Place · air-element Shiva temple · India
Kālahasti / Srikālahasti
Also known as Kalahasti, Kālahasti
The Pancha Bhuta Sthalam representing the air element (vayu), at Srikalahasti in Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, 36 kilometres east of Tirupati. Shiva's vayu-linga is honoured by watching three lamps inside the sealed sanctum, which flicker constantly as the only evidence of air without any natural draught. The name combines Sri (spider), Kala (serpent) and Hasti (elephant), the three animal devotees. The temple grew under Chola king Rajendra I in the 11th century and was expanded by Krishnadevaraya in 1516. The Rahu-Ketu puja for astrological doshas draws modern pilgrims by the thousand.
- Periods
- Regional Flourishing, Islamic Age and Bhakti Traditions, Republic and Living Practice
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Shaiva/local sacred geography
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 13.750, 79.700
Connections (4)
- Sacred transplantMount Kailāsa
Scholars point out that one of the hills at Kālahasti is itself named Kailāsa, carrying Himalayan sanctity to the Penna gorge in southern Andhra. The temple holds the Vāyu lingam, one of the five element shrines of the Tamil country, so Shiva's northern mountain is named on the ground here rather than only invoked.
- Mythic sequenceTirupati
Tradition reads the Eastern Ghats as the body of Ādiśesha: Tirumala the seven-hooded head, the Nallamalas the coils, Kālahasti the tail. The scheme ties a Vaishnava hill, a Śaiva gorge and a forest circuit into one serpent, which is how the Andhra country's shrines are told as a single landscape.
- Devotional corpus onDhurjati
Dhurjati's Kalahasti Mahatyamu is the temple's own sthala-purana in Telugu verse, and his satakam addresses the god directly in a hundred verses that spend much of their length refusing the court he was employed at. A poet paid by an emperor telling his god that kings are not worth writing for, in a poem the emperor's court preserved, is the sharpest thing in the circle.
- Patronage networkSrisailam/ Sri Shailam
Srikalahasti and Srisailam are the two Shaiva shrines the empire endowed most heavily, at opposite ends of the Telugu country, and both carry Vijayanagara prakara walls and inscriptions. A dynasty whose own devotion was Vaishnava endowed Shaiva, Jain and Shakta institutions as a matter of course, which is the political point of the programme.
On these journeys
Sources
Hindu pilgrimage sites in India — Wikipedia
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