Mangeshi

Mangeshi — the Shiva temple of Ponda, Goa

A Konkan temple in a Portuguese landscape

Mangeshi, at Ponda in Goa, is one of the principal Shiva temples of the Konkan and the oldest in the region by its own tradition. Its shrine is associated with the Panchakanya grouping of Parashurama's five lingas along the Konkan coast — Mangeshi, Gokarna, Pārshuram, Mahābalēśvara and Nīlguṇḍi — a grouping that exists in the regional śāhitya and temple record rather than in a single text, and that a guardian should source before repeating it as scripture. The Pārshuram and Gokarna associations are strong in the local pilgrimage economy, with Nīlguṇḍi treated as the westernmost of the five in some enumerations and omitted in others.

The temple's important association in the region is the Gondhal drumming tradition of Goa, in which the gondhals — an organised body of musicians attached to the temples of the region — play for the deity at the Mūrti, Sakal and Paryaya festivals. The Gondhal is one of the few Goan performing traditions with its own unbroken institutional life, and it is a better subject for this entry's cultural detail than a generic description of a Shiva temple. The community that served the temple, the landholding around it, and the vangor and pūrari offices are part of the same record.

A note on a claim the corpus should be careful with. Mangeshi is sometimes described locally as one of the twelve Jyotirlingas. It is not in the standard list of twelve, and the standard list should not be extended to accommodate a regional shrine. Either the local claim should be attributed to the Konkan tradition and explained, or it should be dropped; what should not happen is its silent promotion into the pan-Indian list, which would corrupt a fixed enumeration for the sake of a local pride.

Sources and what is still unverified

Majumdar for the deity material; Nilakanta Sastri for the historical frame; the Goa gazetteer for the local record, which is the essential source here.

For a named guardian, ideally a Konkani speaker: the temple's foundation chronology and the history of its restoration after the Portuguese period; the Panchakanya membership as the local tradition actually states it; the Gondhal institution's own account of its office; and the present custodians of the shrine.