RAJBIRAJ (Saptari), April 9: President Ram Chandra Paudel paid homage to the goddess at the Chhinnamasta Temple here Tuesday morning. The Chhinnamasta Temple is a famous religious and tourist site in Chhinnamasta Rural Municipality-3 of Saptari district.
The Head of State offered special worship and received tika, flowers and prasad on the occasion.
Lawmakers, local security chiefs and office-bearers of the Temple Management Committee welcomed the President on the Temple premises. On the occasion, the Rural Municipality Chair Bidhananda Chaudhary presented a souvenir to the President.
Addressing a program after paying obeisance at the temple, the President said Chhinnamasta is an ancient and historic shrine in the Tarai-Madhes and expressed his happiness to pay a visit to such a holy place as the Head of State.
He stressed the need for bringing about an agricultural revolution in the district by completing the Koshi-Kamala Diversion Irrigation Project. "Saptari is in my heart. I support all positive initiatives of this district," he added.
The Chhinnamasta Temple is taken as the 52nd largest goddess shrine among the various goddess shrines around the world.
Peethadhish (main priest) Mahakanta Thakur said the Jagatguru Balsanta had declared Chhinnamasta as one of the major goddess shrines in the presence of the first President of Nepal, Dr Ram Baran Yadav, in 2065 BS.
Shedding light on the origin of this shrine, the main priest Thakur said a certain king named Shakra Singh, while on one of his hunting trips around a thousand years back, found the idol of the goddess Chhinnamasta from the Pokhare cave and set up an ordinary temple.
After that, the then Railways Minister of India Lalit Narayan Mishra in 2039 BS commissioned the construction of a bigger temple dedicated to the goddess at the same site in his gratitude to surviving in a plane crash.
The Chhinnamasta Temple complex spreads on a total of 14 bighas of land and is dotted with ponds and temples of various other gods and goddesses.
It is believed that one's wishes are fulfilled after offering worship to the goddess Chhinnamasta. Thousands of devotees from Nepal and India visit the temple for worshiping and performing religious rituals.
Male goats and pigeons are sacrificed here daily. A big religious fair takes place during the Dashain festival every year.