The Yogamaya Temple in Mehrauli, South Delhi is an ancient temple said in local oral traditions to date back to the Mahabharata era. In the years after the Kurukshetra War, Arjuna himself built this temple in the Pandavas’ city of Indraprastha, to honor his wife Subhadra, who was an incarnation of Yogamaya. The whole neighborhood was anciently known as Yoginipura; even the Jains still called it this in the 1100s CE.
During the Muslim rule of Delhi, all temples in the area were completely destroyed without any trace. This was one of the 27 temples whose smashed pieces were used in the construction of the Qutb Minar. Generations of Hindus remembered the site of where the Yogamaya Temple had stood. During the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar, he was comparatively tolerant toward Hindus and allowed King Samrat Vikramaditya Hemu to restore the structure; however Akbar’s successors destroyed it again.
The present temple was rebuilt in 1827 CE by Lala Sethmal, restoring this ancient sacred site.
I personally visited this temple on October 5, 2022, which was the day of Dussehra / Vijayadashami. The place was bustling with devotees; despite this, it had a calm, quiet, meditative atmosphere. It was clean and well-maintained. The walls are covered with beautiful carvings like this:
The inner sanctum features a sacred black pindi (stone) rather than a carved murti, though it was almost totally hidden by the festive decorations. It’s placed inside a marble well, two feet wide and one foot deep.
Apart from Yogamaya, the temple also has other deities including Ganesha, Shri Rama, Shiva and others, each with their own room.
Actually, for me the most memorable thing I saw there was a woman venerating the temple’s Shiva Linga (not the main Yogamaya Pindi). Just some random woman, perhaps in her 40s or so, wearing a blue sari, looking like basically any ordinary woman from the Mehrauli neighborhood. But her devotion to Shiva was so palpable and strong! The way she made offerings to the Shiva Linga was so earnest and heartfelt and engaged, anyone watching could clearly see the strong Bhakti, much more so than I commonly see at most temples. I never spoke with her, have no idea who she was, but I remember her as a strikingly outstanding devotee.