Eklingji, Kailashpuri

Ek-linga: the one linga. In the sanctum stands a single image of black marble bearing four faces, and each face is a whole god — Brahma west, Vishnu north, Surya east, Rudra south — while the raised summit above them is venerated as Sadashiva with Amba. Four doors open on the four quarters, and at each door a Nandi waits with his eyes on the Lord. To stand before one face is to stand before all.

Mewar's crown is his. Eklingji is not merely the ruling house's kuladevata but its sovereign, and the Maharana reigns as his dewan, holding the land in the Lord's name and not his own. The Devasthan Department sets down what that means: this is not a public temple but the Maharana's, and by right only he may perform the pooja. The pujaris he appoints declare before they begin that they worship in his name, and at the close receive the Lord's blessing for him. The Maharana meets the temple's expenses; nothing is taken for the shrine itself, and what devotees give goes to the Mewar Shiv Shakti Peeth.

Mondays fill these courtyards, and so does every Pradosh. Maha Shivaratri is the temple's own night, kept over two days, when the Lord is dressed in his jewels. Both Navratris draw multitudes, Makar Sankranti its own, and through Vaishakh and Shravan special manorath sevas are offered. Modest dress is asked, and mobile phones and photography are not permitted inside.

Kailashpuri lies about twenty-two kilometres north of Udaipur, in a fold of the Aravalli beside the ruins of Nagda, the old Guhila capital. The fifteenth-century Ekalinga Mahatmya gives the first temple here to Bappa Rawal in the eighth century — Rajasthan's Devasthan Department dates the founding to 734 — and remembers him as a king who laid every victory of his at Eklingnath's feet.

The temple has been cast down and raised again. The first shrine and its vigraha were destroyed in the Delhi Sultanate's invasions; the earliest surviving murti was set up by Hamir Singh in the fourteenth century. Rana Kumbha rebuilt in the fifteenth, and his inscription of 1460 names him plainly — the personal servant of Ekling. When Ghiyath Shah of Malwa devastated the temple late in that century, Kumbha's son Rana Raimal defeated and captured him, took a ransom and spent it here: the last great rebuilding is his, and so is the murti worshipped today, whose pratishtha the south-wall inscription records.

Older devotion marks the ground. On rising land within the walls stands a temple of Lakulisha, raised in 971 by the head of the matha; its inscribed slab is the oldest record here, opening with obeisance to Lakulisha and naming the four disciples who kept the Pashupata vow. Pashupata first, the shrine passed to the Naths and then the Ramanandis; the Shree Eklingji Trust holds it now.

The sanctum is entered from all four sides, the western and southern frames sheathed in silver with Ganesha on one hand and Kartikeya on the other; because the house of Mewar is Suryavanshi, a silver Surya is set above the western gate. Beyond the sabha mandapa stands a great Nandi of black stone and behind him another of ashtadhatu sheathed in brass, and before them Bappa Rawal himself in stone, hands folded towards Maharshi Harit. The white marble shikhara rises some fifty feet, sixty in girth, over a closely carved double-storeyed porch.

Within the wall the complex gathers something near a hundred and eight shrines — a city of spires under the Aravalli. Parvati and Ganesha stand by the eastern gate, Ganga and Kartikeya by the southern; Yamuna, Saraswati, Ambamata and Kalika have their own. Maharana Kumbha raised Pataleshwar Mahadev and the Girdhar Gopal shrine called Meera Mandir, where Mirabai is remembered as having worshipped. Two kunds, Tulsi and Parvati, hold the water, and the samadhis of the kul-gurus lie south.