Place · Shakta pitha & tantric seat · India
Tārāpīṭh
Also known as Birbhum, Tara at Tarapith, Tara at Tarapith, Birbhum
The Shakta Pitha and cremation-ground tantric centre at Tarapith in Birbhum district, West Bengal, 230 kilometres from Kolkata, where the goddess Tara is worshipped — one of the ten Mahavidyas and one of the great tantric goddess forms. The temple is said to be where Sati's third eye fell. The cremation ghat (shmashan) beside the Dwarka river is one of the few in Bengal where tantric sadhakas still live in continuous practice. Bamakhyapa (1837-1911), the great 19th-century Tarapith tantric, is buried in the complex. With Kamakhya in Assam, Tarapith is one of the two great tantric centres of eastern India; its iconography of the goddess suckling Shiva is distinctive.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.110, 87.790
Connections (1)
- Shared site withKāmākhyā
Tarapith in Birbhum and Kamakhya in Assam are the two great tantric seats of the east, and they are alike in ways that make respectable Hinduism uncomfortable: cremation-ground practice, animal sacrifice, a goddess worshipped in forms that are not domesticated. Bamakhepa at Tarapith in the nineteenth century and the Kamakhya priesthood both kept lines that the reform movements tried hard to suppress, and both shrines are busier now than they have ever been.
Sources
Hindu pilgrimage sites in India — Wikipedia
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