Jammu: In the History of 150 years, it was for the first time that Hindu devotees from India performed a Puja (worship) to the ice formed Lingam of Lord Shiva, not at the cave, but 6kms away at the Panchatarni (five flows), a place outside the holy cave.
It was the day of longest lunar eclipse lasting 3 hours on June 15 (night at 11-50 to 3-30 am early hours of June 16) that this peculiar start was made at Amarnat Yatra (journey) that is described in ‘Discovery of India’ written by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru in jail during 1942-43.
The natural Himalinga (ice formation) alone was to be worshipped by devotees so long traditionally, in an arduous journey made up the Himalayan tracks. The Journey starts on June 29, this year, according to organizers who had informed the visitors. But the devotees wanted to start the religious travel to the cave from June 15!
4 of the pious persons in a batch going up there had contacted to go by a helicopter to the place of worship. But that did not happen anyway.
Panchatarni is in Anantnag district, 6kms from the famous Amarnath Cave, where the tall white ice-formed Lingam appears, and is worshipped every year. Not in 2011, as Puja was done in Panchtarni, breaking the tradition by the first batch of pilgrims.
Under Hindu scriptures, it was in the cave that Lord Shiva taught “immortality to wife Parvathi. Thousands of devotees wind their way up on a slippery path, to reach the cave on foot. The Jammu/Kashmir Govt. has reduced the earlier worship season of 2 months upto 2005, to 46 days now, there was a nasty rumour that the Himalingam was artificial but devotees did not trust so.