Wonderful.

Shubho Bijoya to all at RBSI!

Shubho Bijoya...

Shouldn’t Shubha Bijoya be greeted after the deity is immersed? :) Goddess Kali came in the dreams of Rani Rasmani prior to the day when she was to leave for a pilgrimage to Benaras. Goddess advised the queen not to go to Benaras and build a temple on the banks of River Ganges there itself. She would manifest the image and accept worships. The dream had moved the Rani intensely and she instructed her trusted people specially her youngest son-in law to look for plots to construct the Kali Temple. After a massive hunt for suitable plots, a 20-acred plot in the village of Dakshineswar was selected. The land resembled a hump of a tortoise. One part of this land belonged to a European Christian while the other part was a Muslim burial ground. The idols of the Gods and the Goddess was decided to be installed on the ‘snana-yatra day’, an auspicious days of the Hindus. On 31 May 1855, more than 1 lac Brahmins were invited from different parts of the country to grace the auspicious occasion amidst the controversy of the Rani being in no position to own a temple and to offer Brahmins to feed since she was of low birth. Rani Rasmani being aware of the problem discussed in length with the pundits, but none could solve her problem. Ramkumar Chattopadhayay, Sri Ramakrishna's elder brother suggested that dedicating the temple to a Brahmin could overcome the existing problem. The temple was dedicated in the name of Rani's Guru, and Ramkumar, was the head priest, who installed the idol of Kali in the new temple with a grand splendour on Thursday, 31 May, 1855. Within a year he passed away leaving the entire responsibility to his younger brother, Ramakrishna, who during the subsequent thirty years became the seeker of the Goddess Kali and an ardent devotee who imbedded the seed of change in the socio-religious condition of Bengal and earned immense reputation for the Dakshineswar temple. Since the first days of his service in the shrine of the goddess Kali, was filled with a rare form of love for the Goddess known in Hinduism as maha-bhava. Worshiping in front of the statue of Goddess Kali, Ramakrishna would be overcoming with such an ecstatic love for the deity that he would fall to the ground and immersed in spiritual trance, lose all consciousness of the external world. Ramakrishna fully realized and all-inclusive nature of the divine. In his novel “Seyi Samay” (or Penguin “Those Days” in English) ,Sunil Gangopadhyay provides a detailed account of the unforgettable picture of nineteenth-century Bengal Renaissance and the 1857 uprising form the backdrop to Those Days, a saga of human frailties and strength.

Jai ho

JAI MAATADI

why is it called Dakshineshwar temple

It is located in Dakshineshwar.

Dakshineshwar means Benevolent Lord

Dakshina (benevolent) + Ishwara (Lord)

Dakshina -> South ? no way related?