Amarnāth Cave Shiva

Amarnāth Cave Śiva

An ice lingam and the largest Himalayan pilgrimage

The Amarnāth cave lies in the Lidder valley in Anantnag district, Kashmir, at roughly 3,800 metres, reached on foot over four or five days from Pahalgām (Amru) or from Sonmarg. The object of the pilgrimage is a naturally formed ice stalagmite — the Amareśvara or Amarnāth lingam — standing in a cave at the end of a rock-cut approach passing under a natural arch. The lingam is understood to grow and to shrink through the year, and to melt and re-form; the water that issues from it is treated as Amṛtāṇḍa-jāla and pilgrims drink it. Pilgrimage is timed to the lunar month of Kārtika, at Amarnāth Pūrṇimā, with the Śiva Śivarātri day within it taken by some as the decisive day.

The yātrā is not only devotional but also extremely regulated, and this is part of the shrine's character rather than an administrative detail. Pilgrims observe a fast with no meat, no salt and no附加值 — no, precisely: no meat, no salt, no liquor, no turmeric, and no sexual contact, and they bathe in the Budhi Gangā at Pahalgām before setting out. The route is under the Śrī Amarnāth Yātrā Shrīne Trust (a trust was constituted in 2000 in Ganderbal, and it works with the J&K government on the pilgrimage, the route infrastructure and the medical and rescue posts along the way). Numbers of pilgrims have grown enormously since the 1990s, and the state and central governments have repeatedly resourced the yātrā. Both approaches are active and the route taken varies by year and by which side of the mountain the pilgrims use.

The shrine's textual attestation is thinner than its visibility suggests. The reference to Amareśvara in Kalhaṇa's Rājatarangiṇī — the twelfth-century chronicle of Kashmir — is usually cited as the earliest, and is the only early item that can be checked with some confidence. Xuanzang, Al-Biruni and Ibn Battuta did not describe this cave; the corpus frontmatter attributes such accounts to all three, and no passage in any of their works has been found. Those attributions should be deleted from the record rather than softened.

Sources and what is still unverified

• Kalhaṇa, Rājatarangiṇī — for the Amareśvara attestation, at work level.
• Anantnag District Gazetteer (Government of India gazetteer series) — for the shrine, the route and the traditional administration.
• The Śrī Amarnāth Yātrā Shrīne Trust's own published notices — exist, in English and Hindi, and are the authority for pilgrimage dates and route.
• Unverified: the frontmatter's traveller attributions, its "5 lakh by the 20th century" figure, and the caves' association with the Nāra-Nārāyaṇa of the Badrinath tradition.