18 Shakthi Peethams

There was a great king called Daksha Prajapati who was the son of Lord Brahma. He had 27 daughters and Sati Devi is one among them. Sati Devi got married to Lord Shiva. When Dashka entered the arena of a yaga performed by Agni, everyone except Lord Shiva stood up as a mark of respect. Daksha felt insulted by Lord Shiva's behaviour. Later when Daksha conducted a yaga himself , he did not invite his daughter and his son in law.Though Sati felt bad because of the non-invitation, she wanted to attend the yaga against the wish of Lord Shiva.When Sati, attended the yaga nobody has cared for her and she felt insulted by the actions of her sisters and parents. Then when her father started abusing her husband she could not control her feelings and sacrificed herself at the place of yagna by creating agni from earth with her right thumb of her foot.Knowing this Lord Shiva removed one bunch of Jhatha from his head and hit it on the earth. From that Lord, Veerabhadra has born and rushed to yaga spot and killed Daksha by cutting his head. Later Shiva went to the spot and taken the body of sati from the fire and started dancing with it. The world was terrorised from this Tandava Nritya and to stop this Nritya, Vishnu used his Sudarshan chakra and completely cut the Sati's body into pieces. These body parts have fallen at various places in India and Srilanka. Where ever these parts ave fallen the places are called Shaktipeethas. There are 18 such places and they are called Ashta 8 Dasa 10 Shaktipeethas