हिंदीOn this day
Standing

Adyapeath, Dakshineswar

A temple and seva centre near Dakshineswar built for Adya Ma, whose small murti Sri Annada Thakur found, by his own account guided by a dream, in a pond of Kolkata’s Eden Gardens in 1915.

Built: 20th century, Dakshineswar Ramakrishna Sangha, founded by Sri Annada ThakurWhere: West Bengal (North 24 Parganas district)Deity: Adya Ma (Kali), with Radha-Krishna above and Sri Ramakrishna below22.66° N, 88.36° E
  1. 1915
  2. 1928
Photo: Yann (talk) · Public domain

01The murti from Eden Gardens

Annada Charan Bhattacharya, a Kolkata Ayurvedic physician, said that Sri Ramakrishna appeared to him in a dream and told him where a murti of the Devi lay. In 1915 he found it in the water at Eden Gardens. The Devi asked, he wrote, not to be kept in a temple then but to be immersed after worship, and she gave him the Adya Stotram. Annada Thakur founded the Dakshineswar Ramakrishna Sangha, and after his death in 1928 his followers built the Adyapeath near the Dakshineswar Kali temple.

02Three tiers of worship

The main temple holds the three in a vertical line: Radha-Krishna at the top, Adya Ma in the middle and Sri Ramakrishna at the base, showing love, power and the guru as one path. Around it the Sangha runs schools, orphanages for boys and girls, a home for the aged and free kitchens, and the Adya Stotram is sung at the evening aarti.

The life of this place

  1. 1915Sri Annada Thakur finds the murti of Adya Ma at Eden Gardens.
  2. 1928Annada Thakur passes away; his disciples carry on the work of the Sangha.
Visiting

About 2 km from the Dakshineswar Kali temple; pilgrims usually combine the two.

Nearby

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Company rule and the war of 1857

Dakshineswar Kali Temple

The navaratna temple of Kali on the Hooghly that Rani Rashmoni built, where Sri Ramakrishna served as priest and lived for some thirty years. Here Narendranath Datta, later Swami Vivekananda, came to him.

Belur MathStanding
Renaissance and the struggle for Swaraj

Belur Math

The headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission on the west bank of the Ganga at Howrah, founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1898. He left his body here on 4 July 1902.

Jagannath Temple, Mahesh (Serampore)Rebuilt
Sultanates, Vijayanagara and the kingdoms that stood

Jagannath Temple, Mahesh (Serampore)

The Jagannath temple on the Hooghly at Mahesh, whose Rath Yatra has been held, by the temple’s reckoning, since 1396, the oldest in Bengal and second only to Puri in age. Shri Chaitanya called the place Nava Nilachal, the new Puri.

Thanthania Kalibari, KolkataStanding
The Mughal era and the resistance

Thanthania Kalibari, Kolkata

One of the oldest Kali temples of Kolkata, on Bidhan Sarani in the College Street quarter, older than the city itself in its present form. Sri Ramakrishna came here and sang to Maa Siddheshwari.