Chhinnamasta Temple, Rajrappa

Chhinnamasta is one of the ten Mahavidyas, the fierce Tantric forms of the Great Goddess, and is depicted at Rajrappa in her most striking iconographic form: standing on a copulating couple, holding her own severed head in one hand while three jets of blood from her neck feed her own mouth and two attendant yoginis. The temple sits on a rocky hillock at the meeting point of the Damodar and Bhera (locally, Bhairavi) rivers, a confluence tradition reads as the union of masculine and feminine cosmic energies, and the site is built and worshipped in a distinctly Tantric style rather than a conventional Puranic one.

The temple’s exact founding date is not established: Rajrappa is described as a place of worship for local tribal communities, including Santals, since ancient times, but the temple’s emergence as a recognized centre of organized Chhinnamasta worship is only clearly attested from around the 18th century onward. Today it draws pilgrims from across Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, and even Nepal, and retains practices — including animal sacrifice on Tuesdays and Saturdays and during Kali Puja, and kheer offerings to the goddess — that mark it as a living Tantric shrine rather than a purely historical monument.