Shivrinarayan (Sheorinarayan) Temple

01Shabari’s berries

Valmiki tells how the aged tapasvini Shabari waited years for Rama in her hermitage and, when he came, worshipped him with fruits she had gathered; the later Rama-kathas add that she tasted each berry first to give him only the sweet ones, and Rama ate them gladly. Chhattisgarh, which holds that Rama spent much of his exile in its forests of Dandakaranya, places Shabari here, and the town is named for her and Narayan together. A krishna-vat, a banyan with cup-shaped leaves, grows in the temple court.

02The Magh Purnima fair

The Narayan temple is built in the Kalachuri manner of the 12th century, on a high plinth with a tall spire, and several other old shrines stand round it, among them the Keshavnarayan temple. Chhattisgarh’s tradition says that on Magh Purnima Bhagwan Jagannath of Puri comes here himself, and the fair that day, with a dip at the confluence, is the largest in the region. Old photographs of the temple were taken by the survey teams of the late 19th century.

The life of this place