01Palms and soles
The Peetha Nirnaya Tantra names Yashor as the place where the palms of Sati’s hands and the soles of her feet fell. The Devi is Yashoreshwari, and her Bhairava is Chanda, whose triangular shrine stands nearby. What is worshipped is a stone shaped like a human palm. The temple account says Pratapaditya’s general was led to the buried stone by a ray of light rising from the forest. Bengal tradition says a Brahmin first raised a temple here and that later kings renewed it; the dates given for these are not certain. Shakti Peetha lists differ in many places, but all the Bengali lists keep Yashor.
02Pratapaditya’s capital
Pratapaditya, one of the Baro-Bhuiyan chiefs of Bengal, ruled Jessore from Dhumghat and then from Ishwaripur, which was his capital from about 1590 to 1610. He rebuilt the Devi’s temple near his palace and refused to submit to the Mughal governors of Bengal until their army defeated him; Bengal remembers that he died at Varanasi while being taken as a captive to Delhi. With the king gone, Ishwaripur fell back into forest, worship stopped, and for a time robbers used the ruins. Villagers from around later revived the puja, and a village grew up round the temple again. Kali Puja and Durga Puja are the great days.
03The crown
The temple was partly destroyed in 1971, during the Liberation War, and repaired later. On 27 March 2021 the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, came to Ishwaripur, offered worship and gave the Devi a crown of silver plated with gold, made by hand. In October 2024 that crown was stolen from the sanctum in the afternoon, after the priest had left for the day; the theft was reported by The Daily Star in Dhaka on 10 October 2024, and India asked Bangladesh to investigate and recover it. Worship carries on as before, and Kali Puja night still brings the largest crowds of the year.
The life of this place
- c. 1590–1610Ishwaripur is Pratapaditya’s capital, and he rebuilds the Devi’s temple near his palace.
- 1971The temple is partly destroyed during the Liberation War.
- 27 March 2021Prime Minister Narendra Modi worships here and offers a gold-plated silver crown to the Devi.
- October 2024The crown is stolen from the sanctum.
Ishwaripur is in Shyamnagar upazila, about 60 km south of Satkhira town and close to the Sundarbans. Many pilgrims combine it with the Sundarbans boats from Munshiganj.
