Tripura Sundari

Tripura Sundari, at Matabari near Udaipur in the Gomati district of Tripura, is held in tradition to be the place where the right leg of Sati fell. The goddess carries the same name as her place, Tripura Sundari, the beautiful one of the three cities, and the Bhairava is Tripuresh. She is closely related to the Sri Vidya tradition, in which the goddess is worshipped as Lalita Tripurasundari, the supreme beauty and power behind the universe.

Tripura takes its name in popular understanding from the goddess, and the shrine was long associated with the royal house that ruled the region. The temple is built in a style that locals compare to a tortoise form, which is why the site is known by an additional local name, though that is a description of the hill and shrine and not a point of scripture. The area is part of the north-eastern cluster of Shakta sites alongside Kamakhya in Assam.

In Sri Vidya, Tripura Sundari is the central deity, so a peeth bearing her name carries a particular philosophical weight. This differs from the more fierce Mahavidya forms like Tara or Chinnamastika, as she is a gentle, radiant figure. Lists of fifty-one peeths agree on a Tripura site but disagree on some details of the body part, so the right leg here is one form of the tradition and should be read with that in mind.