The Tryambaka Mantra in the Linga Purana
त्र्यम्बकमन्त्र
How the Purana reads the Mahamrityunjaya mantra, word by word
Chapter 54 of the second part of the Linga Purana is a short chapter on worship with the Tryambaka mantra, the verse most people know as the Mahamrityunjaya. It gives a method of worship, a line of teachers who passed it down, the fruits the Purana promises, and its own reading of the mantra's key words. This page follows that chapter in our own words and keeps the Purana's promises as the Purana's claims.
Where the chapter sits
Chapter 53 is a few lines on the rite of conquering death: a hundred thousand offerings of ghee into the fire while repeating the Rudradhyaya, with sesame, lotus, durva grass, honey or milk rice as the other materials. Chapter 54 then turns to the Tryambaka mantra itself. The text says the three-eyed lord of the gods is to be worshipped with it in a Banalinga or in a self-born linga. The book spells the word Triyambaka, and a footnote refers back to an earlier verse of the same Purana.
The method the Purana gives
Those who want a long life, and those who know the Vedas, are told to worship Shiva with a thousand and eight white lotuses, or a thousand red ones, or a thousand blue ones. After the worship come offerings of food: milk pudding, rice soaked in ghee, cooked green gram, rice with honey, and fragrant sweets. The same flowers are offered into the fire, with cooked rice in particular. The mantra is repeated a hundred thousand times, everything is concluded in due order, a thousand brahmins are fed and given gifts, a thousand cows are given, and gold at the end. This is a large formal rite written for a temple and a priest. It is described here as the text states it, not as a practice to copy.
How the teaching was handed down
The Purana says Shiva, holding the trident, first told this to Skanda on the top of Mount Meru. Skanda told it to Sanatkumara, the son of Brahma, and Sanatkumara told it to Vyasa. When Shuka, Vyasa's son, died, Vyasa saw the three-eyed Rudra, who ended his misery. During that stay Vyasa heard the story of the birth of Skanda, and the glory of the Tryambaka mantra was told to him in full. Suta, the narrator, says he is now passing it on by Vyasa's grace.
The fruits the Purana promises
The text says that anyone who repeats the mantra after duly worshipping the lord is freed from the sins of seven births. It says he gains victory in battle and unmatched good fortune, that someone who wants a realm can win it with a hundred thousand fire offerings, that someone who wants a son will certainly have one with a hundred thousand offerings, and that someone who wants wealth should repeat the mantra a million times. Such a person is described as rich in riches and grain, playing with sons and grandsons, and going to heaven at death. It declares that no mantra in the world or the Vedas equals this one and that its fruit is eight times that of the Agnishtoma sacrifice. These are the Purana's own promises about its own mantra. We report them because they are in the text, and we do not offer them as outcomes a reader should expect.
What 'Tryambaka' means here
The chapter reads the word as meaning the lord of three of everything: the three worlds, the three gunas, the three Vedas, the three gods and the three upper castes. He is expressed by the three syllables A, U and M, and he is the lord of three fires, the moon, the sun and fire. Uma, Amba and Mahadeva are named as the trio, so that Tryambaka is the lord of the three. A footnote by the translators says that an old commentary the book cites splits the word differently, as the source of origin of the three-syllable A U M.
Sugandhi and pushtivardhana
For Sugandhi, fragrant, the Purana points to a tree in full bloom whose scent is carried a long way by the wind, and says the lord is like that, the holder of fragrance for all the other gods, whose fragrance spreads through the world and the sky. A footnote says the same commentary gives three other derivations, which the translators call fanciful. For Pushtivardhana, the increaser of nourishment, the text gives a creation account of its own. Shiva's seed was once placed in the womb of Vishnu, and from it came the golden cosmic egg, the source of Brahma. That nourishment is said to reach the moon, sun and stars, the earth and the higher worlds up to Satya, and to nourish the five elements, the cosmic ego, the cosmic intellect and Prakriti. This is the Linga Purana's own cosmology and differs from the Vishnu-centred accounts, so it is best read as one Shaiva telling among several.
Yajamahe, and the closing half of the verse
Yajamahe, we worship, is explained as worshipping the lord in the linga with offerings into the fire. The text lists ghee, milk, honey, barley, wheat, black gram, bilva fruits, lilies, arka flowers, shami leaves, white mustard and shali rice. The second half of the verse the Purana reads as a prayer. By the grace of this worship, may I be freed from the bondage of actions and their results and from the fetters of death, freed from the glitter of worldly existence, as a ripe cucumber falls from its stalk when its season comes. The time for liberation, it says, has come by the grace of the mantra.
How the chapter ends
A person who understands the meaning and the rites of the mantra and worships the linga with it is said to cut all bonds and to be able to control death. The Purana says there is no lord as merciful as Tryambaka, who is quickly pleased, and the mantra is the same, so one should worship the three-eyed lord of Uma by repeating it, whatever one's plight. It then says that a person is freed from all sins by meditation on Shiva and becomes Rudra himself, and that even someone who has incurred sin by harming living beings or by enjoying things unjustly is freed by remembering Shiva alone, once. These are strong claims for devotion, made by the text itself. The next chapter, on the yogic meditation of Shiva, begins as Nandi tells Sanatkumara what Shiva once told Amba on Kailasa.
How to read this next to our other pages
In our Shiva Purana pages the same mantra appears in practice, for example in the story of the moon god worshipping at Prabhasa. Here it is the subject of a chapter in its own right, with a reading of its words. If you are looking for the verse itself and its everyday use, the Rudrashtadhyayi and the stotra pages are the better starting point. This page is about what one old text says about the mantra. It does not stand in for the guidance of a teacher, or for medical care in illness.
Read the source chapters
Source note
Retold in our own words from the English translation of the Linga Purana by a board of scholars led by J.L. Shastri (Motilal Banarsidass), Part 2, chapters 53 and 54 and the opening of chapter 55 (pages 785 to 788), read line by line against the page images. It is condensed and does not reproduce the translation. The large offering and gift counts are named but are not set out as a procedure.