Vaidyanath Jyotirlinga

Vaidyanātha is most widely worshipped at Deoghar in the Santhal Parganas of Jharkhand, where the temple town is known as Baidyanath Dham or simply Baba Dham. The main shrine stands in a large courtyard surrounded by many smaller temples.

The Śiva Purāṇa tells that Rāvaṇa, king of Laṅkā, performed fierce austerities to please Śiva, and when Śiva did not appear he began to cut off his own heads and offer them one by one. Nine were gone when Śiva stood before him, restored the heads and granted him unequalled strength. Rāvaṇa asked to take Śiva home to Laṅkā. Śiva gave him a liṅga, warning that wherever it was set on the ground it would stay. On the journey Rāvaṇa had to stop to relieve himself and handed the liṅga to a cowherd, who found it too heavy and put it down. It could not be moved again, and it has been worshipped there as Vaidyanātha ever since. The name means “lord of physicians”.

Where “there” is has long been debated, and both readings are old. The Śiva Purāṇa's own list of the twelve places Vaidyanātha at “citābhūmi”, the cremation ground, a name that tradition connects with Deoghar. The popular hymn of the twelve jyotirliṅgas, in its commonest reading, says “Paralyāṃ Vaidyanāthaṃ ca”, which points to Parli Vaijnath in Beed district, Maharashtra, where a hilltop temple is also revered as the jyotirliṅga. Devotees of each place hold their shrine to be the one meant.

Deoghar is known above all for the Śrāvaṇī Melā. Through the month of Śrāvaṇa, kāṃvaṛiyās fill pots with Gaṅgā water at Sultanganj in Bihar and walk, many of them barefoot, roughly a hundred kilometres to pour it on the liṅga. The temple complex is also counted by tradition among the Śakti Pīṭhas.