Baidyanath Temple

Baidyanath Jyotirlinga, Deoghar
Religion
Affiliation	Hinduism
District	Deoghar
Governing body	Baba Baidyanath Temple Management Board
Location
State	Jharkhand
Country	India
Architecture
Creator	Unknown
Website
babadham.org

Baidyanath Jyotirlinga temple, also known as Baba dham and Baidyanath dham is one of the twelve Jyotirlingas, the most sacred abodes of Shiva. It is located in Deoghar in the Santhal Parganas division of the state of Jharkhand, India. It is a temple complex consisting of the main temple of Baba Baidyanath, where the Jyotirlinga is installed, and 21 other temples.

According to Hindu beliefs, the demon king Ravana worshipped Shiva at the current site of the temple to get the boons that he later used to wreak havoc in the world. Ravana offered his ten heads one after the another to Shiva as a sacrifice. Pleased with this, Shiva descended to earth and cured Ravana who was injured. As he acted as a doctor, he is referred to as Vaidhya ("doctor"). From this aspect of Shiva, the temple derives its name.

Difficulty in identifying location of Baidyanath Jyotirlinga

'Baidyanatham chithabhoomau' [sivmahapuran kotirudra samhita 1/21-24] is the ancient verse that identifies location of vaidyanth jyotirlinga. According to which Baidyantham is in 'chidabhoomi', which is the ancient name of Deoghar. While, the same part of text has variation by which, verse is 'paralyam vaidyanatham', i.e., Vaidyanatham is in Parli, Maharashtra.

Thus the three temples of,

• Baiydanath temple at Deoghar, Jharkhand,
• Vaijnath temple at Parli, Maharashtra and
• Baijnath temple at Baijnath, Himachal Pradesh are claiming their shrines as 'real' jyotirlinga of Vaidyanath.

In Dwadasa jyothirlinga sthothram, Adi Sankaracharya has praised Vaidyanath jyothirlinga in following verses,

Poorvothare prajwalika nidhane
sada vasantham girija sametham
surasuraradhitha padapadmam
srivaidyanatham thamaham namami

This states that Vaidyanath jyotirlinga is located at Prajwalika nidhanam (meaning funeral place i.e., chithabhoomi) in the North-Eastern part of the country. Deoghar is far located in east compared to Parli which is in west central part of the country. Also Chidabhoomi indicates that, in olden days, this was a funeral place, where corpses are burnt and post-death ceremonies were performed. This place could have been a centre of tantric cults like Kapalika/Bhairava where Lord Shiva is worshipped significantly as smasan vasin (meaning, residing in crematorium), sava bhasma bhushita (meaning, smearing body with ashes of burnt bodies).

Interestingly, the same shrine of Vaidyanath is considered as on of 51 Shakti Peethas, where 'yoni peetham' of jyotirlinga itself is considered as the Shakti Peetha.

Jyotirlinga

As per Shiv Mahapuran, once Brahma (the Hindu God of creation) and Vishnu (the Hindu God of saving) had an argument in terms of supremacy of creation. To test them, Shiva pierced the three worlds as a huge endless pillar of light, the jyotirlinga. Vishnu and Brahma split their ways to downwards and upwards respectively to find the end of the light in either directions. Brahma lied that he found out the end, while Vishnu conceded his defeat. Shiva appeared as a second pillar of light and cursed Brahma that he would have no place in ceremonies while Vishnu would be worshipped till the end of eternity. The jyotirlinga is the supreme partless reality, out of which Shiva partly appears. The jyothirlinga shrines, thus are places where Shiva appeared as a fiery column of light. Originally there were believed to be 64 jyothirlingas while 12 of them are considered to be very auspicious and holy. Each of the twelve jyothirlinga sites take the name of the presiding deity - each considered different manifestation of Shiva. At all these sites, the primary image is lingam representing the beginningless and endless Stambha pillar, symbolizing the infinite nature of Shiva. The twelve jyothirlinga are Somnath in Gujarat, Mallikarjuna at Srisailam in Andra Pradesh, Mahakaleswar at Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, Omkareshwar in Madhya Pradesh, Kedarnath in Himalayas, Bhimashankar in Maharastra, Viswanath at Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Triambakeshwar in Maharastra, Vaidyanath at Deogarh in Jharkand, Nageswar at Dwarka in Gujarat, Rameshwar at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and Grishneshwar at Aurangabad in Maharastra.

Legend

According to the stories narrated in the Shiva Purana, it was in the Treta yuga that the demon Ravana, king of Lanka, felt that his capital would not be perfect and free from enemies unless Mahadeva (Shiva) stays there forever. He paid continuous meditation to Mahadeva. Ultimately Shiva got pleased and permitted him to carry his lingam with him to Lanka. Mahadeva advised him not to place or transfer this lingam to anyone. There should not be a break in his journey to Lanka. If he deposits the lingam anywhere on the earth, in the course of his journey, it would remain fixed at that place forever. Ravana was happy as he was taking his return journey to Lanka.

The other gods objected to this plan; if Shiva went to Lanka with Ravana, then Ravana would become invincible and his evil and anti-vedic deeds would threaten the world. Therefore the gods tricked Ravana. Ravana was offered water by Parvati, who then directed all the waters of three rivers (Ganges, Yamuna and Saraswati) into Ravana's stomach.

On his way back from Mount Kailash, Ravana felt an urgent need to attend nature's call and as he could not do so with the holy linga in his hand, he started looking for someone who could hold it for him. Ganesha then appeared as a Brahmin in front of him. Ravana asked Ganesha to hold the linga and went to relieve himself. Ganesha, pretending to be vexed by Ravena's delay, set the linga down on earth. The moment linga was kept down, it got fixed to the ground.

Ravana needed to wash his hands to make himself pious. Finding no water source around he hit the ground with his fist and a big crater was made which got filled with water. When Ravana now tried to move the linga, he could not. Out of anger he press the linga down with his thumb. But after restoring himself, he started to offer his prayers for the linga.

Shravan Mela

More than a million pilgrims visit this shrine every year. It is famous for the mela of Shraavana (a month of the Hindu calendar), between July and August. About 7 to 8 million devotees visit the place from various parts of India and offer holy water of Ganges to the deity collected from Sultangunj, which is almost 105 km from Deoghar. An unbroken line of people in saffron-dyed clothes stretches over the full 104 km for the month. The pilgrims are called Dak Bam and they do not stop even once in their journey from Sultangunj, located near Bhagalpur to Vaidyanath. Pilgrims to the temple later visit the Basukinath temple.

Notes

• Chaturvedi, B. K. (2006), Shiv Purana (First ed.), New Delhi: Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd, ISBN 81-7182-721-7
• Eck, Diana L. (1999), Banaras, city of light (First ed.), New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-11447-8
• Gwynne, Paul (2009), World Religions in Practice: A Comparative Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publication, ISBN 978-1-4051-6702-4 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help).
• Harding, Elizabeth U. (1998). "God, the Father". Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 156–157. ISBN 9788120814509. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Lochtefeld, James G. (2002), The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism: A-M, Rosen Publishing Group, p. 122, ISBN 082393179X
• R., Venugopalam (2003), Meditation: Any Time Any Where (First ed.), Delhi: B. Jain Publishers (P) Ltd., ISBN 81-8056-373-1
• Vivekananda, Swami. "The Paris Congress of the History of Religions". The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Vol. Vol.4. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

External links

• Website of Baba Baidyanath Temple
• Babadham Deoghar
• Vaidyanath at Deoghar
• vaidyanath jyotirlinga deogarh
• Vaidyanath Temple in Deoghar
• Shri Vaidhynath / Vaijhnath