Biraja Temple, Jajpur

The account begins with the frame shared by every Shakti Peetha. In the Devi Bhagavata Purana, Sati, the daughter of Daksha, is married to Shiva. Daksha later insults Shiva, and Sati resolves to give up the body born of Daksha; she burns it in a fire that rises out of yoga. Shiva destroys Daksha's sacrifice, cuts off Daksha's head and sets a goat's head in its place. Then he lifts Sati's body onto his neck and wanders from country to country, until Vishnu cuts the body to pieces with his arrows. Wherever a part falls, Shiva remains there in another form, and the place becomes a seat of the goddess.

The Ashtadasha Shakti Peetha Stotram, a short list of eighteen of those seats, names them in a fixed order. Its sixth line opens with the eleventh: "Odhyane Girija devi" — the goddess Girija at Odhyana. The stotram is traditionally attributed to Adi Shankara; no scholarly source confirming that attribution has been found, so it is given here as tradition.

The stotram gives a name and a region and nothing more. It does not name Jajpur or the Biraja temple, and it does not say which part of Sati's body fell at Odhyana. The Devi Bhagavata's own, longer list of seats has no entry for Viraja or Girija. The identification of the stotram's Girija with the goddess Biraja at Jajpur is the one this encyclopedia follows.

We have not yet been able to read the temple's own account of its goddess — the sthala tradition published by its administration or by the Odisha government. It is left out rather than retold from secondhand versions.

What the frame explains is why a goddess at Jajpur is counted among the eighteen: in the stotram's list, Odhyana's seat belongs to Girija.