Place · Koli goddess temple · India
Mumbadevi, Mumbai
Also known as Mumbadevi, Mumbadevi — Mumbai, Mumbai
The 15-century Mumbadevi temple at Bhuleshwar in central Mumbai — the shrine of the Koli fisherfolk goddess Mumba (a form of Durga-Parvati), from whose name the city of Mumbai (and the earlier Portuguese 'Bombaim' / British 'Bombay') is derived. The temple was originally located at Bori Bunder (where the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus now stands) and was relocated to Bhuleshwar in 1737 when the British East India Company reclaimed the Bori Bunder area for the Bombay Castle extension. The deity Mumbadevi is the kuladevi of the Koli (traditional Mumbai fishing community) and is credited as the eighteenth-century Portuguese-British Bombay's founding deity. The temple's foundation goes back to the pre-Portuguese period. The temple's annual September Navaratri festival draws over 100,000 Koli and non-Koli pilgrims.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered — The place is documented; its associated historical or cultural record and its named tradition are distinct layers.
- Location
- 18.949, 72.832
Connections (2)
- Mumbai templesSiddhivinayak, Mumbai
Mumbadevi in the old Bhuleshwar bazaar is the Koli fisherfolk goddess the city is named after, and Siddhivinayak at Prabhadevi, endowed by Deubai Patil in 1801, is now the most thronged shrine in Mumbai — queues of several hours, and a well-known clientele from the film industry and politics. The oldest and the busiest, and the traffic between them is a fair sample of what the city has become.
- Site withinMumbai
Mumbadevi, Mumbai sits inside Mumbai and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Mumbai”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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