Place · Kali goddess shrine · India
Dhari Devi
The Kāli shrine on the Alaknandā near Srinagar, Uttarakhand, revered as the guardian deity of Uttarakhand and specifically of the Chota Char Dham — the pilgrimage to Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. The upper half of the image is worshipped here; the lower half is at Kalimath, forty kilometres east. The shrine sat on a rock in the river until the 2013 Kedarnath disaster.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 30.185, 78.807
Worth knowing
The upper temple was raised on stilts above its old bed in June 2013 to make way for the Alaknanda hydel project, and the flash floods that destroyed Kedarnath began that same afternoon — a coincidence that the pilgrimage carries as folklore. The image is now housed a few metres above the original rock.
Connections (4)
- Shared sacred geographyYamunotrī
The pilgrimage begins here at Yamunotri, and Dhari Devi is invoked at the foot of it as the guardian who lets the pilgrim onto the road. Her shrine sits at the Alaknandā mouth of the same Himalayan yatra circuit, and every Chota Char Dham route passes her on the way in — the Yamunotri leg is the first of the four and she is the deity said to keep the whole yatra safe. Priests at Yamunotri open the season with an offering routed to her.
- Shared sacred geographyGangotrī / Gomukh
Gangotri is the second stop of the Chota Char Dham, and Dhari Devi is its regional kavach. The image, worshipped only in its upper half at Srinagar and in its lower half at Kālīmath, is described in Skanda Purana and Kedarkhand as the presiding goddess of the entire Uttarakhand hill country — the same terrain the Ganges falls through from Gomukh onward. The pilgrimage tradition treats her worship as prior to the four dhams.
- Shared sacred geographyKedāranāth
Kedarnath is the third stop, and the folklore that tightens Dhari Devi to it is the clearest of the four: on the afternoon of 16 June 2013 the goddess's image was moved a few metres from its original rock to make way for the Alaknanda hydel project, and the flash floods that destroyed Kedarnath began that same afternoon. Whatever the cause, the pilgrimage tradition now treats the two events as inseparable.
- Shared sacred geographyBadrīnāth
Badrinath is the fourth stop, and the repository already carries the tradition that neither Char Dham list makes without her: pilgrims stopping at Srinagar for darshan of Dhari Devi before continuing to Badrī on the Alaknandā. Her shrine sits fifteen kilometres downstream on the same river and is treated in the yatra as the door that has to be opened for the road ahead to hold. This is why she is called kavach — armour — of the yatra.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Dhari Devi"; standard reference accounts of Uttarakhand pilgrimage.
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