Chamunda Devi, Kangra

What makes this a dham and not a mandir only is the second presence. Behind the main shrine a marble stair descends to a cave-like scoop in the rock where Shiva is worshipped as Nandikeshwar, in a lingam held to be self-manifested, so that one who has bowed before the Mother goes down a few steps to bow before Mahadev. Her image is kept veiled in red cloth, and Hanuman and Bhairav guard the sanctum door.

Chamunda is not counted among the fifty-one Shakti Peethas of the Kalika Purana and the Devi Bhagavata, and makes no such claim; what it holds is a living place in the Devi-bhoomi of Kangra. It is revered as one of Himachal's five great Shakti shrines with Jwala Ji of the eternal flame, Brajeshwari at Kangra, Chintpurni and Naina Devi, and it is a station of the Nau Devi circuit that families from across the north make together.

The river is part of the worship: a sacred kund set about with images, a bathing ghat and a small shrine across the footbridge draw pilgrims to the water before darshan, and — in a usage reaching back to the oldest strand of Chamunda's worship — the last rites are still performed on this bank for the peace of the departed. The trust also keeps the Trigarat Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya, teaching Sanskrit and Vedic ritual without fee since 1972.

Below the wall of the Dhauladhar, where the Baner Khad comes down out of the mountains, stands the temple Himachal calls Shri Chamunda Nandikeshwar Dham — on the river's right bank, some fifteen kilometres from Dharamshala and about ten west of Palampur. The Kangra district administration gives it that name because it is not the Devi's house alone: Shakti and Shiva are worshipped here together, the Mother in the sanctum, Mahadev in the rock behind her.

Her name comes from the Devi Mahatmya. In the battle told there, Ambika — Kaushiki — brought forth from her brow a dark and blazing form who overcame the asura commanders Chanda and Munda; and the Devi, receiving their heads, gave her the name the world has used ever since. The hills tell that victory in their own land: the Mother cast the two down from the snow-line above this valley, and one of the fallen boulders is still shown above the Shiva shrine by the river.

That snow-line holds the older shrine — Aadi Himani Chamunda, the first abode, about 3,185 metres up in the Dhauladhar. Some four centuries ago — the district administration places it in the sixteenth century — a raja and his purohit prayed for the Mother's leave to bring her worship down to her people. She consented in the priest's dream and named the ground to dig. The ancient image found there would not be lifted by the raja's men; she told the priest they had handled it as a common stone, and, bathed and freshly clothed, he raised alone what a crowd could not. It is the image in the sanctum today.

The building belongs to the hills and not to the plains: a Himachali temple of dressed stone and timber under sloping slate, carved woodwork about its openings and whitewashed walls around a paved courtyard. There is no soaring shikhara and no great carved gateway; what the eye is given instead is the Dhauladhar rising behind, the Baner Khad running below and the fields of Dadh across the water.

The plan is simple and layered — the sanctum with its veiled image and its two guardians, the marble stair descending to the Nandikeshwar cave, the kund with its sculptures, and the ghat and footbridge over the khad.