pitha
पीठ pīṭhaA seat. The word carries two distinct senses in tantric literature and they are easy to confuse. In sacred geography it is a named site, Jālandhara among them, reckoned a seat of the Goddess and given a presiding deity or siddha; those lists are unstable across recensions. In the classification of scripture it is instead a class of tantras, the Bhairava corpus being divided into the seats of Vidyā, Mantra, Mudrā and Maṇḍala.
Where this term appears
- Anatomy of a Hindu Temple: Gopuram to Garbhagriha Temples
Beside it sits the bali-pitha , the offering altar, often shaped like a lotus, where ritual offerings are placed.
- Kamakhya: The Temple of the Goddess Temples
In one passage, as read by Banikanta Kakati in his study of the goddess, the text holds that the religion of the Yogini Pitha is of Kirata origin.
- The Four Streams of Hinduism Essentials
Across the whole subcontinent the tradition maps the Goddess onto the land through the Shakta pithas , the seats where, the tradition holds, parts of her body fell, commonly counted as fifty-one.
- The Twelve Jyotirlingas Temples
…is is that networks of pilgrimage places, the four dhams , the shakti-pithas , the seven sacred rivers, and the twelve jyotirlingas among them, have over centuries composed India's sense of region and belonging…
- What are the Shakti Peethas? Temples
Sircar's The Sakta Pithas , first published in 1948 and revised for Motilal Banarsidass in 1973.
- Who is Shiva? Deities
It is the liṅga , the aniconic pillar, usually set in a yoni-pīṭha base, and it is the principal cult object in Shaiva temples.
- The two seats: how the tantric canon was actually organised Lineages
… the handbooks gloss as headed by the Svacchandatantra ; and the Vidyāpīṭha , the seat of the feminine vidyā -goddesses, the stratum from which much of later Śākta religion descends.
- A genre that was always bilingual Treatise
The Asiatic Society catalogue mentions the same Chatterji: the Divyaśābaratantra , it notes, was published under the name Śābara in eighteen pīṭhas by Chatterji in the Aruṇodaya and in the Indrajālādisaṃgraha .