Baidyanath Dham Temple

According to the Shiva Purana, once Lord Brahma and Vishnu had an argument in terms of supremacy of creation. In order to solve the dispute, Shiva decided to pierce the three worlds as an endless pillar of light. Both Vishnu and Brahma started upwards and downwards respectively to find the end of the light. Brahma lied that he had found the end while Vishnu accepted that he could not and accepted defeat. Shiva cursed Brahma that as punishment for lying to him, Brahma would not be part of any ceremonies while Vishnu would always be worshipped. The jyotirlinga is the supreme partless reality, out of which Shiva partly appears. The jyotirlinga shrines, thus are places where Shiva appeared as a fiery column of light.  Each of the twelve jyotirlinga sites take the name of the presiding deity – each considered to be a different manifestation of Shiva. At all these sites, the primary image is the jyotirlingam representing the infinite nature of Shiva. The twelve jyotirlinga are Somnath in Gujarat, Mallikarjuna Jyotirlinga in Andhra Pradesh, Mahakaleswar in Madhya Pradesh, Omkareshwar in Madhya Pradesh, Kedarnath in Uttarakhand, Bhimashankar in Maharastra, Kashi Viswanath at Varanasi, Trimbakeshwar Shiva Temple in Maharastra, Baidyanath Dham in Jharkhand, Nageshwar at Dwarka, Rameshwar in Tamil Nadu and Grishneshwar in Maharastra.