Place · multi-faith mountain shrine · Nepal
Muktināth / Gandakī
Also known as Gandakī, Muktināth
At 3,800 m in the Kali Gandaki: a Vishnu shrine with 108 waterspouts, a Shakti pitha, and a Buddhist gompa where the same natural gas flame is worshipped as Chumig Gyatsa. Also the source region of shaligram stones used in Vishnu worship across India.
- Periods
- Classical and Puranic Age, Republic and Living Practice
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Vaishnava, Shakta and Tibetan Buddhist traditions
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.817, 83.872
Worth knowing
The gas flame burns behind a screen of water in the Jwala Mai shrine, which is why Buddhists call it Chumig Gyatsa, the hundred waters, and Hindus treat it as one of the self-manifested Vishnu sites. Pilgrims bathe under all hundred and eight spouts in sequence at three thousand eight hundred metres, and the shaligram ammonites of the riverbed below are used in Vishnu worship across India.
Connections (3)
- Site adjacencyLumbinī
Lumbini, in present-day Nepal, is traditionally regarded as the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Marked by the Ashokan pillar and ancient monastic remains, it became one of Buddhism’s most important pilgrimage sites. Along with Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar, Lumbini forms the core sacred geography of the Buddha’s life.
- Shared site withHalesi Mahadev
Halesi and Muktinath are the two Nepali sites where a Shaiva and a Nyingma claim occupy the same room rather than the same hill: a limestone cave worshipped as Shiva's and as Maratika, where Padmasambhava is held to have realised deathlessness, and a shrine where the same natural gas flame is Jwala Mai and Chumig Gyatsa. Both keep two liturgies on different days.
- River flowSonepur Mela
Sonepur's ground is a confluence, and the river that makes it comes down from Muktināth. The Gandakī rises in the Nepal Himalaya below the Muktināth shrine, where the śālagrāma ammonites that are worshipped as Vishnu are gathered from its bed, and joins the Ganga at Harihar Kshetra — where the temple holds Hari and Hara together. A river sacred to Vishnu at its source meets the Ganga at a shrine that refuses to choose between him and Shiva.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Muktinath”. Diana Eck, India: A Sacred Geography (2012); Charles Ramble on Mustang's shared shrines.
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