Shani is the Hindu deity of the planet Saturn and one of the Navagraha, the nine celestial influences of Indian astrology; he is the stern lord of karma, of justice, of discipline and of time. He is the son of Surya, the Sun, by his shadow-wife Chhaya, and this parentage marks him as dark and slow where his father is bright and swift, Saturn being the most distant and slowest-moving of the planets known to the ancients. Shani is imagined as dark of complexion, sometimes lame or limping, riding a crow, buffalo or vulture, and his gaze is held to be so powerful and inauspicious that even the gods fear it. In astrology he is the great judge who returns to each person the fruits of their own actions, rewarding patient effort and integrity but exacting a hard reckoning for wrongdoing; his influence is associated with delay, hardship, loss and the slow discipline through which maturity is won.
The period of some seven and a half years during which Saturn transits the signs around the moon, called Sade Sati, is widely regarded as a testing time to be met with care, and Shani is among the most actively propitiated of the grahas, worshipped on Saturdays, honoured at temples such as Shani Shingnapur in Maharashtra, and appeased through charity and the wearing of dark things. Yet Hindu understanding does not see him as simply malefic: his hardships are the workings of justice, and to accept his discipline honestly is held to bring lasting benefit. Shani is the divine face of consequence, unhurried, impartial, and not to be evaded.