Sharika Devi

Sharika Devi is the goddess of Hari Parbat, the hill that rises from the middle of Srinagar, and in Kashmiri Pandit tradition she is the presiding deity of the city itself. She is conceived as an eighteen-armed form of the great goddess, but at her shrine on the western slope of the hill she is worshipped not through an image but through a shri chakra, the goddess's diagram, held to be self-manifest on the face of a sacred rock. From this she is also called Chakreshwari, the lady of the chakra.

The tradition

The hill and the goddess share a founding legend. A demon of the waters oppressed the valley, and the goddess, taking the form of a sharika, a myna, carried a pebble in her beak and dropped it upon him; the pebble grew into the hill, Hari Parbat, pinning the demon beneath. The goddess then remained on the hill she had made. Kashmiri Shakta tradition, with its deep Tantric inheritance, treats the rock chakra as a living seat of the goddess, and generations of the valley's devotees have made the circuit of the hill as a rite in itself.

The hill

Hari Parbat carries more than one sanctity: a Mughal-era fort crowns it, the wall at its base was begun under Akbar, and the hill's skirts hold, besides the Sharika shrine, the shrine of the Sufi saint Makhdoom Sahib and a historic gurdwara. For Kashmiri Pandits, Sharika's days are kept with offerings at the rock, and the goddess's festival, remembered as her birthday, remains one of the community's cherished observances, in the valley and in exile alike.