You can click on the name of the places in Red colour to read about that places and can be part of our journey right from the beginning.
Today morning we started our exploration with Pateshwar Temple(Click on the link to read about Pateshwar temple)
We retrace our steps back till the Ashram or mutt and we take a right turn and no sooner we take a right turn a little walk and we see the Agnivrush Temple and a small cave like temple behind it.
The cave like temple behind the temple was in a very neglected condition.Here again there was a huge jyotiling. I didn’t venture to go in ,because of fear of unknown.(Arre yaar mere ko samp aur chipkaliyo se darr lagta hai)
We now turned our attention toward the Agnivrush Temple, its again a small temple which had a carving of Lord Hunuman on its exterior wall.
The temple as you can see lies in the middle of forest. Its just an old cave type temple which has lots of small over grown vegetation above it implying neglect on the part of local authorities.The idol of Lord Hanuman on the exterior wall of the temple looks quite old.
On entering the temple I saw a strange and mysterious idol which intrigued me. It looked like Nandi but the face side was altogether of a different variety. I have never seen such idol in any temple in my life time, During the writing of this blog I spoke to few Indologists to gather information about this and some, I researched on the internet. Won’t you like to know more about this mysterious Idol? If yes , Read on…
The mysterious Agnivrish deity or idol that I saw appears to manifest the seven hands of Lord Agni along with the body of a bull (Vrishabha). Agni is describe in the Vedas as having two heads, seven hands, and three legs. If you see the deity from the front you can identify all of these aspects. You will see two faces (one human and one bull), seven hands, and three legs (with two human legs and one bull leg).
Rig Veda 4.58.3 describes Agni as follows:
chatvari shringa trayo asya pada dve shirshe sapta hastaso asya |
tridha baddho vrishabho roraviti maho devo martyan a vivesha ||
“Four are his horns, three are the feet that bear him; his heads are two, his hands are seven in number. Bound with a triple bond the bull roars loudly; the mighty god hath entered in to mortals.”
According to Sayanacharya, the four horns of Agni are the four Vedas. The three feet are the three daily sacrifices (morning, noon and evening). Others say they refer to the three fields of time (past, present and future). The two heads are the Brahmaudana and the Pravargya ceremonies (others say day and night). The seven hands are the seven metres of the Vedas (others say the seven rays of light). The three bonds are the three lokas (bhuh, bhuvah, svah)
Honestly I would be very happy if any of you, who has further information as regards to Agnivrush, please do share in comment section. I am very much interested to know whether this kind of idol exist in any other temple across India.
Just behind the Agnivrush there are of two carvings of Brahmini, Vaishnavi, and Maheshwari, placed on the floor along the wall.I am sorry if the photos are not very sharp , because there was hardly any light within this cramped cave temple.
We clicked few pictures and moved on to our next temple and let me tell you Iwas told that there are more than thousand shivlings….THOUSANDS OF SHIVLING….Man oh Man I m truly intrigued to see, Aren’t you?
So stay tuned for the next part of my blog.
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