Ghṛṣṇeśvara of Ellora

Grishneshwar of Ellora

A small Jyotirlinga beside the caves

Grishneshwar (Gṛṣṇeśvara) is the shrine at Verul — the village now universally called Ellora — a few hundred metres from the great Kailasa cave temple carved out of the solid basalt between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries CE. It is counted in most lists as the twelfth and last of the twelve Jyotirlingas, the linga-form shrines at which Shiva is held to be present as a pillar of light. The shrine is strikingly small beside the scale of the caves: a low, dark, west-facing chamber, a small linga, a brass trunk, a lamp, and an oiled floor. From the doorway, the cliff face of Ellora fills the sky.

The enumeration itself is worth flagging, because the familiar "twelve Jyotirlingas" list is later and less stable than it looks. Varāhamihira's Bṛhatsaṃhitā, of around the sixth century CE, sets out a shorter list of the great linga sites of the Deccan and north India. The standardised twelve-item list, with Grishneshwar standing last, circulates in later Śaivaite temple-inventory and Purāṇic texts and in the wide popular literature that grew out of them. The order of the list is not agreed on between the different published enumerations, and different regional traditions disagree about which shrine is "first". This is a case where the tidy popular number should not be treated as ancient fact.

Name and story

The name is usually explained from a local narrative about a man named Gṛṣṇa or Gṛṣṇeśvara who, in the course of a ritual, forgot his duty because he was absorbed in looking at Parvati — and was punished or purified accordingly. A second, widely told version concerns his son, who was drowned through the jealousy of a co-wife and then restored by Shiva. Neither version is traceable here to an early text, and local guides tell them with considerable variety. The present structure is generally attributed to the eighteenth-century Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar, who rebuilt many shrines across the Deccan, including at Ellora; a precise date for the present building is not securely documented, and the earlier shrine on the site has been repeatedly altered and restored.

Worship is small, intimate and entirely Shaiva in idiom. The pujari applies a mark of ash and mustard oil; lamps are kept burning through the day; the darshan is open through the night, which is unusual and is part of the shrine's local reputation. Pilgrims walking the twelve Jyotirlinga yātra — traditionally taken over about a week, though the order and duration vary widely in practice — often make Grishneshwar one of the shorter stops precisely because the shrine is small and the surrounding town is busy with the caves.

Sources and what is still unverified

This entry draws on Varāhamihira's Bṛhatsaṃhitā for the earlier form of the Jyotirlinga list, the later Śaivaite Purāṇic and temple-inventory enumerations, and the Archaeological Survey of India's material on the Ellora complex. A guardian should check: the Ahilyabai Holkar attribution and any date attached to it; the local Gṛṣṇa legend in its Verul oral form, which has not been collected here from a named informant; and the currentJyotirlinga enumeration used by the temple trust. Note also that the religious character of the Ellora caves after their conversion to Buddhist and then Jain use in the medieval period is a separate, contested history, and this entry makes no claim about it.