Amarnath
अमरनाथ
The ice lingam cave in Kashmir
Amarnath is a cave shrine in Pahalgam tehsil, Anantnag district, Jammu and Kashmir, at about 3,888 m. Its lingam is a natural ice stalagmite regarded as self-manifested Shiv. It is not one of the twelve Jyotirlingas.
The lingam and the yatra
Water dripping from the cave roof freezes on the floor and builds up into a dome-shaped lingam; two smaller formations are taken to be Parvati and Ganesha. The lingam is said to wax from May to August as snow melts above the cave, then wane. The yatra runs in the Hindu month of Shravana, around the Shravani Mela, but its length changes with the ice: 20 days in 1995, about 60 days in 2004 to 2009, and 46 days in 2019.
Where it is mentioned
Kalhana's 12th-century Rajatarangini calls the shrine Amareshvara and the pilgrimage the Amareshvara Yatra, and mentions Sheshnag Lake on the route. The Nilamata Purana, dated around the 6th to 7th century, is also cited, as is Abu'l Fazl's 16th-century Ain-i-Akbari. A text called the Amarnath Mahatmya, attributed to Bhrigu, names places along the route.
What is uncertain
The popular belief that the lingam grows and shrinks with the moon's phases comes from a source flagged as possibly unreliable. A glaciologist's 2009 comment suggests changes in the water reaching the lingam may affect its size, and that more study is needed. The Bhringesha Samhita, which the master plan linked to Amarnath, could not be confirmed in the sources read.
Read the source chapters
Source note
Built from one encyclopedic overview, read only partly, so it is a first pass, not a cross-checked page. Nothing here was read from a primary text.