Place · Durga temple · India
Shila Devi, Jaipur
Also known as Amber Palace, Jaipur, Shila Devi, Shila Devi (Kali), Shila Devi — Amber Palace
The Shila Devi temple at Amber Fort near Jaipur, Rajasthan — the kuladevi (clan goddess) of the Kachhwaha Rajput royal house of Amber-Jaipur. The deity Shila Devi (a black-stone image of Durga) is said to have been brought from Jessore in Bengal in 1600 by Raja Man Singh I of Amber (ruled 1589-1614), Akbar's general and brother-in-law. Man Singh fought the 1575 Battle of Haldighati against Maharana Pratap and the subsequent Bengal campaigns under Akbar; the goddess was taken from Jessore after Man Singh's 1600-1605 Bengal command. The Shila Devi temple inside Amber Fort has been in continuous worship since 1604. The temple's installation is one of the clearest documented cases of Rajput imperial religion drawing on conquered territory's deities. The annual Chaitra Navratri festival is one of Rajasthan's major pilgrimages.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.985, 75.851
Connections (1)
- Site withinJaipur
Shila Devi, Jaipur sits inside Jaipur 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.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Shila Devi”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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