Journey
Pancharama Kshetras
Five Śiva temples of coastal Andhra, held to be shards of one liṅga. Tradition has the asura Tārakāsura carry an invincible Śiva liṅga at his throat; when Kumāra finally broke it, the five pieces fell across the Godāvari and Krishna deltas and were installed where they landed — by Indra, Sūrya, Chandra, Vishnu and Kumāra himself.
Stops (5)
- Amarārāma, Amarāvatī · Amareśvara — installed by Indra and the immortals
The shard installed by Indra, which is why the place is Amarāvatī, the town of the deathless. A white liṅga nearly five metres tall rises through two storeys, so the priest climbs a platform to bathe its head. It stands on the Krishna a few hundred metres from the Sātavāhana Buddhist mahāchaitya — two religions on one riverbank.
- Bhīmeśvara, Drākshārāmam · Bhīmeśvara — installed by Sūrya
Drākshārāmam is the only one of the five that is also a Mahā Śakti Pīṭha, where Satī's left cheek is said to have fallen, so Bhīmeśvara and Mānikyāmba stand in one enclosure. The two-storey temple was built under Chālukya Bhīma I about 900, and its walls carry some eight hundred inscriptions, the largest early Telugu epigraphic archive anywhere.
- Somārāma, Bhīmavaram · Someśvara — installed by Chandra
At Gunupudi in Bhīmavaram, the shard the moon installed and where the moon's own name stuck. The liṅga is said to change colour with the lunar month, white at full moon and brown at the new, and an Annapūrṇa shrine sits directly above the sanctum — a first-floor goddess over a ground-floor Śiva, which almost nothing else in the south does.
- Kshīrārāma, Palakollu · Kshīra Rāmalingeśvara — installed by Vishnu
Palakollu's shard, white as milk, which is what kshīra means and where the name comes from. The gopuram is among the tallest in coastal Andhra at some forty-five metres, nine storeys raised in the sixteenth century. Tradition has Rāma install this piece and strike the ground for water, giving the tank its name.
- Kumārārāma, Sāmarlakota · Kumāra Bhīmeśvara — installed by Kumāra
Sāmarlakota's shard, set down by Kumāra himself, which makes it the one the story ends at. The liṅga rises through two storeys of white limestone; an upper gallery exists so that abhisheka can reach the top. Chālukya Bhīma I built the temple in the early tenth century, the same reign that raised Drākshārāmam.