The Pandavas and the bull: the Panch Kedar of Garhwal

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Namaste. Welcome back. Settle in, and let your breath slow down a little.

In the first sitting we heard the story of Kedarnath as the Shiva Purana tells it: two sages, Nara and Narayana, praying for the good of all people, and Shiva staying on in the Himalaya as Kedareshvara. We also heard, briefly, a second story, the one the hills of Garhwal tell. Today we stay with that second story, the Pandavas and the bull, and we will visit the five places it gave to these mountains.

First, a clear word about where this story comes from. It is a local tradition of the Garhwal Himalaya. It is told in the temples, in villages, and by the priests and families who have lived in these valleys for generations. It is not a chapter of the Mahabharata itself. The great epic tells us a lot about the Pandavas, and it does bring them to the Himalaya, but the story of Shiva as a bull and the five Kedars is the hills' own telling. We say this plainly because it helps us hold the story rightly, with love, and without claiming for it more than it claims for itself.

Let us first hear what the Mahabharata does say.

In the epic, the Pandavas come to the Himalaya more than once. During their long years of exile, the Vana Parva, the book of the forest, takes them north into the high country, towards Badari, the place we met in the first sitting where Nara and Narayana sat in tapas.

And at the very end of the epic, in the short book called the Mahaprasthanika Parva, the book of the great departure, the brothers give up their kingdom. With Draupadi, they set out walking towards the north, into the mountains. One by one they fall on the way. Yudhishthira walks on, with a dog that has followed them. It is one of the quietest and most moving passages in the whole epic.

So the idea of the Pandavas walking in the Himalaya is very old, and it is in the text. The people of Garhwal, living in those same mountains, carried the memory further, into their own valleys and their own temples.

Now the tradition itself.

After the war at Kurukshetra, the tradition says, the Pandava brothers carried a heavy weight. They had won, but they had fought against their own kin and teachers, and many had died. They wished to be free of that weight, and they went to seek Shiva's grace.

Shiva, the story says, did not wish to be found easily. He went into the high Himalaya and took the form of a bull among the herds grazing in the meadows. The Pandavas followed. Bhima recognised him among the animals. As Bhima reached out towards the bull, it began to sink into the earth. Bhima held on to the part that was still above the ground, the hump on its back. That hump remained at Kedarnath.

This is why, in the local understanding, the linga at Kedarnath is shaped the way it is. It is a rough, rising rock, which devotees see as the back of the bull. Pilgrims touch it, rest their foreheads against it, and offer ghee to it with their own hands.

It is worth pausing on the bull itself. In Shiva's temples everywhere, a bull already sits at the door. That is Nandi, Shiva's companion and carrier, who faces the sanctum and waits. So when the hills tell of Shiva taking the form of a bull, they are using a picture that every devotee already loves. In the herds of the high meadows, among the animals the hill families lived with every day, the divine was hiding in plain sight.

The tradition goes on. The other parts of that form, the hills say, appeared at four more places across Garhwal. The arms at Tungnath. The face at Rudranath. The navel at Madhyamaheshwar. The matted hair at Kalpeshwar. With Kedarnath, these make the Panch Kedar, the five Kedars. And many families in Nepal add that the head appeared at Pashupatinath, in Kathmandu.

Please keep in mind that tellings differ a little from village to village and from book to book. The version we give is the one most often heard. None of these tellings put words in the mouths of the brothers or of Shiva, and we will not either.

Let us visit the five places, one at a time. Picture them spread across the hills, some a day's walk apart, each at the end of its own path.

The first is Kedarnath itself, the place of the hump, at the head of the Mandakini valley. We know it from the first sitting: the grey stone temple, the stone Nandi, the snow peaks close behind.

The second is Tungnath, the place of the arms. It sits high on a ridge above the meadows of Chopta, and people often describe it as the highest Shiva temple in the world. The walk up is short compared with the others, but steep, through rhododendron forest and open grassland. Above the temple rises a rocky summit called Chandrashila, and on a clear morning the whole wall of the Himalaya stands in front of you.

The third is Rudranath, the place of the face. Here the deity is worshipped as a natural rock face, and the path to it is long, through forest and high pastures, with lakes along the way. Many pilgrims say that Rudranath is the hardest of the five to reach, and that its quiet stays with them.

The fourth is Madhyamaheshwar, the place of the navel. The name itself has the word madhya, middle, in it. The path climbs from the village of Ransi through forest and small hamlets to a green meadow with the temple at its edge.

The fifth is Kalpeshwar, the place of the matted hair, in the Urgam valley. Unlike the others, it is said to stay open through the year, and the deity is worshipped in a small shrine set into the rock.

There is something beautiful in how these five places behave through the year. Like Kedarnath, most of them close when the snow comes. Their worship moves down to winter seats in the villages below. For Kedarnath and Madhyamaheshwar, that winter seat is Ukhimath. For Tungnath it is Makkumath, and for Rudranath, Gopeshwar. When spring returns, the festival images are carried back up the mountain in a palki, with music and villagers walking alongside.

So the Panch Kedar are five temples, and they are also a rhythm of the whole region, going up in summer and coming down in winter, as the herds and the families of these valleys have always done.

The Pandava story lives outside the temples too. In many Garhwal villages, people perform the Pandav Lila, a traditional performance where the story of the Pandavas is sung and danced over several days, with drums, and with villagers taking part. It is a reminder that this tradition belongs to the people of the hills. It is their memory, told in their own way.

Why does a story like this matter, if it is not in the epic's own text?

Because it tells us how the people of these mountains understood their land. For them, the hills were not empty. Every ridge and meadow could hold something of Shiva. The search of the Pandavas became their own search, and the five temples became places where anyone could come and look for grace, the way the brothers once did.

And the story has a gentle lesson inside it. The Pandavas were great heroes. They had won the greatest war of their age. Yet grace did not come to them easily. They had to walk, and search, and keep going when Shiva was not where they expected him to be. That is how many of us feel, sometimes, in our own prayers.

The Shiva Purana gave us sages praying for others. The hills give us seekers searching with longing. Both are welcome at Kedarnath.

Some pilgrims try to visit all five Kedars in one season. It is a long and demanding journey on foot, at high altitude, and the weather can change quickly. If you ever think of it, go slowly, go with local guidance, and speak to your doctor first if you have any heart, lung or other health condition, or if you are elderly or pregnant. There is no hurry. The mountains have waited a long time, and they will wait for you.

One thing to take with you. When something you are seeking does not come easily, remember the Pandavas in the meadows. They did not stop searching. This week, keep one small practice going even on the days it feels empty. That is often when it matters most.

In the next sitting, we meet a young teacher from the far south who, tradition says, walked all the way to these snows: Adi Shankaracharya, and his long bond with Kedarnath.

Keep going

• Listen: The Pandavas and the bull: the Panch Kedar of Garhwal
• Previous: Nara, Narayana and the linga in the snows
• Next: Adi Shankaracharya and Kedarnath
• हिन्दी में पढ़ें
• All episodes of Kedarnath: the shrine in the snows