The Sakta Pithas

Description

Foreword:- The Sakta Pithas by Dr. D. C. Sircar, which is limited and precise in scope but has a wide appeal, brings honour to the young historian of Calcutta. Its basis is a critical edition of the Pithanimaya or Mahapilhanirapana which is a short treatise of the late period describing the fiftyone pilgrim spots associated with the Mother Goddess under some of her various names. Each one of the pithas is mentioned along with a particular form of the Goddess and that of Siva associated with it. The said text passes as a chapter of the Tantracüdamani and resembles some others, so that a plausible edition, based on six manuscripts and four source materials which Dr. Sircar’s diligence has succeeded in grouping together, was philologically realisable. The editor adds a reconstructed text, based mainly on a Bengali version, and furnishes other useful matters in appendices, one of them containing an index of the pithas with necessary identifications of the localities.