The Goddess Spitting Fire: Myths and Reality of the Kangra Temple

Abstract

The paper focuses on one of the most popular Hindu pilgrimage centers — Jwalamukhi temple, based in the Kangra district of the North-Western state of India, Himachal Pradesh. The temple is unique due to the absence of the main image. At the same time, people worship the deity as women’s energy Shakti in the form of a fire. The author draws attention to peculiar analogies traced by some research scholars between this temple and the fire temple named Surakhan Ateshgah near Baku in Azerbaijan. Considering this subject, the author analyses different versions of the origin of the fire temple in Azerbaijan, including the so-called “Indian angle”. Basing on the wide range of source material, including the reports of the Archaeological Survey of India established by the British colonial administration in 1861, the author evaluates and critically reviews various versions regarding possible dates of building this temple. Undertaken investigation allows concluding that the temple of Jwalamukhi could be founded in the 6th–7th centuries AD. However, the very cult of worshipping this goddess in Kangra might originate much earlier, in the first centuries BC. The article contains a cryptic narrative of the medieval history of the temple, supplemented by famous chronicles by Ferishta narrating how it was repeatedly subjected to devastating raids of Muslim armies, firstly led by the Delhi sultans and later by Mughal rulers. The description of the temple and religious rituals are based on the personal impressions of the author.