Kiriteswari Temple, Kiritkona

01Not a limb but a crown

Most peethas mark a part of Sati’s body. Kiritkona marks an ornament: the kirita, the crown she wore. The Stotram calls the Devi here Bhuvaneshi and Vimala, and the Bhairava Samvarta. Locals call her Mahishamardini. The old shrine faces south, and the Devi in it is kept always covered in a red sari. The newer temple faces east and has no image; the Devi’s face is painted on a vedi, a raised altar. The Bhairava’s stone sits in meditation. A Tuesday mela in the month of Paush draws the villages of the Bhagirathi bank.

02Gupta Math

In the time of the Nawabs, when Murshidabad was the capital of Bengal, the place was known as Bhavanir Than and as Gupta Math, the hidden math where sadhakas sat in meditation. Darpanarayan of the kanungo family that later held Lalgola cleared the forest round it, rebuilt the shrine, raised Shiva temples and dug the Kalisagar tank. Ramakrishna Rai, adopted son of Rani Bhavani of Natore, did his sadhana here, and his panchamundi asana is still shown. David McCutchion, who surveyed Bengal’s temples, describes the main shrine as a small char-chala with an ek-bangla porch. Nikhilnath Roy wrote of the place in Murshidabad Kahini in 1897.

The life of this place