Mahabaleshwara, Gokarna

He could not move it. He heaved until he fainted, and gave the linga the name it keeps — Mahabaleshwara, the mighty one, the strength greater than his own. What he tore away he flung down the coast: the case to Sajjeshwar, the lid to Gunavante and Dhareshwar, and the cloth that had covered it to Mrideshwara on Kanduka hill, which the map now calls Murudeshwar. Gokarna holds the Atma-linga; that hill holds what had lain against it. The five together are the Panchalinga of this shore.

What the devotee is given here is small and exact. The pranalinga stands in a square saligrama pedestal, and a little opening at its centre shows the crown of the linga and nothing more; to that crown, unusually among great shrines, the hand is allowed, and pilgrims enter the sanctum for sparsha darshan.

Gokarna is one of the seven Mukti Sthalas of Karnataka, with Udupi, Kollur, Subrahmanya, Kumbasi, Koteshvara and Sankaranarayana, and families come from across the state to perform the last rites for their dead. The town is often called Dakshina Kashi, the Varanasi of the south. Its own pilgrimage begins with a bath in the Koti Tirtha and goes barefoot to five shrines before noon, Maha Ganapati honoured first.

Maha Shivaratri is the night, the fourteenth of the dark fortnight of Magha, when the town fills and the ratha is drawn from the Maha Ganapati temple through the lanes to drums. Dress is traditional — dhoti or lungi for men, who uncover the upper body before the garbhagriha, saree or salwar for women — and no camera goes inside.

Gokarna is old beyond reckoning. Kalidasa names the Lord of Gokarna in the Raghuvamsha, and the Tevaram sings the place among its two hundred and seventy-five Paadal Petra Sthalams. The temple stands a little inland on Car Street, in the town between the Gangavalli and the Aganashini. Copper plates trace royal care back to the Kadambas of Banavasi, ardent Shaivas who gave Gokarna land, gold and cattle, and tradition credits the first structure to Mayurasharma in the fourth century. Most of the great complex standing today is Vijayanagara work.

The katha begins far from this coast. Ravana's mother was a great devotee of Shiva, and when the linga she worshipped was cast into the sea she would not eat. Her son vowed to bring her the Atma-linga itself, Shiva's own soul in stone. He did tapasya on Kailasa of a severity few have matched — singing the Shiva Tandava Stotram in his own voice, and when that was not enough cutting into himself to string a veena from his sinews. Mahadev came, and gave, with one condition: wherever the Atma-linga touched the ground, there it would stay for ever.

Near Gokarna the sun went out. Shri Vishnu had darkened it, and Ravana, exact in his observance, could not let the evening sandhya pass. A brahmachari boy stood by the road, Ganesha in that form, and agreed to hold the linga on terms: he would call three times, and if Ravana had not returned, set it down. He called thrice, quickly, and went away with his cattle. Ravana caught the last cow as it sank into the earth and held only its ear, petrified there still: go, cow; karna, ear; Gokarna.

The temple is built in the Dravida manner of this coast. A tiered rajagopuram carries stucco figures of gods and celestials over the gate; behind it the stone vimana rises from a wide skirt of red tiled roof. The garbhagriha within is small and dark, so that nothing but the linga holds the eye, and a narrow antarala joins it to the navaranga mandapa on carved columns. The prakara gathers the lesser shrines — Parvati, Subrahmanya, Ganesha — and the Koti Tirtha tank lies close by.