Tarapith

Tarapith is one of the most unusual pilgrimage sites in India — a functioning cremation ground (smashan) that is also a major goddess temple. Located in Birbhum district on the Dwarka river, the site is where Sati's third eye (or eye socket) is believed to have fallen. The name Tarapith means the seat of Tara — the second of the ten Mahavidyas and the tantric form of the goddess associated with liberation through the most transgressive means.

The temple complex sits at the edge of a large cremation ground where fires burn continuously. Tantric sadhus and Aghoris perform rituals among the burning pyres at night. The great 18th-century Tantric saint Bamakhyapa (Bamdev) attained siddhi here, and his name is inseparable from the place. The idol of Tara — a three-eyed, fierce goddess nursing the infant Shiva — is housed in a relatively modest brick temple. The amalgam of the sacred and the cremation-ground impurity makes Tarapith the paradigmatic site of left-handed Tantric practice in Bengal.

Sati's third eye fell here, and the resultant power of sight — of seeing through illusion — gave the goddess her name Tara (the one who enables crossing over, the star that guides). In the Shiva Purana variant, it was the eyeball (netra) that fell. The Shiva-companion at this site is Chandrachur, the moon-crested one. The myth of Bamakhyapa recounts that he was suckled by the goddess Tara herself in the form of a divine woman — confirming the site's special connection to the infant Shiva being suckled.