Nageshwar Jyotirlinga

Nāgeśa, or Nāgeśvara, is most commonly visited at a temple on the open coastal plain of Saurashtra, on the road between Dwarka and Bet Dwarka in Gujarat. The present temple is modern, and a very tall seated image of Śiva beside it can be seen from far off.

The Śiva Purāṇa tells of a demon couple, Dāruka and Dārukā, who lived in a forest on the western sea. Dārukā had won a boon from Pārvatī, and by its power the forest could be moved wherever she wished; when the sage Aurva cursed the demons for their cruelty, they carried the whole forest out into the sea and preyed on travellers from there. Among those they seized was a merchant named Supriya, a steady devotee of Śiva, who kept up his worship in prison and taught his fellow captives to do the same. When Dāruka came to kill him, Supriya called on Śiva, who appeared and gave him the Pāśupata weapon, and the demons were destroyed. Śiva stayed in that forest as Nāgeśvara and Pārvatī as Nāgeśvarī.

The hymn of the twelve says only “Nāgeśaṃ Dārukāvane”, “Nāgeśa in the forest of Dāruka”, and where that forest lay is disputed. The temple near Dwarka fits the Purāṇa's western sea. Aundha Nagnath in Hingoli district, Maharashtra, an old and finely carved temple, is held by its tradition to be the jyotirliṅga. Jageshwar in the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand, a cluster of ancient stone temples in a deodar forest, makes the same claim, reading the name as dāru-vana, “forest of deodars”. Each has its devotees and its supporting texts.

What the three share is the name: Śiva as lord of the nāgas, the serpents he wears. Devotees commonly say that worship of Nāgeśvara frees one from the fear of poison, and the Purāṇa promises the worshipper Śiva's protection, as it was given to Supriya.