Rajashekhara Dasa
From the book “Chaurasi-kosa Vraja Mandala Parikrama”:
This is the celebrated village where the two very devoted ladies named Vandi and Anandi once lived. These two female devotees were always immersed in thinking about Krishna’s pastimes. Every day they left their village and went to Nanda Maharaja’s house at Gokula on the pretext of helping to make cow-dung patties for cooking, but in fact they spent the whole day helping mother Yashoda take care of baby Krishna. These two ladies were actually expansions of Yogamaya Devi and represent two different aspects of the divine goddess.
The famous temple in the village is known as the Yogamaya Mandira and contains the two ancient Deities of Vandi and Anandi, seen here in their forms as Durga Devi, which are said to have been installed by King Vajranabha, although there are no historical records to verify this claim. However, it is a fact that after Vajranabha became the king of Mathura there was a great renaissance of Krishna-bhakti in the Vraja area and many Deities were installed during that period. During the course of time, the two Deities, Vandi and Anandi, were lost for a very long period but were rediscovered at the bottom of the nearby kunda when it was being cleaned about hundred years ago. The large kunda next to the temple where the Deities were found is known as Vandi-Anandi-kunda. During the Greco-Bactrian and Saka (Scythian) invasions of India beginning around 150 bce, many Deities were hidden in lakes and kundas to avoid them being stolen or destroyed by the invading armies who had captured the nearby city of Mathura. By the turn of the 1st century, another invading horde known as the Kushans defeated the Sakas and gradually gained control over most of Northern India and the city of Mathura also fell under their control. This dark period in Indian history brought about the decline of Bhagavata-dharma and many of the famous Deities established by Vajranabha were hidden for fear they would be desecrated.
It is said that these two very beautiful Deities were carved out of the same black stone known as Vraja-shila, from which Vajranabha had the Deity of Baladeva (Dauji) and many other Deities carved from. The exquisite beauty of these two Deities of Vandi and Anandi can only be fully appreciated in the early morning hours after mangala-arati, just prior to them being decorated. The elaborately sculptured form of Vandi Devi, whose full name is Vinandi Devi, can be seen displaying ten arms holding her various weapons in her feature as Durga, riding on her tiger carrier and slaying the invincible demon Mahishasura, who is seen in the form of a buffalo. The ten-armed form of Durga is generally associated with her fierce feature of Bhadrakali, the consort of Rudra, who, having received all the weapons of the demigods, killed the king of demons Mahishasura, who possessed the form of a human being as well as that of a ferocious buffalo.
