01The seat of victory
Raktabija was the asura whose every drop of blood, falling to earth, rose as another of him. The Devi Mahatmya tells how Chamunda drank his blood before it could touch the ground, and so he was slain. The katha of Salkanpur says that after the battle the devas offered the Devi a seat here, and she sat on it victorious; so she is Vijayasan, and the people of the Malwa and Narmada villages say Bijasan. The hill is part of the Vindhya, and the Devi is called Vindhyavasini as at Vindhyachal. Many families of the region keep her as their kuldevi.
02The Banjaras’ cattle
The shrine on the hilltop came, the story goes, from a band of Banjara traders about three hundred years ago. They had camped below the hill with their pack animals, and in the night the animals vanished. Searching, an old Banjara met a young girl on the hill who threw a stone toward a spot and told him to worship there. They did, and the animals came back on their own. The Banjaras raised the first shrine at that spot. Today the climb is more than a thousand steps on a rock about 800 feet high; a road and a ropeway go up too. In both Navratris a great fair fills Salkanpur and the roads from Bhopal.
Salkanpur is about 70 km from Bhopal on the Bhopal–Nasrullaganj road, near Rehti; Budni station is about 15 km away. Climb early in the cool of the morning.
