On the southern bank of the Krishna river at Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh, the Amaralingeswara temple is one of the five Pancharama Kshetras — the shrines that hold the pieces of a single great Shiva linga. Their shared legend tells how the demon Tarakasura wore an invincibility-granting linga; when Lord Kumara Swamy (Kartikeya), on Vishnu's counsel, at last shattered it with the fiery Agneyastra, it broke into five fragments that fell across the land and were enshrined by the gods so that they could never reunite. Here the fragment was installed by Indra — whose heavenly city is also called Amaravati — giving the shrine its name.
The towering linga is so tall that priests mount a platform to perform its worship, and a red mark at its top is revered in tradition as the sign of a nail driven in to halt its growth. With the Goddess honoured as Bala Chamundika, Amararama is the westernmost of the five, set in a town famed since ancient times on the sacred Krishna.
