Sita Samahit Sthal

About

Sita Samahit Sthal, also known simply as Sitamarhi, rests between the holy cities of Prayagraj and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, near National Highway 2 and reached from the railway station at Jangiganj. It has long been one of the cherished pilgrim destinations of the eastern, or Poorvanchal, stretch of the state.

The sanctity of the place rests upon a tender episode at the close of the Ramayana. Tradition holds that after years of dwelling in the forest hermitage of the sage Valmiki, who composed the great epic, Mata Sita came to this very ground and asked her mother, the earth, to receive her once more into her embrace. The earth opened, and Sita returned to it in dignity, leaving behind her twin sons Lava and Kusha to be reclaimed by their father, Sri Rama.

The legend joins this site to the Ashvamedha yajna performed by Sri Rama after his return to Ayodhya. As the sacrificial horse roamed the kingdoms it came into the forest near present-day Baripur in Bhadohi, where Lava and Kusha, raised in Valmiki's hermitage, halted it. In the great battle that followed they overcame Lakshmana, Bharata, Shatrughna and even bound the mighty Hanuman, until Sri Rama arrived and the family was reunited.

The Temple precinct preserves the memory of that meeting and parting, and the site is visited by devotees who come to honour Mata Sita and her sons within the very forest in which the epic itself was first composed.

History

Tradition holds that after years in the forest hermitage of the sage Valmiki, Maa Sita came to this riverside ground on the Ganga and asked Her mother, the earth, to receive Her once more. The earth opened and She returned to it, leaving behind Her twin sons Lava and Kusha, whom Sri Rama had come to reclaim after the sacrificial horse of his Ashvamedha yajna was seized in the nearby forest of Baripur. The village that grew around the site, known today as Sitamarhi or Sitamarhi Bankat, lies in Bhadohi district on the old road between Prayagraj and Varanasi.

Significance

Sita Samahit Sthal occupies a singular place in Ramayana devotion, marking what tradition remembers as Maa Sita's final return to the earth that bore Her. Pilgrims travelling the Prayagraj to Varanasi road turn aside to this bend of the Ganga, where a 110-foot statue of Lord Hanuman now watches over the ghat below.