Bahula Devi Shakti Peetha, Ketugram

01The left arm

When Bhagwan Vishnu’s chakra divided the body of Sati that Mahadev carried in grief, the pieces fell across Bharat, and each place became a peetha with a Devi and a Bhairava to guard her. The Shakti Peetha Stotram of the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra gives Ketugram in one line: at Bahula, the left arm, and the Devi is called Bahula. Binoy Ghosh, writing on the culture of West Bengal, records a village belief that it was the left foot. Shakti Peetha lists differ in such details, and the village keeps the arm.

02Bahula and her Bhairava

The stone murti of Bahula is four-armed and old; one arm is broken. Shri Ganesh, eight-armed, stands on her right and Devi Lakshmi on her left, with Kartikeya in the same shrine; the village says Raja Chandraketu set the images here. Bhiruk, the Bhairava, is not in this temple. He is worshipped as Bhutnath at Srikhanda, a short way off. Ketugram has a second Devi seat, the Maraghat Mahapeeth by the Ishani, where the Devi is worshipped in a ghat, a water pot, with no murti; it is counted as another peetha, Bahulakshi, outside the 51.