Janasthan Shakti Peeth (Nashik)

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 Janasthan her chin is believed to have fallen, with the Devi Bhramari and the Bhairav Vikritaksh. Bharatkosh tells that each of Nashik's nine small hills had a seat of Maa Durga, and on one of them was an old, self-manifested murti of Bhadrakali. To keep it safe in troubled times the murti was moved, and in 1790 Sardar Ganpatrao Patwardhan Dikshit built the present temple, called 'Devi ka Math'. It was given two upper storeys but no kalash or shikhar, so from outside it looks like a house. The temple runs a traditional school of Vedic learning; its students gather madhukari, alms of food from nearby homes, which is offered to the Devi, and they help with her worship three times a day. The other claimant, Saptashrungi, is the eighteen-armed Devi of the seven peaks, reached by about 500 steps; in Maharashtra she is honoured as the 'half' peeth among the state's three and a half Shakti Peeths.