Kailash- Hindu LocationLocation · Landmark"Abode of Shiva"

The Mountain

The Puranas describe Kailash as made from crystal, its four faces aligned to the cardinal directions, its summit permanently capped in snow. The Indus and the Brahmaputra have their sources near its base. No human climber has reached the top. The mountain is Shiva's, and he does not share it.

Kubera's City

Before Shiva claimed the peak, it belonged to Kubera, god of wealth and lord of the Yakshas. The Mahabharata describes his capital Alakapuri on the mountain's northern slope: a city of crystal palaces that caught the moonlight, gardens of wish-fulfilling trees, pools where celestial women bathed. In Kalidasa's Meghaduta, a Yaksha exiled from those slopes sends a cloud north to carry a message to his beloved, still waiting in the city above.

When Shiva chose Kailash as his dwelling, Kubera welcomed him. Shiva made Kubera guardian of the north, binding the god of wealth to the mountain where he had always lived.

Ravana and the Mountain

Ravana, a fervent devotee of Shiva, attempted to uproot Kailash and carry it whole to Lanka. In the Uttara Kanda of the Ramayana, he wedged his twenty arms beneath the mountain's base and lifted. The earth shook. The gods scattered. On the summit, Parvati clung to Shiva in alarm.

Shiva pressed down with his toe. The mountain settled. Ravana's arms were crushed beneath it. He screamed, and the scream became a hymn. Pinned under Kailash's weight, he sang the Shiva Tandava Stotram for a thousand years, a hymn of such agonized devotion that Shiva finally forgave him and gave him the sword Chandrahasa.

The Wedding on the Peak

Parvati spent years in austerities on Kailash's frozen slopes to win Shiva's attention. She matched his asceticism with her own, meditating in snow until the gods themselves worried she would destroy her body. When Shiva finally agreed to marry her, the wedding procession that climbed toward the summit terrified everyone who saw it.

Shiva arrived smeared in cremation ash, wearing serpents, riding Nandi through a retinue of ganas and ghosts. Parvati's mother Mena fainted at the sight of her daughter's groom. But the marriage held. The Shiva Purana tells that the divine couple made their home on the peak: Shiva meditating in the cold, Parvati beside him, their sons Ganesha and Skanda nearby, and the ganas keeping watch on every slope below.