Shakti Peethas
Sacred sites associated with the goddess Shakti/Sati in Hindu tradition. The classical count is 51 (where 51 body parts of Sati are said to have fallen), spanning India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka; a few more sites (e.g. Vaishno Devi, Naina Devi) are also widely venerated as Shakti Peethas in popular tradition even though they fall outside the classical 51, so this list runs slightly longer. Named lists genuinely disagree on several entries between sources — this is one widely-cited version, not a claim of religious authority on a single definitive list.
A curated selection, not an official or closed list — either traditions vary on the full set of sites, or this is an editorial grouping rather than a traditional one.
Significance & tradition
Shakti Peethas mark the sites where, in the widely-told legend, parts of the goddess Sati's body fell as a grieving Shiva carried her corpse across the sky after her self-immolation at her father Daksha's yajna. Each peetha is associated with a specific body part and pairs its local form of the goddess (Shakti) with a guardian form of Shiva (Bhairava) — a distinctive feature of Shakta pilgrimage not shared with Jyotirlinga worship.
History
The concept draws on Puranic and Tantric sources, including sections of the Devi Bhagavata Purana and various Tantric texts, which genuinely disagree with each other on both the exact count and the identity of individual sites — some traditions cite 4, others 51, and others 108. This is long-standing scholarly and sectarian disagreement, not a gap in our own research.
How this list was compiled
Given that disagreement, this list deliberately stays to a smaller, widely-cited subset rather than asserting a single definitive 51 (or more). It is marked non-exhaustive on purpose.