Bhimashankar — the Forest Linga

The sixth Jyotirlinga is Bhimashankar, in the Sahyadri hills of Maharashtra, near Pune. The name means “Shiva of Bhima” — and the “Bhima” here is not the Mahabharata’s Pandava. This Bhima is a demon.

The story is this. A demon named Bhima — son of Kumbhakarna and a demoness — grew up in a forest, unaware that his father (Kumbhakarna) had been killed by Rama during the war at Lanka. When Bhima at last learned the truth about his father’s death, he was filled with rage.

But his rage was not directed at Rama. It was directed at Shiva — and at all gods in general. Bhima did long austerity, won boons, and then went on a rampage of revenge against the worlds. He defeated the gods. He drove sages out of their forests. He insisted that no one in his territory worship anyone but him.

In particular, a small king named Kamarupeshwar — a great devotee of Shiva — fell under Bhima’s rule. Bhima discovered the king worshipping Shiva in secret. He had the king arrested and dragged before him.

“Worship me,” Bhima said. “Not Shiva. Stop, or I will kill you.”

The king refused. “I worship Shiva. I will not worship anyone else.”

Bhima had the king imprisoned. He commanded that a Shiva linga in the king’s cell be removed. The king made a new linga out of clay and continued worshipping in the cell. Bhima had it broken. The king made another.

Bhima at last lost his patience. He drew his weapon. He came to strike the king.

The king, hands folded, prayed: Om Namaḥ Śivāya.

The linga in the cell — the small clay one the king had just made — broke open. Shiva emerged from it.

The battle between Shiva and Bhima was, the Purana says, long and hard. Bhima had his boons. He had grown enormous. He fought with all the rage that had built up over his life. He pushed Shiva harder than many demons had before.

The fight was, in part, a sweating fight — even Shiva had to work for it. The hill on which the battle was fought, in the Sahyadris, ran with sweat. That sweat, the Purana says, became a river — the Bhima river — which still flows from those hills today.

At last Shiva ended Bhima. The trident went through the demon’s chest. Bhima fell. The king was freed. The sages returned. The forest went quiet.

The gods, in gratitude, asked Shiva to remain at the site. He agreed. He installed himself in a linga at the spot of the battle, and the linga became the Bhimashankar Jyotirlinga.

A few features of Bhimashankar today:

• The Bhima river. The river that originates at this hill — literally from the same hill where the battle is said to have been fought — flows down to join the Krishna and is one of the major rivers of the Deccan.
• The forest. The Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary surrounds the temple. It is the kind of forest the Purana describes — dense, thick, full of the species of trees the original story imagines. Giant squirrels native to the region (the Indian giant squirrel) live in the sanctuary and are sometimes seen by pilgrims.
• The Nagara-style temple. The current temple is a small, simple Nagara-style stone building, not lavish. The setting — the forest on a hill — does most of the visual work.

For a reader, Bhimashankar’s lesson is about worship that does not give way. The small king in his cell, making new clay lingas as each was broken, is the model. The demon was destroyed in the end, but the destruction came because the king did not stop.

The next Jyotirlinga is the most famous of all — Shiva’s own city, where he chose to live and never leave: Kashi.