Shri Shail Shakti Peeth (Sylhet)

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. The tantric text says the neck fell at Shrihatta, the old name of Sylhet. Bengali tradition tells how the hidden peeth came to light. Long ago, while a road was being built here, workers struck a black stone that would not move. When a worker broke it with an iron bar, a little girl is said to have come out of the nearby forest, scolded him and vanished. That night Maa Mahalakshmi appeared in a dream to Devi Prasad Das, who had hired the workers, and asked him to begin her daily worship at the spot. He gathered bricks for a temple, but the next night the Devi said she wished to be worshipped in the open, not closed in. So he built only a low wall around the stone, and his descendants still look after the shrine. The Bhairav was found later: the sadhak Brahmananda Giri sensed that Shiv ji lay within a mound to the west. After his passing, his disciple Birajanath Nyayavagish and two students dreamt the same dream on one night, dug at the spot and found a Shivling.