The Shakti Peethas

Shiva picked up Sati’s body and began to walk. He did not have a destination. He simply did not want to put her down. He walked across the worlds carrying her — Kailash to the southern lands, the southern lands to the western shores, back to the north — in grief, refusing to stop.

The trouble was that he was not just grieving. He was Shiva. As long as he carried Sati and refused to settle, the worlds could not return to normal. The seasons hesitated. The sun moved oddly. The other gods watched with growing alarm.

They went to Vishnu.

“You have to do something,” they said. “He cannot be reasoned with. He will carry her forever. The worlds will fail if he does not stop.”

Vishnu considered. He could not take Sati from Shiva — Shiva would never let her go. But there might be another way.

Vishnu followed Shiva at a distance, unseen. As Shiva walked, Vishnu sent his discus — the Sudarshana — to cut the body of Sati, gently, piece by piece. Not to destroy her — Vishnu did this with great care, the Purana is clear — but so that Shiva’s burden grew smaller, and his grief, with the body itself diminishing in his arms, could begin to settle.

The pieces fell as Shiva walked.

They fell across the whole of the land — what is now India, parts of Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, even reaching Tibet. Each place where a piece of Sati fell became, from that day, a Shakti Peetha — a “seat of the goddess.” There are said to be 51 of them, each sanctified by a different part of the body that came down there.

A few of the more famous ones:

• Kamakhya in Assam — where her womb fell. The temple is one of the most important Shakta sites in India.
• Kalighat in Bengal (in the city of Kolkata) — where her toes fell. The city’s name comes from Kali-ghat.
• Tarapith in Bengal — where her third eye fell.
• Vindhyavasini — where part of her face fell.
• Hinglaj in Balochistan, modern Pakistan — where her head is said to have come down. The most westerly of the Peethas.
• Manasa at Lake Mansarovar — where her right palm fell.
• Jwala in Himachal — where her tongue fell, kept marked by an eternal flame that has been burning since the Purana itself was composed.

When the body was finally fully gone, Shiva at last stopped walking. He sat down. He went into a deep meditation that lasted what the Purana calls “a thousand years of the gods” — long beyond any human reckoning. The worlds returned to their normal turning. The seasons came back into order.

But the goddess had not ended. She had only ended in that body. Sati would be reborn. The mountain itself — Himavat, the king of the Himalayas — would pray to her, and she would come to him as his daughter. Her new name would be Parvati, “she who is of the mountain.”

And Shiva — sitting on his mountain in a meditation no one could break — would, in time, be approached again. The goddess does not give up on the ascetic. He had married her once when she was Sati. He would have to be married to her again when she came as Parvati.

That is the next story.