Durgabari Temple’s Durga puja enters 148th year: Unique offerings include meat, fish, eggs as prasad

Durgabari Temple, Tripura, Assam is all set to host its 148th Durga puja. This ancient temple is famous for its grand celebrations and unique offerings as prasad, which hardly any other temple does. This temple is quite different from the majority of temples, where one can only find vegetarian food served as prasad. During the Durga puja celebrations, the Durgabari Temple offers its followers meat, fish, and eggs as prasad. This year Durga puja will be held from October 9 to 12.

As a mark of respect on the day of immersion of Durga idol, the national anthem is played and a gun salute is offered by Tripura State Rifles (TSR).

“This time the puja enters its 148th year, the oldest puja in Tripura in its present location. It was Maharaja Krishna Kishore Manikya Bahadur, who first started worshipping goddess Durga in present-day Chittagong in Bangladesh around 500 years ago. Over the years, the goddess was worshipped from Chittagong to Amarpur in Gumati to Udaipur – before the puja permanently settled in Agartala,” chief priest of Durgabari temple, Jayanta Bhattacharjee told PTI on Saturday.

Unique two-handed Goddess Durga

He also said that a unique custom was introduced a long ago where devotees worship the two-handed Goddess Durga.

“Long ago, Maharani Sulakshana Devi had fainted after seeing a ten-handed goddess at Durgabari and was taken back to the palace. On the same night, she received a divine message to worship a two-handed goddess instead of a ten-handed goddess from next year. Since then we have been worshipping a two-handed goddess at Durgabari,” the priest said.

Immersion ritual

Before starting the immersion journey, the idol is taken to the royal palace where family members of the Manikya dynasty pay respect, it is a part of an old ritual.

(With PTI Inputs)

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