Shri Mahalakshmi (Ambabai) Temple, Kolhapur

Deity

Mahalakshmi (Ambabai), one of the Shakti Peethas

Where

Maharashtra · 16.69N 74.23E

Usual hours

5 am – 1 pm, 4 pm – 9 pm — hours change with festivals and the season; check before travelling. Were these right when you went?

Grahas

Sukran

Visited for

The Karaveer kshetram where the sun’s rays fall on the Devi for three days each in Ratha Saptami season (Kiranotsav). Fridays and Navaratri are its days.

The sthala purana has it that Mahalakshmi left Vaikuntha after a quarrel and settled at Karavir, and that she has stayed here since; the town is spoken of as her own place rather than as a place she visits.

The name of the city is read from the asura Kolhasura, who is said to have been killed here.

Kolhapur is counted among the Shakti Peethas in several traditional lists, including the eighteen named in the Ashtadasha Shakti Peetha stotra. Other lists of the Peethas leave it out or put a different place in its position, and there is no single agreed enumeration — the temple’s standing is a matter of which tradition is being followed.

The building is much older than the Maratha city around it: the core is Chalukya-period work in black stone. The Kiranotsav, when the setting sun shines through the western door and along the passage onto the image, happens for three days at the end of January and three in early November, and the dates are published each year.

The image is black stone, heavily ornamented, with a Sri Yantra carved on the wall above and a lion at her side.

The temple is built of stone throughout, with carved outer walls and a shikhara added in the Maratha period, and has several subsidiary shrines inside the same enclosure.

The Garud Mandap in front and the Manikarnika kund are the other parts of the complex. The temple stands in the middle of the old town with narrow streets running up to it.

Navaratri is the season, with the Devi in a different decoration each day and a procession through the town.

Kiranotsav, twice a year, fills the western door with people watching the light. Fridays and Tuesdays are the weekly days, and the Rath is drawn at the annual festival.

Also called

Ambabai Temple, Karavir Nivasini Mahalakshmi

Period

Chalukya-period building, with later Maratha additions

Reaching it

The temple is in the old part of Kolhapur, about 3 km from Kolhapur railway station. Kolhapur is roughly 230 km south of Pune on the Bengaluru highway.

• Renuka Yellamma Temple, Saundatti 140.2 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Shri Mangueshi Temple, Mangeshi 140.7 km · Saiva
• Shri Mahalsa Narayani Temple, Mardol 141.7 km · Vaishnava
• Shri Shantadurga Temple, Kavlem 146.1 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Shri Vitthal Rukmini Temple, Pandharpur 159.8 km · Vaishnava
• Khandoba Temple, Jejuri 177 km · Saiva

Been to this temple? The things that change — whether the hours on this page were right, whether the sannidhi was open, how long the queue was on a Saturday — are exactly what no printed source keeps current, and what the next person travelling here needs.

• Were the hours right when you went?
• Is anything on this page wrong or out of date?
• A photograph of the gopuram, the tank, or the notice board

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