Mahakaleshwar — Lord of Time

The third Jyotirlinga is Mahakaleshwar in the ancient city of Ujjain, in central India. It is the great Shiva temple of Madhya Pradesh, and one of the unusual lingas of the twelve — it is said to be swayambhu (self-arisen) rather than installed.

The story goes back to a small boy and a demon.

Long ago, Ujjain was ruled by a king named Chandrasena, who was a great devotee of Shiva. A small cow-herd boy in the city, watching the king worship every day, took to worshipping a stone himself — imagining it was a linga — with whatever flowers and water he could gather. His mother scolded him: that is just a stone; eat your food instead. The boy paid no attention. He worshipped his stone.

His devotion built up. The Purana says it built up to such a degree that the stone itself began to glow.

Around this time, a demon named Dushana — a great enemy of dharma — was about to attack the city. Dushana had a boon that made him nearly invulnerable. He had defeated the king’s army. He was at the gates.

The people of Ujjain went to Shiva. They prayed at the king’s shrine. They prayed all night.

In the early morning, with the demon at the gates, Shiva himself broke out of the earth at a particular spot in the city — swayambhu, self-arisen — in his most fearsome form, Mahakal (lord of time). He looked at the demon Dushana with the look that ends time, and the demon was reduced to ash on the spot.

The army with him scattered.

Shiva did not return to Kailash afterward. He remained at the place he had risen — installing himself permanently as the Mahakaleshwar linga, the lord of time at Ujjain.

The temple has several features unique among the Jyotirlingas:

• The linga faces south. Most lingas face east. The southward face links Mahakaleshwar to yama (death) and time directly.
• The Bhasma Aarti. At dawn each day, the linga is anointed not with milk or flowers but with bhasma — sacred ash. Traditionally this was ash from a fresh cremation; modern practice uses consecrated cow-dung ash. The ash anointing is the most famous ritual of Mahakaleshwar, performed at four in the morning before sunrise.
• The city of Ujjain itself. Ujjain is one of the seven sacred cities of Hinduism (the Sapta Puri), and it sits on the prime meridian of ancient Indian astronomy — the city through which time was once measured. The Purana takes the city’s astronomical significance as proof that the lord of time chose his location carefully.

For a reader, Mahakaleshwar is the Jyotirlinga of facing the end. Most temples make their visitors comfortable. This one — with its predawn ash worship, its southward face, its association with the lord of time — does not. You go to Mahakaleshwar to look at the fact of mortality plainly, the way the small cow-herd boy looked at his stone and saw it light up.

The next Jyotirlinga is on an island in the Narmada — shaped like the syllable Om itself.