Vakreshwar (Bakreshwar) Shakti Peeth

The story

According to the Shakti Peeth tradition, after King Daksha's yagya Shiv ji wandered in grief carrying the body of Devi Sati. Vishnu ji's Sudarshan chakra then divided the body, and wherever a part or an ornament fell, a Shakti Peeth arose. At Bakreshwar the space between her eyebrows is believed to have fallen; the Peeth Nirnaya calls it 'man', the mind. The Shiv of this place takes his name from the sage Ashtavakra. The story goes that in Satya Yug the sage Subrata was insulted by Indra at the wedding of Lakshmi ji and Narayan; in his anger his body became bent in eight places, and he came to be called Ashtavakra. He did tapasya to Shiv ji here for many years and bathed in the Paphara stream, and Shiv ji blessed him. So Shiv ji is worshipped here as Vakreshwar or Vakranath, 'the lord of the bent one'. Bharatkosh adds that the ashram of Ashtavakra, son of the sage Kahoda, was believed to be here. The Devi's murti is of brass with ten arms, the temples are in the rekha deul style, and old paintings in the complex are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.