One of the nine Shiwalik goddesses, Naina Devi is the presiding deity of the Naina Devi temple in the Shiwalik Hills of Himachal Pradesh.
Naina Devi's tem pel is situated on a mountainside near the
Punjabi border.
It's roughly a mile from Nangal hamlet and nine miles from
Anandpur Sahib, a well-known Sikh pilgrimage site.
The busiest period for pilgrimage traffic is on the eighth
day of each half of the lunar month of Shravan, as well as the first nine days
of the month of Ashvin, when the Navaratri festival takes place.
Naina Devi is one of the Shakti Pithas, a network of holy
shrines to the Goddess that stretches throughout the subcontinent, according to
the temple's founding story.
Each Shakti Pitha commemorates the location where a bodily
part of the dismembered goddess Sati fell to earth and took on the shape of
another goddess; Naina Devi was Sati's eyes (naina).
The pictures of Naina Devi's temple, like those of many
other Shiwalik goddesses, are self-manifested (svayambhu images) outcropping of
stone.
In another version of the narrative, the pictures were found
by a herdsman called Naina, who followed the Goddess's instruction to construct
a temple for her.
Kathleen Erndl, Victory to Victory, is a good source of
knowledge.
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