Durga Mandir, Varanasi

About

Standing on Sankat Mochan Road in the ancient city of Varanasi, the Durga Mandir is among the most cherished places of worship in this holy city. The Temple honours Maa Durgā, the goddess of strength and power, whose central icon is believed, in the living tradition of the place, to have manifested of its own accord rather than having been fashioned by human hands.

The structure rises in the North Indian Nāgara style, its exterior washed in deep red and ochre, colours chosen to mirror the hues of the presiding deity's form. The interior shelters intricately engraved stones, and the shikhara crowning the shrine is composed of many smaller sikhara towers clustered together, giving the Temple a distinctive layered silhouette against the Varanasi sky.

Adjacent to the main shrine lies a kund, a rectangular sacred tank, that once flowed in direct connection with the waters of the River Gaṅgā. The Temple stands roughly two hundred and fifty metres north of the Tulsi Manas Mandir and seven hundred metres from Sankat Mochan, placing it within the dense constellation of sacred sites that give Varanasi its singular spiritual character.

History

The Temple's own tradition traces its founding to a battle told in the Devi-Bhagavata Purana: when the king of Kashi married his daughter Sashikala in secret to the forest prince Sudarshana, the rejected suitors marched on Varanasi in anger, and Sudarshana turned in prayer to Maa Durga, who descended on Her lion and won the war in the city's defence. In gratitude, the king asked Her to protect Varanasi for all time, and devotees understand the Temple's founding as flowing from that promise. Its documented history begins in the eighteenth century, when Rani Bhabani, the Bengali Maharani of Natore, raised the shrine that stands beside the Durga Kund today.

Significance

Standing in Varanasi, among the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, Durga Mandir draws pilgrims who come to seek strength and protection from Maa Durga at a site devotees hold to be self-manifested rather than made. Its shikhara, built up from many smaller towers washed in the deep red long associated with Maa Durga, has also lent the Temple its popular nickname, the Monkey Temple, for the troops of langurs that live in the surrounding trees.

Architecture

North Indian Nagara style; a clustered shikhara built up from many smaller towers