The Goddess Temples of Kashi

When grief-maddened Shiva carried Sati's body across the cosmos, Vishnu's discus cut it into pieces that fell to earth as Shaktipeethas — seats of the Goddess's living power. At Kashi it was her karna-kundala, ear and earring, that touched the ground beside what is now Manikarnika Ghat, and the temple raised over the spot became one of the fifty-one — in some countings fifty-two — Shaktipeethas of the subcontinent. Her guardian Bhairava here is Kala Bhairava, and Kashi Vishwanath himself, the texts say, rests close by to console the goddess in her grief and, through her, to grant relief to anyone worn down by the world.

Two images share the sanctum: a small, very old black-stone Adi Vishalakshi set slightly behind, and a larger murti placed in front of her — positioned with such care that a devotee standing at the right spot can see both faces at once, an alignment every priest here is quick to point out. The temple that stands today, with its South Indian gopuram rising over a narrow Banaras lane, was rebuilt in 1893 by the Nattukottai Nagarathar merchant community of Tamil Nadu, giving Vishalakshi a Dravidian silhouette found nowhere else on this stretch of the Ganga.

Why she matters in Kashi

Vishalakshi — "the wide-eyed one" — is counted the fifth of Kashi's Navagauris and is named first among the goddess's hundred and eight seats listed in the Devi Bhagavata. Even a small offering here, the Kashi Khand promises, returns boundless fruit; worship is held to bring both beauty (saundarya) and wealth (lakshmi) to the sincere devotee. She is one of only three sister-shrines — with Kamakshi of Kanchipuram and Meenakshi of Madurai — regarded as the great "eyed" goddesses of the subcontinent.

The Kashi Khand devotes an entire chapter to this one neighbourhood, calling it a Paramsiddhi-pada Mahapeetha — a great seat where every spiritual attainment ripens — and declaring flatly that no other seat in the city grants wealth as completely as Mahalakshmi's. The sacred tank that gives the locality its name, Lakshmi Kund, lies just below and behind the shrine; bathing there before darshan, and performing rites for one's ancestors and gifts for the needy, is prescribed to keep prosperity in a household for life. Two lesser-known goddesses named in the same chapter, Shikhi-Chandi and Mayuri, stand to the rear and at the entrance of the temple complex.

Mahalakshmi closes the sequence of Kashi's nine Navagauris, worshipped on the ninth and final day of the Vasantik (Chaitra) Navaratri. Every year from Bhadrapada Shukla Ashtami to Ashwin Krishna Ashtami, the sixteen-day Sorahiya Mela fills the lanes around the kund — a fair as well known today for its traditional hand-thrown clay pottery as for its religious rites, and for the Jiutputrika (Jivitputrika) vrata during which mothers fast for the long life of their sons.

The Padma Purana places this shrine within Anandavan, Kashi's ancient sacred forest, at a spot called the Padmamudra-Peetha — north of the Vireshwar Mahadev shrine and east of Chandreshwar. Temple tradition traces her presence here to the exile of the Pandavas: stripped of their kingdom and worn down by hardship, they came to Kashi, and on the counsel of the sage Markandeya, Yudhishthira performed a special worship of Sankata Devi, after which their fortunes began to turn. Other local accounts instead trace the shrine to Shiva's own grief after Sati's death — as with much of Kashi's older devotional geography, the layers of story have folded into one another over centuries, and both are still told at the temple today.

As Vikata-Matrika, "the fierce mother," she carries eight names in temple tradition — Sankata, Vijaya, Kamada, Duhkhaharini, Sharvani, Katyayani, Bhimanayana, and Sarvarogahara, "destroyer of every disease" — and is counted among the Matrikas who once fought beside Devi against the demons Shumbha and Nishumbha. Unusually for a Kashi goddess shrine, devotees are permitted to touch her feet directly. The present temple, with its silver-masked, self-manifest image flanked by Hanuman and Bhairava beneath an old banyan tree, was raised by the King of Baroda in the eighteenth century alongside the ghat that bears her name.