Nageshwar and Grishneshwar: The Formless Form

The serpent-demon devotee, the humble wife

The chapter on the Jyotirlingas closes with two stories that look different but teach the same thing. At Nageshwar a snake-demon named Daruka is undone by a devotee's steady faith inside a prison. At Grishneshwar a wife's patient devotion outlasts every attempt to destroy it. The formless one shows up at the edge of endurance.

Closing the Twelve

This chapter opened with Somnath, the lord by the western sea who was restored after every destruction. It walked through the rescue of Markandeya at Mahakaleshwar, the silent witness at Kedarnath, the presence in crisis at Bhimashankar and Rameshwaram, the liberation through place at Kashi Vishwanath. Each pairing carried a teaching, and each teaching widened the picture of who Shiva is.

This last lesson closes the twelve. The pairing is Nageshwar in Gujarat and Grishneshwar in Maharashtra, the two Jyotirlingas geographically furthest from Kashi and theologically closest to the householder.

Both temples were caused by ordinary devotees. Nageshwar was caused by a Vaishya merchant kidnapped by a serpent-demon. Grishneshwar was caused by a second wife from a small village whose son was murdered by jealousy. Neither devotee was a king. Neither was a sage. Neither performed extraordinary tapas. Each one simply did not stop holding Shiva in the mind through circumstances that would have broken almost anyone.

The chapter's last teaching is that the twelve Jyotirlingas are not, finally, monuments to extraordinary devotees. Six of them were caused by extraordinary figures, kings and rishis, but six of them, including these last two, were caused by people the kingdom would have walked past. The Shaiva tradition held the balance on purpose. A god who was only available to the extraordinary would be a small god. The Jyotirlinga circuit ends, deliberately, at the small village and the kidnapped merchant.

Nageshwar: The Merchant Who Did Not Look Up

The Nageshwar story belongs to the Saurashtra coast of present-day Gujarat. The temple, near Dwarka, sits in a region the Shiva Purana names as Darukavana, the forest of Daruka.

Daruka was a serpent-demoness who ruled this forest with her husband, also named Daruka. They held travellers captive, terrorised the coast, and killed the local population whenever it suited them. They had a boon from Parvati, complicated and partial, that protected them from most ordinary forms of attack.