The Devi Mahatmya, also called the Durga Saptashati or the Chandi, is the founding text of Shaktism and it does something no earlier Sanskrit text had done: it makes the Goddess the ultimate reality rather than someone's consort, and stages the argument as combat. The gods, defeated by Mahishasura, pool their energies and what emerges is a woman who does what they could not. In the Kali episode she produces from her own forehead a figure who is her rage detached and running loose. The text is treated as a mantra in itself, chanted with ritual precautions, and used in vows across northern and eastern India. The Mahalaya broadcast is a good indicator of its reach: an All India Radio programme of chanting and song that has been going out before dawn on the day Durga Puja begins since the 1930s, which Bengalis of no particular religious conviction still get up for, and which produced a public revolt when the station tried to replace the reciter in 1976.