Nageshwar

As Nagesha, the lord is invoked above all for protection — from snakebite, from poison, and from the subtler venoms of the mind — and a darshan here is sought by those seeking freedom from fear. Set close to Dwarka, it is usually taken together with the Dwarkadhish temple and Bet Dwarka on the Saurashtra pilgrimage.

The precise identity of the Nageshwar Jyotirlinga is, however, debated: two other shrines — Aundha Nagnath in Hingoli district of Maharashtra, and Jageshwar amid the deodar forests of Uttarakhand — also claim the title. The reading of the scriptural 'Darukavana' as the Dwarka forest supports this coastal site, the most widely listed of the three, but the question is not settled, and each of the three keeps its own devotees.

Daily worship runs from the pre-dawn aarti to the night, with the Rudrabhishek — the pouring of water, milk and offerings over the lingam — the central rite; on Maha Shivaratri and through the month of Shravan the shrine fills with devotees. Set on the open coast between the two Dwarkas, with the great seated Shiva looking out to sea, Nageshwar keeps a stillness quite unlike the crowded city-shrines among the Jyotirlingas.

Nageshwar — Nagesha or Nagnath, the 'lord of serpents' — stands on the Saurashtra coast of Gujarat, on the road between Dwarka and the island of Bet Dwarka, some seventeen kilometres from Dwarka town. It is counted among the twelve Jyotirlingas, and its name and legend both turn on the Nagas, the serpents.

The Shiva Purana tells that in the forest called Darukavana a demon, Daruka, seized a devout merchant named Supriya and cast him with others into an undersea prison; when the captives called ceaselessly on Shiva, the Lord rose up, destroyed the demon and stayed on at the spot as a self-manifest Jyotirlinga, worshipped ever after as the guardian against poison and every worldly venom. The forest took its name from Daruka's wife, herself a devotee of Parvati.

The temple as it stands is largely modern, rebuilt in recent decades with sponsorship associated with the music magnate Gulshan Kumar; beside it rises a colossal seated image of Shiva, about twenty-five metres tall, meditating with the coast behind — the landmark most visitors see first.

The shrine itself is modest and modern in scale, its Jyotirlinga set in a sunken sanctum reached by a descent; there is little of the ancient carved grandeur of the older Jyotirlingas here.

What dominates instead is the enormous outdoor murti — a roughly twenty-five-metre Shiva seated in meditation, visible from far along the coast road — and the open, sea-lit grounds around the temple. The setting, between the two Dwarkas on the edge of the Arabian Sea, is part of its draw; it is a place shaped more by its legend and its landmark than by historic stone.