Kalimath - (“Kali's Residence”) In Uttar Pradesh's Himalayan mountains, there is a village and a holy spot (tirtha).
Kalimath lies roughly ten kilometers from Guptakashi on a
minor tributary of the Mandakini River; the Mandakini is one of the Himalayan
tributaries that merge to form the Ganges.
Kalimath is one of the Shakti Pithas, a network of holy
locations dedicated to the Goddess, according to local legend.
Each Shakti Pitha commemorates the location where a piece of
the goddess Sati's severed body fell to earth and took on the shape of a new
goddess.
According to local legend, Kalimath is the location where
Sati's vulva landed.
It assumed the shape of the goddess Kali there, thereby
linking a highly charged female bodily part with a strong and sometimes deadly
Goddess form.
The Goddess image at the temple is a metal plate a little
more than a foot square with a little triangle carved out in the middle, an
aniconic emblem of the Goddess.
This plate is said to cover a pit—a clear sign of the
portion of Sati's corpse that is said to have fallen there—but the region
underneath it is considered so holy that peering beneath it is banned.
The notion that Kalimath is where Sati's vulva descended to
ground exemplifies the Indian holy landscape's flexibility.
A far more commonly acknowledged tradition connects this
specific body part to the Kamakhya temple in Assam.
Competing claims are widespread in the Indian holy
landscape, since individuals typically create them to increase the holiness and
status of their particular spot.
Many Hindus seem unconcerned by such apparent
inconsistencies, presumably because they believe that a single Goddess is
responsible for all of her many manifestations.
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