Shani Dev -- The Slow One, Judge of Karma

Of the nine grahas, the planetary powers of Indian astrology, none is feared like Shani. His transits are blamed for delays, losses and long hardships; on Saturdays queues form at his shrines with offerings of mustard oil and black sesame. And yet in the temples and in the hymns, Shani is not a demon or an enemy. He is a god -- a stern one, whose work is to give each person the exact fruit of their actions.

His name explains his nature. Shanaishchara means "the one who moves slowly" (shanaih charati). Saturn is the slowest of the planets visible to the naked eye, taking about twenty-nine and a half years to circle the zodiac, some two and a half years in each sign. To the ancient astronomers that slowness made him the planet of time, patience, endurance and delay.

The Puranas make Shani the son of Surya, the Sun, by Chhaya, "shadow". Surya's wife Sanjna could not bear his blazing heat, so she created a woman from her own shadow, left her in her place and went away to do penance. Chhaya bore Surya children, Shani among them. In some tellings Shani's dark complexion -- and his difficult relationship with his father -- go back to this birth from shadow: the son of light born dark.

Shani is thus the brother of Yama, the god of death and dharma, and of the river goddess Yamuna, Sanjna's children. The two brothers share a domain. Yama judges after death; Shani is said to deliver the results of karma within life. That is why Shani is called the dandadhikari, the one entrusted with punishment -- and why his worshippers insist that he is just, not cruel.

In astrology, Shani's most dreaded period is Sade Sati, "seven and a half". It is the roughly seven-and-a-half-year span during which Saturn passes through the three signs centred on the sign of one's natal Moon -- the one before it, the Moon sign itself, and the one after, about two and a half years each. Because it comes round about every thirty years, most people pass through it two or three times in a life. Astrologers describe it as a time of pressure and testing, but also of maturing; many teachers stress that Shani's periods reward honesty, hard work and patience, and that what he takes away is what was not built to last.

Much of the folk worship of Shani grows from stories about softening his gaze. One says that when Shani looked at the newborn Ganesha, the child's head was struck off -- the reason, in some accounts, that Shani keeps his eyes lowered. Another, popular in north India, says that Hanuman once freed Shani from Ravana's captivity, and Shani promised not to trouble Hanuman's devotees; so many people worship Hanuman on Saturdays too.

The way devotees approach Shani says a good deal about him. He is offered oil, the cheapest of lamps; black things and iron, the colours and metal of labour; and service to the poor, the old and the disabled, whom he is said to protect. Lighting a mustard-oil lamp under a peepal tree on Saturday evening is one of the most widespread practices. None of it is about bribing a cruel god. It is about honouring discipline, humility and fairness -- and that, the tradition says, is what Shani asks for and what he returns.