Varanasi is named seventeenth in the hymn, under the goddess Vishalakshi — the wide-eyed. The shrine is small and easy to walk past: a temple in the lanes above Mir Ghat, a few minutes from the river, in a city whose scale and noise make a compact Devi shrine very easy to miss. Three things are worth carrying into a visit. First, this is one of three towns where a member of these eighteen stands in the same city as one of the twelve jyotirlingas — Srisailam and Ujjain are the others — but unlike Srisailam, where a single shrine holds both memberships, Varanasi's are two separate temples: Kashi Vishwanath and this. Second, a reader researching "the Kashi Shakti Peetha" will meet Manikarnika Ghat at least as often as Mir Ghat, and that is not a disagreement about this enumeration — it is the separate fifty-one-peetha literature's own Kashi entry, which sits at that ghat and carries an ear-ornament name, being read back into a list that never said it. Third, the shrine has a long and strong association with south Indian worship at Varanasi, and is one of the places a Tamil pilgrim to Kashi is likeliest to be directed to.

Claims, and where they come from

• Varanasi is one of the eighteen Shakti Peethas of the recited enumeration, named seventeenth, and the goddess there is Vishalakshi. — Aṣṭādaśa Śakti Pīṭha Stotra (traditionally attributed to Śaṅkarācārya) — Fifth verse of the hymn, which pairs Varanasi with the goddess Vishalakshi and places her seventeenth in the sequence, after Gaya and immediately before the closing name in Kashmir. The verse NUMBER here is derived from this corpus's own citations rather than from a checked edition — 5b and 5c put members 5-8 in the second verse, 9-12 in the third and 13-16 in the fourth, four to a verse and two to a line, which leaves 17 and 18 as the closing pair in the fifth. What the claim rests on is the enumeration's ORDER, checkable against `member_order`. The half-line is paraphrased rather than transliterated here: nothing in this session could check the wording against an edition. The attribution of the hymn to Shankaracharya is traditional; this corpus writes attributed to rather than composed by
• The Manikarnika Ghat location commonly given for "the Kashi Shakti Peetha" belongs to the fifty-one-peetha enumeration, not to this one. — The fifty-one-peetha literature, distinguished from the eighteen — The fifty-one list carries a Kashi entry located at Manikarnika Ghat and named for an ear-ornament, and that location travels with the entry wherever it is quoted. Applied to the eighteen it produces a second candidate shrine in the same city and looks like a dispute. It is not one: it is one enumeration's entry being read into another, which is the same failure the corpus's own rule against importing limb assignments exists to prevent — here it is a whole location that migrated rather than an attribute. Increment 5c expected Varanasi to repeat the two-shrines dispute shape it met at Mahur and Ujjain; on working it, this rule resolves it instead. No source reached from this session argues that the eighteen mean any shrine at Varanasi other than Vishalakshi
• Varanasi is one of three towns in which a member of these eighteen stands alongside one of the twelve jyotirlingas, and here the two are separate temples. — The two enumerations, compared member by member — Checkable against this corpus's own set membership rather than against a text: Srisailam, Ujjain and Varanasi are the three. Srisailam is the only one where a single site carries both memberships (`mallikarjuna`); at Ujjain and at Varanasi the jyotirlinga and the peetha are different shrines in the same city, `mahakaleshwar` and `mahakali_ujjain` here, `vishweshwar` and this site there. Vaidyanath, commonly named as a fourth, belongs to the fifty-one and the fifty-two but not to this eighteen
• The shrine carries a long association with south Indian, particularly Tamil, worship at Varanasi. — Practice at the shrine and in the Kashi Tamil community — Reported as practice. A tradition connecting the image to Kanchipuram circulates alongside it and is carried here as tradition too; nothing reached from this session cites it to a text or an inscription, and the corpus does not upgrade a repeated story into an origin
• No limb of Sati is assigned to this site by the enumeration that names it. — The structure of the stotra itself — The earring is what the separate fifty-one-peetha convention gives Kashi, and it is the same datum that carries the Manikarnika location — the ghat's name is itself read as a jewel of the ear. That is a tight and attractive package, which is exactly why it should not be borrowed. The hymn that names Varanasi gives a place and a goddess and stops

Counted among

• The Shakti Peethas — Sati's body fell across the subcontinent — and the tradition has never agreed on how many pieces, or on how many shrines.

Questions to explore

• Researchers keep placing the Kashi peetha at Manikarnika Ghat and pilgrims keep being taken to Mir Ghat. How did one enumeration's entry end up standing in for another's?
• Varanasi holds both a jyotirlinga and one of these eighteen, in two different temples. Does the tradition treat a town that holds both as doubly powerful, or are the two lists simply indifferent to each other?
• Vishalakshi means the wide-eyed. Is the name describing the image, or saying something about how the goddess is understood to see?