Kedarnath Temple

About

Kedarnath Mandir sits at roughly 3,583 metres on the slopes of the Garhwal Himalayas, where Shiva is venerated as Kedarnatha, Lord of the Field. The svayambhu lingam in the sanctum is three-sided and broad, rising from a wide stone pedestal, and is regarded as one of the holiest manifestations of Shiva in the entire jyotirlinga circuit.

Reached only by a seventeen-kilometre climb from Gaurikund, the temple opens to pilgrims between Akshaya Tritiya in spring and Kartika Purnima in autumn. Through the long Himalayan winter the vigraha is carried down to Ukhimath, where devotion continues for six months under the same priests who follow the deity into the snowline.

Kedarnath stands at the head of the Panch Kedar pilgrimage, with Tungnath, Rudranath, Madhyamaheshwar, and Kalpeshwar marking the other limbs of Shiva's bull form. Local tradition credits the Pandavas with founding the original shrine, and Adi Shankara is said to have revived it before attaining mahasamadhi nearby, where a samadhi mandir still receives offerings behind the main temple.

In the catastrophic flash floods of June 2013, debris and mud overwhelmed the surrounding valley, yet a vast rock lodged behind the sanctum divided the torrent and spared the temple. That stone is now worshipped as Bhim Shila, a silent witness to the resilience of the dham.

History

Early references to Kedara appear in the Skanda Purana, and by the twelfth century the site is recorded as a major Shaiva pilgrimage in the Kritya-kalpataru of Bhatta Lakshmidhara. Hagiographies of Adi Shankara place his final years and mahasamadhi here, and the head priest, called the Raval, has long been drawn from the Veerashaiva community of Karnataka. Worship is performed by Jangam priests, while local Tirtha Purohit Brahmins of the Shukla Yajurveda guide pilgrims through the rites of the dham.

Significance

Kedarnath is the highest of the twelve Jyotirlingas and the first stop in the Panch Kedar circuit, where Shiva is said to have submerged himself as a bull and re-emerged across five Himalayan peaks. Pilgrimage tradition holds that darshan here should be sealed by a later visit to Badrinath, joining the worship of Shiva and Vishnu into a single Himalayan yatra.