Place · shared-faith hot springs · India
Manikaran
Hot springs in the Parvati valley in Himachal where a gurdwara and Shiva and Rama temples share one bank, and food is cooked in the same boiling spring water for the langar and for the temple prasad. Sikh tradition attaches the place to Guru Nanak's visit and Hindu tradition to Shiva and Parvati.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Sikh and Shaiva traditions
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 32.027, 77.348
Worth knowing
The water comes out at close to boiling and rice is cooked in cloth bundles lowered into it, which is the practical reason both kitchens are on the same pool. The gurdwara is a stop on the Nanak udasi routes and the temples belong to the older valley cult; neither claims the spring exclusively.
Connections (2)
- Shared site withKedāranāth
Manikaran in the Parvati valley has a gurdwara, a Shiva temple and a Rama temple on one bank of boiling springs, with langar and prasad cooked in the same water — Guru Nanak is remembered as having stopped here, and so is Shiva. It belongs to the same Himalayan Shaiva landscape as Kedarnath but works by sharing rather than by exclusivity, which is the ordinary condition of small hot-spring sites in these valleys.
- Site adjacencyHidimba Devi, Kullu
Hidimbā's grove at Manāli and the springs at Manikaran are the two great sacred sites of the Kullu and Parvati valleys, forty kilometres apart. One is a temple with no image over a hand-printed rock; the other is boiling water shared between a gurdwara and Hindu shrines that cook in it together.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Manikaran”. Janamsakhi accounts of the northern udasi; Himachal Pradesh Gazetteer, Kullu district.
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