Nainativu Nagapooshani Amman Temple

The Nainativu Nagapooshani Amman Temple stands on Nainativu, an island in Palk Bay off the Jaffna peninsula of Sri Lanka, dedicated to Parvati as Nagapooshani, also called Bhuvaneswari, with Shiva worshipped beside her as Nayinaar. The island was known as Manipallavam and its Naga people were serpent worshippers, which gave the goddess her name.

Tamil classics speak of the shrine, and a Tamil inscription from the reign of the Sinhala king Parakramabahu I, between 1153 and 1186, was found in the precinct; it is an edict to his Tamil officials in Jaffna on how to treat shipwrecked foreign traders.

The temple was destroyed by the Portuguese in 1620 and rebuilt between 1720 and 1790. It remained a pilgrimage focus of the Jaffna Tamils, whose sixteen-day summer Mahostavam draws worshippers from across the region.