''Mahishasura Mardini'' (; a name for

Durga Durga ( sa, दुर्गा, ) is a major Hindu goddess, worshipped as a principal aspect of the mother goddess Mahadevi. She is associated with protection, strength, motherhood, destruction, and wars. Durga's legend centres around c ...

) is a 1959 Indian

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

-language film, directed and produced by

B. S. Ranga Bindiganavile Srinivas Iyengar Ranga (11 November 1917 – 12 December 2010) was an Indian photographer, actor, producer and director who has made many landmark movies in Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil. He was also the owner of Vikram Studios. He ...

. The film stars Rajkumar, V. Nagayya,

Udaykumar Bommasandra Srinivasaiah Suryanarayana Murthy (16 March 1933 – 26 December 1985), known by his screen name Udaykumar, was an Indian actor and producer in Kannada cinema. He, along with Kalyan Kumar and Rajkumar, were called the ''Kumarath ...

and Narasimharaju. It was dubbed in seven other languages and is retrospectively identified as amongst the first major

Pan-India films Pan-Indian film is a term related to Indian cinema that originated with Telugu cinema as a mainstream commercial film appealing to audiences across the country with a spread to world markets. The movement gained popularity since 2015, post th ...

. The film has musical score by

G. K. Venkatesh Gurusala Krishnadas Venkatesh (21 September 1927 – 17 November 1993) was an Indian film score composer who primarily worked in Kannada cinema during the 1960s, 1970s and until the late-1980s. He also composed music for Telugu, Malayalam and Ta ...

. It was dubbed in seven languages - including in Telugu under the same name and in Hindi as ''Durga Maata'' (, 1960). This was the first movie shot in Vikram Studios, Madras. Rajkumar sang a duet as a playback singer for the first time through the song ''Thumbithu Manava'' in this movie.

Cast

* Rajkumar as

Mahishasura Mahishasura is a bovine asura in Hinduism. He is depicted in literature to be a deceitful demon who pursued his evil ways by shape-shifting. Mahishasura was the son of Mahisi (Buffalo) and the great-grandson of Brahmarshi Kashyapa. He was ultima ...

Sowcar Janaki Sankaramanchi Janaki (born T. Janaki; 12 December 1931), popularly known as Sowcar Janaki (Tamil) or Shavukaru Janaki (Telugu) or Sahukar Janaki (Kannada), is an Indian actress who has appeared in over 300, films, predominantly in Tamil, Tel ...

as Gunavathi *V. Nagayya as

Shukracharya Shukra (Sanskrit: शुक्र, IAST: ) is a Sanskrit word that means "clear" or "bright". It also has other meanings, such as the name of an ancient lineage of sages who counselled Asuras in Vedic history. In medieval mythology and Hindu as ...

as Rambhesha * Narasimharaju as Vyaaghrasimha *

K. S. Ashwath Karaganahalli Subbaraya Ashwathanarayana (25 March 1925 – 18 January 2010) was an Indian veteran actor who appeared in Kannada films He appeared in over 370 films during his five-decade-long career. His only memorial in the whole of Karnata ...

as Narada *Rajanala *Ganapathi Bhat *Sandhya as Chamundeshwari * T. D. Kusalakumari *Suryakala *Ramadevi *Indrani as Goddess

*M. Lakshmidevi *Vasudeva Girimaji *Hanumantha Rao *Anilkumar *Suryakumar *Udayashankar as Vishnu *Sadashivaiah *Rajendra Krishna *Y. N. S. Swamy *Rangaswamy *Papamma *Shanthamma

Soundtrack

The music was composed by G. K. Venkatesh.

References

External links

* * 1950s Kannada-language films Films scored by G. K. Venkatesh Hindu mythological films {{1950s-Kannada-film-stub