01The neck at Shri Shail
The Peetha Nirnaya Tantra says Sati’s neck, griva, fell at Shri Shail, where the Devi is Mahalakshmi and the Bhairava Shambaranand. Bengal places that Shri Shail at Joinpur in Sylhet, on a low hill south of the Surma; the full name of the shrine is Shri Shri Mahalakshmi Bhairabi Griba Maha Peetha. Other traditions read Shri Shail as Srisailam on the Krishna in Andhra, where Bhramaramba sits beside Mallikarjuna and is counted among the eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas. Shakti Peetha lists differ, and Sylhet holds to its own reading. The Shakti Peetha stotra attributed to Adi Shankaracharya is also cited by the temple for its claim.
02The open sanctum
The inner sanctum is left without a roof, because the Devi, the temple says, wishes to be worshipped under the open sky. Beside it are a Shiva shrine and the Hatkeshwar temple on the tila, the hillock. In the British period the land belonged to the zamindar Devi Prasad Das Munshi; parts of it were later taken over, and the temple went to law to recover them, as far as the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. The two great festivals are the three days of Mahalakshmi Bhairavi Puja in Chaitra Navaratri and the autumn Durga Puja, when Hindus of Sylhet division fill the hill.
Joinpur is about 5 km from Sylhet city, reached by road across the Surma bridges. Sylhet has direct flights and trains from Dhaka.
