Sharada Peeth

Sharada Peeth, the seat of Sharada, as Saraswati is called in Kashmir, is a ruined temple and temple-university in the Neelum Valley. From the sixth to the twelfth century its library drew scholars; the Sharada script takes its name from the place, and Kashmir was known as Sharada Desh.

As one of the great Shakti Peethas it marks where Sati's right hand is said to have fallen. The stone temple is plausibly a work of the Karkota emperor Lalitaditya Muktapida, who reigned from 724 to 760; by the eighth century pilgrims came from as far as Bengal.

In 1422 the Kashmiri sultan Zain-ul-Abidin visited to seek a vision of the goddess, and in the sixteenth century Abu'l-Fazl described the temple as greatly venerated. Under later Mughal and Afghan rule the valley passed to local Muslim chiefs and the pilgrimage dwindled.