rather than to invite her to join in.
Nirṛti is mentioned in the hymns of the Rigveda, mostly to seek protection from her or imploring her during a possible departure.
However, in Atharva Veda, she is described as having golden hair.
In the Taittiriya Brahmana (I.6.1.4), Nirṛtī is described as dark, dressed in dark clothes and her sacrificial shares are dark husks.
In the Shatapatha Brahmana she is related to pain and the southwest corner is considered as her region. In it, she is also mentioned as residing in the south which is the direction of the kingdom of the dead.
In later Hindu texts, Nirṛti was re-conceptualized as a deity. According to some texts, she is the wife of Adharma (not-dharma) signifies an important component of Prakriti (nature) for the Purusha (human -beings) who dwell in forests and the mother of three rakshasas—Mrityu (death), Bhaya (fear) and Mahabhaya (terror)—who were collectively referred to as Nairrita.
Other texts portray her as the daughter of Adharma and Himsa (violence, the opposite of Ahimsa); she married her brother—Arita and became the mother of Naraka (personification of hell) and Bhaya.
In the Bhagavata Purana, he is presented as Aprajaḥ (one without children) who takes Adharma and Mṛṣā (untruth), two of Brahma’s sons or creations, as adopted sons. Some texts identify Nirṛti with other inauspicious goddesses, Jyeshtha or Alakshmi. In this context, she is described as having emerged from the Samudra Manthana (the churning of the ocean).
Nirrti symbolized an aspect of Nature that our human mind refused to accept – that the human corpse would ultimately decompose and decay. She symbolized someone who bore life away. Her job was to carry the dead man’s life to the other world. So we re-conceptualized Nirrti as the goddess of misfortune and death.
See also – Nirrti – as Dikapala
