Nīlakaṇṭha

Nīlakaṇṭha means “the one with the blue throat”. It is the name of Śiva as the one who saved the worlds by drinking their poison. Unlike many of his forms, it is not a separate image so much as a mark he carries always: wherever Śiva is shown, the blue at his throat remembers this act.

The story is told in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the Mahābhārata and elsewhere, and the Śiva Purāṇa counts it among his great deeds. The gods and the asuras churned the ocean of milk for the nectar of immortality, with Mount Mandara as the rod and the serpent Vāsuki as the rope. But before any treasure rose, the ocean gave up hālāhala — a poison so fierce that its fumes began to burn the three worlds. Neither side could stop it. They ran to Śiva, and he, with Pārvatī's consent, gathered the poison in his palm and drank it.

He did not swallow it, for the worlds rest within him, and he did not spit it out, for it would have burnt them again. He held it in his throat, which turned blue. Many tellings add that Pārvatī pressed her hand to his throat to keep it there. The churning then went on, and the treasures and the nectar came afterwards — to others.

Tradition reads in this a whole teaching on compassion. The one who is truly great is the one who takes the harm that no one else can bear, asks nothing for it, and leaves the reward to others. It also teaches restraint: the poison is neither denied nor let loose; it is held, consciously, where it can do no harm. Every churning — of a life, a family, a society — throws up poison before it yields nectar, and someone must be willing to hold it.

Devotees remember Nīlakaṇṭha when they are asked to carry what is bitter, and pray to him for protection from poison of every kind — in the body, in speech, in the mind. In many places, cool water and milk are poured over the liṅga with the thought of soothing the burning throat of the one who drank for the world.