The legend is as follows:
During their wanderings in the forest, the Pancha
Pandavas came to Darukavana, where Vedavyasa met them, and told them that one
of them should perform Tapascharya in praise of Lord Siva, and obtain from him,
the Pasupatastra as a boon, so that they may easily conquer their enemies.
Arjuna was chosen for this task and be betook himself to the top of the
Indrakila hill (which is said to be the same as the Indrakila hill of
Vijayawada) and was performing intense Tapascharya, with his arms upraised, and
standing on one foot, and surrounded by the Pancha Agnis or five fires, with
four artificial fires around him, and the fifth being the Sun God himself above
him. Being pleased with the great Tapascharya of Arjuna, Lord Siva wanted to
further test his sincerity, before granting him the desired boon, and therefore
took the form of a Kirata or hunter. Parvati also dressed herself as a huntress
and the Sivagana of the Lord also came in several disguises. Accompanied by all
these, Lord Siva was hunting on the Indrakila bill, driving a wild boar in
front of him.
The wild boar came to the side of Arjuna, and
Arjuna being a great warrior, took up his bow, and shot it with a single arrow.
At the same time, Lord Siva who was following it also shot it with an arrow,
and being struck by both the arrows, the boar fell down dead in the middle.
Both the Lord and Arjuna claimed the boar as their kill, and a -controversy
arose between them, as to whom the boar should belong. Words led to physical
quarrel shortly, and the Lord and Arjuna began to wrestle with each other. An
experienced and powerful wrestler though he was, Arjuna was no match before the
Lord himself, and was soon exhausted. Even in the midst of that desperate
struggle, he never lost his one-pointedness of mind and devotion to the Lord.
To invoke divine aid in his favor, he made a
Shivalinga out of the earth, worshipped it, and offered prayers to it. He saw
the flowers, with which he worshipped the Linga, as physically falling on the
hunter before him and he thereupon realised that the hunter was none other than
the Lord himself. The hunter immediately disappeared and the Lord appeared
himself before Arjuna, in all his glory. Arjuna prayed to him and his prayer
was granted, and Pasupatha was given to him by Lord Siva, As a commemoration of
this great event, Arjuna is supposed to have installed the Vijayeswara temple
here, in the Indrakila hill.
In the Indrakila there are several rock-cut
temples. These were supposed originally to be ancient temples, but during the
course of time, they were completely buried under debris. When quarrying for
stone and road metal was done, they were revealed, and the rock-out temples
were preserved as protected monuments. There is in the temple an excellent
stone sculpture, which contains in all its four faces the story of
Kiratarjuneeyam.
There are interesting legends about the origin of
the Malleswaraswamy temple also. It is stated that, prior to the Kaliyuga, the
sage Agasthya had named the Lord at Vijayawada as Jayasena.The Mahabharata hero
Arjuna, who was a great wrestler or Mallayoddha, called the Lord as Malleswara.
The thus famous Lord Siva so goes the legend, graces with his presence and
blesses the town Vijayawada on the banks of the sacred Krishna River.
There is another legend about this in which it is
stated that in the Kaliyuga, as early as Saka year 117, there was a king famous
on earth by name Madhava Varma. The son, of this Icing once killed by accident
the child of a woman who eked her livelihood by selling the fruits of tamarind
trees (Intrini-Jeevini). The king, who meted out justice according to the
principles of Dharma, sentenced his own son to be banged, in order to uphold
the principles of justice. Pleased at this impartial attitude and the adherence
to principles of Dharma, of this king, God Malleswara came down and showered
gold on him, which brought back to life the deceased prince and the dead child.
Thus the great Lord Malleswara. Established in this
world, the name of the great King Madhava Varma. Later on a pious devotee by
name Panditharadhya came here, and proclaimed to the world that the devotees of
Lord Siva were superior even to the sages. He illustrated the truth of this, by
bundling up live, coal in a piece of cloth, with the tender twig of a Sami
tree, without burning it. God Malleswara was pleased with it and manifested
himself to this devotee. This Lord according to the popular legend, is Mahadeva
Malleswara, "the endless one ' the lover of his devotees and worshipping
whom the lords of the earth prospered of old".
There is an inscription in the temple, of the 9th
century A.D., in the usual Telugu script. The inscription is strangely recorded
from bottom upwards. Its purport is to say that a certain Thrikoti Boyi or
Trikoti Boyu, the son of Kaliyama-Boy of Pechchevada, set up the pillar as a
commemoration of his own fame, in order to secure distinction for his race. The
Thrikoti Boyi is identified in the inscription with a Guhyaka Yaksha, who in
Dwaparayuga was directed by Indra to direct Arjuna to Indrakila hill, where
Arjuna should worship the Lord Siva in order to obtain Pasupatha from him.
Besides being a religious centre, Vijayawada is
also the very centre of Andhra culture. The Chalukyas of Kalyani once conquered
this place, and the famous Chinese Huin. Tsang had visited this place in 639
A.D. when Buddhism was at its zenith. Vijayawada that is a famous centre of
Andhra thus enshrines three important and ancient temples and the temple of
Kanakadurga is especially a sacred and powerful one, which attracts a large
number of pilgrims even now.
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