L’amore di Śiva per la Montagna. Il tempio di Kedarnath nel complesso sacro di Panch Kedar

Indian myths have identified the mountain as a ‘sacred’ place, primarily as the seat of the deities: the gods and goddesses inhabit Mount Meru, the mountain at the centre of the world, according to ancient Indian cosmography. In particular, Brahmanical culture and the influence of certain local traditions have built around the figure of the god Śiva a series of myths linking him to mountain settings, particularly the Himālaya range. Not only is one of Śiva's most common epithets Yogīśvara, ‘the Lord of yogins’, i.e., ascetics who retreat to mountainous places to meditate, but the mountain is the god's own bride personified in Pārvatī, the ‘Daughter of the Mountain’. Śiva, the ‘erotic ascetic’ represented in aniconic form by his liṅga (the phallus), retreats to the mountain peaks for long meditative sessions, but at the same time, on the mountain, which is his bride, he engages in long amplexes. Therefore, the Mountain/Pārvatī, represents the same feminine energy (śakti) that embodies the dynamic and kinetic aspect as opposed to the static male pole. The religious values that Indian culture has attributed to the mountain are thus delineated: the setting of an otherness made up of vast solitary places frequented by ascetics, which at the same time are the theatre of a living and life-giving presence, personified in the companion of the god Śiva. This bond between the god and the mountain-bride seems to find a privileged place in the Himālayan region of Gaṛhwal, where the five Śivaite sanctuaries named Panch Kedār (or Pañcakedāra) stand. A tradition accepted by the Śiva Purāṇa and widespread in the Himalayan regions links the sacredness of these places to the final events narrated in the Mahābhārata and has it that Śiva dismembered himself, penetrating with the different parts of his body the five places where five temples stand today, the object of a long tradition of worship and pilgrimages. Here, the god has united himself forever with his bride, incorporating himself into the mountain, and the pilgrims who undertake the very difficult journey that progressively touches the five sites seem each time to reconstitute the unity of that divided body that has forever identified with the mountain itself.