Kashi Vishwanath Temple

Standing on the western bank of India’s holiest river, the Ganges, Varanasi is one of the oldest surviving cities of the world  and the cultural capital of India. The Kashi Vishwanath temple is supposedly one of the holiest mandirs in the country which attracts tourists from around the globe as well. It is also said that the blessings one gets from all the other jyotirlingas can be accrued by a single visit to the Vishveshwara jyotirlinga alone. Such is the reverence and importance of this temple.

According to the Shiva Purana, once 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 jyothirlinga shrines, thus are places where Lord Shiva appeared as a fiery column of light.  Each of the twelve jyothirlinga 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 Lord Shiva. The twelve jyothirlinga are Somnath in Gujarat, Mallikarjuna in Andhra Pradesh, Mahakaleswar in Madhya Pradesh, Omkareshwar in Madhya Pradesh, Kedarnath in Himalayas, Bhimashankar in Maharastra, Viswanath at Varanasi, Triambakeshwar in Maharastra, Vaidyanath in Jharkhand, Nageshwar at Dwarka, Rameshwar in Tamil Nadu and Grishneshwar in Maharastra.