Kireeteshwari

Kireeteshwari, at Kiritkona near Murshidabad in West Bengal, is the peeth associated with the crown of Sati, called the kireet. The goddess here is Mukteshwari, also known as Vimla, and the Bhairava is Samvarta. The name of the shrine and the village both echo the idea of the crown, a regal ornament, which the tradition sees as the part that came to rest in this place after the division of the body.

Murshidabad was a capital in the later medieval and Nawabi period, and the area has a layered history of Hindu and Muslim culture. The shrine is described in tradition as very old, and a stone tied to the crown is the focus of devotion, rather than a carved image of the goddess. Scholars note that older temples in the region were rebuilt after floods and changes of the river course, so the building seen today is not the original structure, a point worth keeping in mind when reading older descriptions.

Vimla is also the name of the goddess at the Puri Jagannath complex, so this peeth shares a Devi name with the Odisha peeth. That kind of repetition is common in the lists, where the same name may appear for different places. The Tantra Chudamani and the Pithanirnaya both treat the crown as an important part, but the attribution of the specific village varies, and the Daksha yajna narrative is the one element that remains constant.