Grishneshwar — the Last of the Twelve

The twelfth and last of the Jyotirlingas is Grishneshwar — “lord of Grishma,” or “lord of compassion” — at a small village in Maharashtra called Verul, near the famous Ellora caves. The story is the quietest of the twelve and may be the most touching.

There was a brahmin couple living in the village: a man named Sudharma, and his wife Sudeha. They were devoted to Shiva. They were also unhappy in one specific way: they had no children.

Sudeha grieved over this. She was the one most affected. She tried everything. She did austerities. She made vows. Nothing produced a child.

She at last suggested to her husband what she had been thinking about for a long time. “Marry my sister Grishma,” she said. “Through her you may have a child. I cannot bear one. The household needs an heir. I do not want you to be without a son.”

Sudharma did not want to do this. But Sudeha insisted. In time he agreed, on the condition that Sudeha would always be the senior wife in the home.

Grishma came into the household as the second wife. She was a devotee of Shiva — a quiet, devoted woman who, every morning, made a small Shiva linga out of clay, worshipped it, and at the end of her worship dipped it into a small pool in the back of the courtyard. She did this every day, with great patience.

In time, Grishma had a son. The household had its heir.

But Sudeha, after the boy was born, found something she had not expected in herself: jealousy. Not of Grishma exactly — she had asked for this. But of the boy. The child got the husband’s attention. The child got the kindness. The child got the future that Sudeha had thought of as hers.

The jealousy grew. One night, Sudeha did something terrible. She took the sleeping child of her sister out to the pool in the courtyard. She drowned him. She put him in the same water where Grishma’s daily lingas were dipped.

In the morning, Grishma came to do her worship as always.

She found the body.

The Purana lets the moment have its weight. Grishma was a quiet woman. She had been devoted to Shiva her whole life. Her son was dead. The first thing she did, the Purana says, was not to scream. The first thing she did was to bow, very deeply, to the small clay linga she had been preparing.

“Lord,” she said, “you have given. You may take. I do not know who did this. I do not ask. I keep my faith.”

She did her full daily worship — without stopping — over her drowned son.

And from the linga, Shiva himself emerged.

He looked at Grishma. He looked at the boy. He raised his hand. The boy stood up alive. He stretched as if from a nap. He went to his mother.

Shiva then said to Grishma, “Ask me anything.”

Grishma had only one thing to ask. “Lord, forgive my sister Sudeha. She did this in jealousy. She has been like a mother to me. I do not want her punished.”

Shiva looked at her for a long time. Then he said, “Because of your faith and because of your forgiveness, I will remain here. This village will be the seat of the last of the twelve great lingas. I will be Grishneshwar — Lord of Grishma.”

He installed himself permanently at the site.

The temple at Verul today is the Grishneshwar Jyotirlinga. It is small, simple — a modest temple in a small village, very close to the great Ellora cave-temples carved out of the same hillside. A pilgrim to Ellora can walk to it in twenty minutes.

For a reader, Grishneshwar is the Jyotirlinga of faith that does not break and forgiveness that does not ask first. Grishma did not stop her worship even on the worst morning of her life. She did not demand revenge. She asked, when given the chance, for her sister’s forgiveness. The reward was her son back, and her name in the canon of the twelve forever.

The twelve are now complete. Each is a particular story; each is a particular place. A pilgrim who visits all twelve — the Dwadasha Jyotirlinga Yatra — covers most of India: Somnath in Gujarat, the two southern ones at Mallikarjuna and Rameshwaram, central India at Ujjain and Omkareshwar, the Himalaya at Kedarnath, the Sahyadris at Bhimashankar and Grishneshwar, the Godavari at Trimbakeshwar, the Ganga at Kashi, the eastern hills at Vaidyanath, the western shore at Nageshwar. The pilgrimage is itself a small map of the country.

The next stories — the last few — are about the festivals and the devotees of Shiva, beginning with the night of his first great vigil.