Lingaraja

Lingaraja

The Ekāmra Śiva, and a shrine shared by two sects

Liṅgarāja is the principal deity of Bhubaneswar in Odisha, and the cluster of pilgrimage shrines around it is called the Ekāmra-kṣetra. The name is mishandled in the popular literature: the previous version of this entry glossed it as "the place of the one-mango-tree" and also glossed Bhubaneswar itself as "Lord of the three worlds", which is very likely a confusion between the city's Sanskrit name and the market quarter traditionally called Triquetra. A reader with the district gazetteer should settle it. What is not in doubt is that the Ekāmra kṣetra is a Śaiva centre of the first order, and a Śaiva one.

What makes this shrine unusual is not its size but its double belonging. The liṅga here is worshipped as Harihara — the fused form in which Śiva and Viṣṇu share one body — so that Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava worship meet inside the same enclosure. The consequence is visible in the hands of the devotee: a pilgrim may offer bilva leaves and tulsi at one and the same shrine. The claim that this makes it "the only such temple in India", or "one of only two", circulates constantly. This entry does not repeat it, because no authority was found that establishes any count at all.

The temple is a tall rekha-deul — a curvilinear tower over a square hall — of the Odishan type, standing on a low terrace within a compound of many other shrines. The present fabric is generally attributed to the reign of Jajati Keśari of the Somavamsi (Somapaura) line in the late eleventh century, and an earlier shrine on the site is claimed in the local record. The sequence of foundations, collapses and renovations here is precisely the kind of thing that needs an epigraphist rather than a summary. The bhoga of khīri served to the images, and the ekādaśi observance, are matters of temple office rather than of text.

The festivals that structure the year are the Chandan Yātrā of Vaiśākha, when sandalwood paste is applied to the images and a sandalwood boat is carried on the Bindu Sarovar tank, and Rukmini Haraṇa Ekādaśī of Phālguna. The sectarian coexistence shows in them too: a Śaiva and a Vaiṣṇava calendar share one building.

Sources and what is still unverified

The Orissa State Gazetteer, Bhubaneswar volume, is the first thing to open; the Archaeological Survey of India's Reports and Memoirs cover the tower. The Encyclopaedia of the Hindu World (ed. Jones and Ryan) gives an entry-level account. Still unverified: the date of the present structure, the height ranking against other Odishan temples, the origin of the Ekāmra etymology, the "only two in India" claim, and the two tier-1 attributions carried by the previous revision, which could not be matched to real works and were dropped rather than passed on. Left .