Mallikarjuna

Mallikarjuna at Srisailam, in the Nandyal district of Andhra Pradesh, is the only sacred site that holds the dual distinction of being both a Jyotirlinga and a Shakti Peetha — making it doubly sacred across the two great streams of Shaiva and Shakta tradition. The temple complex, spread across a forested plateau of the Nallamala hills on the banks of the Krishna river, contains both the Mallikarjuna Shivalinga (Shiva) and the Bhramaramba Devi shrine (Shakti).

The temple's antiquity is confirmed by inscriptions from the 2nd century BCE, and it is mentioned in both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The Nallamala forest surrounding the plateau is dense and largely undisturbed — a wilderness sanctuary that gives the approach its quality of entering a different world. The Srisailam dam on the Krishna river, completed in the 1980s, created a large reservoir that now dramatically frames the plateau. The view from the temple ghats over the reservoir and forest is extraordinary — a confluence of the wild, the sacred, and the deeply ancient.

Kartikeya, angry at being denied the prize in the gods' race around the universe (which Ganesha won by circumambulating his parents rather than the earth), left Kailash and settled on the Kraunchadri hill in grief. Shiva and Parvati, missing their son, followed and established themselves at Srisailam in longing — Parvati as Bhramaramba Devi (the goddess who took the form of a bee or bhramara to destroy a demon) and Shiva as Mallikarjuna. The hill is said to be as meritorious as Kailash itself.