Ugratara Sthan Temple

In Mahishi village of Bihar’s Saharsa district, in the Mithila cultural region, Ugratara Sthan is dedicated to Ugratara, a fierce form of the goddess Tara — one of the ten Mahavidyas and, notably, the same Tara worshipped in her gentler aspect at Tarapith in West Bengal, already documented elsewhere in this directory. Local legend attributes the site’s name to the sage Vashishtha, who is said to have undertaken an extraordinarily severe penance (ugratapa, “fierce austerity”) here to win the goddess’s favor — a legend that closely parallels the Vashishtha tradition also associated with Tarapith, suggesting a shared devotional lineage around Tara worship across the eastern Gangetic plain rather than mere coincidence.

The present temple is credited to the 16th century CE, built in the regional Tirhut architectural style under the patronage of Queen Padmavati of the Darbhanga Raj estate, a Mithila noble house with a long record of temple patronage in the area. The site carries a strong reputation as a historic center of tantric sadhana, consistent with its identity as a Shakti Peetha, though the specific fragment of Sati’s body traditionally associated with it is not confirmed in the source consulted for this entry — a separate general reference table names the left eye, but this could not be cross-checked against a source focused on the temple itself.