Ashtadasha Maha Shakti Peetha — The 18 Great Abodes of the Devi

Where the wider Shakta tradition counts 51, 52, 64 or 108 Shakti Peethas, the Ashtadasha Maha Shakti Peetha Stotram — attributed to Adi Shankaracharya — names just eighteen, and it is this short list that most pilgrims in South and Central India follow. The stotram opens at Shankari in Lanka and closes at Sharada in Kashmir, sweeping the subcontinent in a single verse sequence. Every site here is also counted among the canonical Peethas, but the eighteen carry a devotional weight of their own: reciting the stotram is itself held to be a pilgrimage. Three of the eighteen — Shankari at Trincomalee, Shrinkhala at Pandua, and Sharada in the Kishanganga valley — survive only as ruins or as sites of contested identity, and are listed here for completeness.