MOTHER MAHALAKSHMI OF KOLHAPUR

The tradition of offering gifts to the Mother on fulfillment of desires like child birth, marriage etc. is honoured with great fervour and fanfare and it is called Navas in Marathi. As the compassionate Mother fords them across the ocean of grief effortlessly and surely, their visits arc more frequent and constant. Another strange feature in practice here is, the temple prescribes no fixed routine rates for any kind of prayer service desired. Yet the performers offer lavishly in cash or kind. There arc two common practices which arc frequently observed. One is filling the lap and the other is presentation of Sadi-Choli to the Mother along with other auspicious things like haldi, kumkum etc. Prasad like Phedas, kumkum etc. are given to the devotees. After prayers, visitors go to several other sacred places situated within a radius of nearly 10 KM, since the Mother's kshetra extends over a large area and includes several shrines dedicated to important powerful deities. Ardent theists visit them all to gain merit to the full after visiting the main temple. Among the visit worthies, the Vithoba's temple resembling the Mother's temple; Mahakali temple, the yellamma temple, where unmarried women make vows to her and get their desires fulfilled are most popular and hence visitation is deemed a must. Moreover, they are two underground temples Khandoba and Karthikaswami here and they also attract the visitors. The Jain temples and other Mutts, like Sankeshwar Sankarachari deserve visitation for benedictions. In addition to these, there is the famous shrine dedicated to Jyothiba at a distance 15 Km. which is visit worthy.

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