Pashupatinath Templeਪਸ਼ੂਪਤੀਨਾਥ ਮੰਦਰ

On the eastern edge of Kathmandu, the Bagmati River bends past a hillside of gold roofs, white shrines and stone cremation steps, and at its heart stands the temple Hindus across Nepal and India know simply as the home of the Lord of all beings. Pashupatinath Temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Pashupati, a form of Shiva, in Kathmandu, Nepal. The precinct spreads over 246 hectares along both banks of the sacred Bagmati and holds 518 mini temples around its principal pagoda. UNESCO placed it on the World Heritage List in 1979 as part of the Kathmandu Valley, and for devotees it is counted among the holiest abodes of Shiva in the world.

What is Pashupatinath Temple?

Pashupatinath Temple is the oldest Hindu temple in Kathmandu and one of the most significant Shiva shrines in South Asia. Its existence is recorded as early as 400 CE, and tradition traces the site to a Licchavi king, Prachanda Deva, with rebuilding under the medieval king Shivadeva and the main temple taking its present form in a renovation of 1692 after termites and earthquakes damaged the earlier structures. Inside the sanctum stands a stone Mukhalinga, a linga with faces, about one metre high on a silver base bound with a silver serpent. Its faces look to four directions and represent aspects of Shiva: Sadyojata, Vamadeva, Tatpurusha and Aghora, with Ishana as the imagined fifth. Only four priests may touch the idol, and daily worship is carried by two groups, the Bhatta priests who perform the rituals and the Rajbhandaris who serve as caretakers and assistants.

The head of Shiva: Pashupatinath, Kashi and Kedarnath

In the sacred geography told by devotees, Pashupatinath is honoured as the head of Shiva, with his body stretching south to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, India. The Shiva Purana tells how Shiva, hiding from the Pandavas in the form of a bull, sank into the earth and reappeared in parts: his head at Pashupatinath, his hump at Kedarnath, his face at Rudranath, his arms at Tungnath and his navel at Madhyamaheshwar. The same chapter praises the linga of Pashupatinath as a bestower of wishes. These are beliefs of the tradition, told here as devotees tell them, and they explain why a pilgrim who comes to Kathmandu so often feels the journey continues across the border to the Himalayan shrines of India.

How is the temple built?

The main temple is built in the Newari pagoda style of the Kathmandu Valley. Two levels of roof rise in copper covered with gold over a square base, reaching 23 metres from base to pinnacle, and a gold pinnacle crowns the top. Four main doors, all covered with silver sheets, lead toward two sanctums: an inner garbhagriha where the Mukhalinga stands, and an outer sanctum like an open corridor. Around the main shrine the precinct has grown over centuries into a small sacred city of temples, ashrams, inscriptions and images, including a Vaishnava temple complex with a Rama temple from the 14th century and the Guhyeshwari Temple, mentioned in an 11th century manuscript. Along the river, the cremation ghats remind every visitor that Pashupatinath is a place of endings as well as beginnings.

Which festivals are celebrated at Pashupatinath?

The year's greatest gathering is Maha Shivaratri, the night of Shiva, when devotees fill the precinct from before dawn. Teej, the festival at which women pray for their families and for long life, is the other great celebration named for this temple, drawing crowds of women in red to the Bagmati banks. Through the rest of the year the temple keeps a daily rhythm of ritual carried by its two priestly groups, the Bhattas and the 108 Rajbhandaris who rotate in sets of three and change on every full moon day. Buddhists also hold the complex sacred: in Vajrayana tradition its cremation ground is revered as one of the eight great charnel grounds, linked with Padmasambhava and with teachers such as Matsyendranath and Gorakhnath, whose temple stands within the wider Pashupati area.

Visiting Pashupatinath

The temple stands in the Deopatan area of eastern Kathmandu, at about 817 metres above sea level, and most visitors walk its outer precinct, watch the Bagmati aarti from across the river and take in the panorama of shrines from the far bank, where the white shivalayas line up above the ghats. The inner sanctum follows the temple's own rules of entry and worship, which visitors should respect as they would at any living shrine. Read Pashupatinath alongside its Himalayan partner Kedarnath and Nepal's other great pilgrimage in this collection, Muktinath in Mustang, the high temple of liberation at the foot of the Thorong La pass.