Bagalamukhi Temple
— — a yellow shrine the goddess of stillness keeps.
Not only on a wall.
“A small yellow-stone shrine in the old town of Datia, set inside a walled courtyard a short walk from the seven-storey Bir Singh Palace. The deity is Bagalamukhi, one of the ten Mahavidyas, worshipped here in her form that stills the speech of an enemy. Pilgrims come for havan and for the Tuesday and Saturday queues. Turmeric on the steps, yellow cloth on the railings, the smell of ghee from the lamps. A working temple, not a monument, and quiet between the rush hours.
Bagalamukhi Temple, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Bagalamukhi temple at Datia, also known as the Pitambara Peeth, sits in the historic core of Datia town in northern Madhya Pradesh, roughly 75 kilometres south of Gwalior and 25 kilometres north of Jhansi. The shakti peeth was established in 1935 by Swami Maharaj, often called Shri Golokwasi Swamiji, who built it adjoining an older Dhumavati shrine. The complex is run as a charitable trust and houses both the Bagalamukhi sanctum and one of the few temples in India dedicated to Dhumavati, another of the ten Mahavidyas.
Yellow is the temple's working colour. Bagalamukhi is the pitambara devi, the goddess in yellow, and the iconography is built on that: turmeric paste, yellow cloth, yellow flowers, and the recommendation that devotees wear yellow for the puja. The walls of the inner shrine are washed in ochre, and the railings are wrapped daily in saffron-yellow cotton by the temple staff. Tuesday and Saturday are the heavy footfall days, when the offerings of pitambari cloth and besan ladoo fill the side counters.
The temple is open from early morning until late evening, with a midday break that varies by season. Photography inside the sanctum is not permitted, and shoes are left at the dedicated stalls outside the main gate. Datia is reached by train on the Delhi-Chennai trunk line; Datia Junction is a short auto-rickshaw ride from the temple. Most visitors combine the temple with the 17th-century Bir Singh Palace, completed by Raja Bir Singh Deo of Orchha in 1620, which dominates the skyline above the old town.