Naina Devi Temple (Bilaspur)

Perched on a ridge above Gobind Sagar — the reservoir formed when the Bhakra Dam was built on the Sutlej in the mid-20th century — Naina Devi is one of the most visited Shakti Peethas in Himachal Pradesh, identified in tradition as the spot where the right eye (“naina”) of the goddess Sati fell after Vishnu cut apart her body to end Shiva’s grief-stricken wandering with her corpse. The temple is also known as Mahishapeeth, a name recalling the goddess’s role as slayer of the buffalo-demon Mahishasura. Local tradition credits the temple’s founding to a Gurjar cowherd boy who noticed a white cow inexplicably releasing its milk onto a particular stone; a subsequent vision led him to Raja Bir Chand, who built a shrine on the spot and named it for the goddess’s eye. No confirmed date survives for either Bir Chand’s reign or the original construction, though a ruler of the same name, Raja Bir Chand of the Chandel Rajput line, is separately documented in dynastic tradition as the founder of the neighboring Kahlur (later Bilaspur) princely state, reigning around 697-730 CE; no source consulted ties this specific ruler to the temple legend, so the two are noted here only as a possible, unconfirmed connection rather than a settled identification.

The hilltop site draws especially heavy crowds during the Sawan (monsoon) month and around Navratri, a popularity that turned tragic on 3 August 2008, when a stampede — triggered by some combination of a broken guard railing, crowd panic, and rumor, according to conflicting accounts — killed at least 123 devotees, including many children, among roughly 3,000 pilgrims present that day. The temple remains an active and heavily visited pilgrimage site today, now reached by road or, for many pilgrims, by a cable car built to ease the climb from the base near the lake.