Hidimba Devi

Hidimba Devi, in the Mahābhārata a rakshasi of the forest, is worshipped at Manali in the Kullu valley of Himachal Pradesh as a goddess. In the epic she meets the Pandavas during their forest exile, marries Bhīma after he kills her demon brother Hidimba, and bears the hero Ghatotkacha. The hills read the story differently from the plains: in Kullu, Hidimba is no episode but a sovereign local goddess, protectress of the valley and, in tradition, grandmother-deity and patroness of the Kullu royal house.

The shrine

Her temple stands in a deodar grove at Dhungri, above Manali, and is among the best-known examples of the hill pagoda style: a timber tower of receding wooden roofs rising over a shrine built around natural rock, with a richly carved doorway. An inscription dates its construction to 1553, under Raja Bahadur Singh of Kullu. There is no image in the ordinary sense; the sanctum encloses the rock itself, on which the goddess is worshipped. A short walk away stands a small shrine to her son Ghatotkacha.

Worship

Hidimba receives the devotion due a valley's guardian: local festivals at her grove, first honours in the ritual order of Kullu's many village gods, and a role in the great Dussehra assembly of the valley's deities. A spring fair at Dhungri gathers the goddess's own celebrations. Devotees hold that the rakshasi of the epic won her divinity through austerity in these forests, and the grove around her temple is treated as her own ground, old deodars included.