Place · Shakti Peetha temple · India
Naina Devi, Bilaspur
Also known as Bilaspur, Naina Devi
The Naina Devi temple at Naina Devi in Bilaspur district, Himachal Pradesh — one of the 51 Maha Shakti Pithas said to hold Sati's eyes (naina), overlooking the Govind Sagar reservoir on the Sutlej river. The temple sits on an 1,100-metre hilltop with 400 steps to the summit. The 1783 Battle of Naina Devi saw Guru Gobind Singh's Khalsa forces defeat the Hill Rajas on the Bilaspur plateau. The temple is one of the five Shakti Peethas of the Punjab-Himachal pilgrimage circuit. The annual Shravan Ashtami festival (August) draws over 200,000 pilgrims. The 2008 Naina Devi stampede on 3 August 2008 killed 162 pilgrims in a railing collapse during the Shravan festival. The temple is managed by the Himachal Pradesh Devasthan Department and the Naina Devi Trust.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 31.303, 76.533
Connections (4)
- PilgrimageChintpurni Devi, Una
Chintpurni and Naina Devī are the Una and Bilaspur halts, the circuit's turn from the Beas country toward the Sutlej. Both are hilltop shrines above reservoirs made in the twentieth century, so the views the pilgrims describe are younger than the temples by nine hundred years. Both are also on the Nau Devi bus circuit's fixed overnight halts, so the pilgrimage's modern shape is set by where a coach can park rather than by the older foot roads.
- Shared sacred geographyPaonta Sahib, Sirmaur
Guru Gobind Singh is held to have performed a havan at Naina Devī before founding the Khalsa at Anandpur in 1699, and Paonta Sāhib is the other Shivalik seat of his years in the hills. The goddess shrines and the Guru's forts occupy the same foothill country and the same decades.
- PilgrimageChamunda Nandikeshwar, Palampur
Chāmundā and Naina Devī mark the circuit's turn from the Beas country toward the Sutlej, about a hundred and thirty kilometres apart. Naina Devī now overlooks the Gobind Sagar, so the view pilgrims describe from it is younger than the temple by nine hundred years. The Śrāvan fair at Naina Devī in 2008 ended in a crowd crush that killed a hundred and forty-six people, which is the scale these hill shrines now handle.
- PilgrimageMansa Devi, Panchkula
Naina Devī on the Sutlej ridge and Mansā Devī at Panchkula are the circuit's plainsward shrines, closest to the Punjab and Haryana towns and therefore the most heavily used. Most Nau Devi journeys start or finish at Mansā Devī, being the first hill a bus from Chandigarh reaches. Mansā Devī's two temples, a hundred metres apart, were built by the Mani Majra raja in 1815 and by Patiala afterwards, and are administered by a single shrine board today.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Bilaspur”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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