Trimbakeshwar Jyotirlinga

Tryambakeśvara is in the small town of Trimbak, a short drive from Nashik in Maharashtra, at the foot of the Brahmagiri hill in the Sahyadri range. The Godāvarī, the longest river of peninsular India, rises on that hill, and the river and the shrine belong to one story.

The Śiva Purāṇa tells that the sage Gautama lived on Brahmagiri with his wife Ahalyā. During a long drought his austerities won from Varuṇa a pit of water that never ran dry, and sages from all around came to live by it. In time some of them grew resentful. Through a stratagem a frail cow was sent into Gautama's field, and it fell dead when he brushed it away with a handful of grass. Charged with the sin of killing a cow, he was told that he could be cleansed only by bringing the Gaṅgā to that place. Gautama worshipped Śiva with an earthen liṅga. Śiva appeared, told him he was blameless, and at his request gave him the Gaṅgā, which flowed there as the Gautamī, or Godāvarī. The river agreed to remain only if Śiva stayed too, and so he did, as Tryambaka, “the three-eyed”.

The liṅga here is unlike any other of the twelve. Instead of a raised stone there is a hollow in the pedestal holding three small liṅgas, understood as Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Rudra. The present temple of black basalt was built in the mid-eighteenth century by the Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao. In the town is Kuśāvarta, the tank where the Godāvarī is said to re-emerge and where pilgrims bathe. Every twelve years the Siṃhastha Kumbh is held at Nashik and Trimbak, when Jupiter is in Leo, a conjunction the Purāṇa itself connects with the river's sanctity.