Nalhati (Nalhateswari)

The origin of every Shakti Peetha is the story of Sati and Daksha. Daksha, the great progenitor, held a sacrifice and did not invite his daughter Sati and her husband Shiva, or invited them only to insult Shiva before the assembled gods. Sati, unable to bear the dishonour of her lord, cast off her body in the sacrificial fire, or by her own yogic power. When Shiva learned of it he was consumed with grief and rage; he took up her body and began the tandava, the dance of destruction, carrying her corpse across the worlds, and the shaking of his dance threatened to unmake creation.

To end the danger and to release Shiva from his grief, Vishnu followed with his Sudarshana chakra and cut away the body of Sati piece by piece as Shiva carried it, so that the parts fell to earth across the land. Each place where a part of the goddess fell became a Shakti Peetha, a seat where the goddess is present in the ground, worshipped as a particular Shakti and guarded by a particular form of Shiva as her Bhairava.

At Nalhati, in the Birbhum country of Bengal, the traditional lists hold that the nala of Sati fell, the throat-pipe or vocal tube, the channel of her voice, and the goddess dwells here as Nalhateswari, with the Bhairava Yogesh. The very name of the town is read from this fall, from nala, the tube of the throat, so that the place carries in its name the part of the goddess that came to rest here. As with all the peethas, the lists vary in their attributions, some naming the throat and others the voice-box or a nearby part, but the sanctity of the goddess at Nalhati is held to reach back to the falling of the body itself, and the seat is counted among the ancient Devi shrines of the Rarh country, close to the Shakta shrines of Tarapith.

Nalhati is one of the Shakti Peethas, the seats of the goddess linked by the myth of the fallen body of Sati, located at the town of Nalhati in the Birbhum district of West Bengal. The traditional lists hold that the nala of Sati, the throat-pipe or vocal tube, fell here, and the goddess dwells as Nalhateswari, with the Bhairava Yogesh. The very name of the town is read from this fall, from nala, the tube of the throat.

Birbhum is among the great homes of goddess worship in Bengal, the country of the celebrated Shakta and Tantric shrines of Tarapith, and the worship of the goddess at Nalhati stands within this dense sacred landscape of the Rarh. The Nalhateswari temple, set on a small hillock above the town, has been rebuilt across the periods on a site whose sanctity the tradition traces to the falling of the throat of Sati, so that the goddess of the Birbhum countryside is woven into the pan-Indian network of the Shakti Peethas.

As a Shakta shrine of Bengal, Nalhati stands within the rich goddess tradition of the region, its worship following the Bengal Shakta manner, with red flowers, sindoor and bhog, and its calendar marked by the great goddess festivals. The peetha's attributions, like those of all the Shakti Peethas, vary between the traditional lists, some naming the throat and others the voice-box, but its standing as an ancient seat of the goddess in Birbhum is secure in the tradition.

Nalhati remains a living Shakta shrine, drawing devotees to the goddess Nalhateswari and pilgrims of the Shakti Peetha tradition who come to the seat where the throat of Sati is held to have fallen, often combining the visit with nearby Tarapith. It joins the ancient sanctity of the Rarh country to the deeper antiquity of the goddess, a place where the Devi has been worshipped, the tradition holds, since the throat-tube of Sati came to earth here.