Pradakshina

Shaiva Agama — Kamikagama

The Kamikagama fixes the direction and the route rather than a number. It gives both modes of movement — savya, up to the Chandesvara shrine, and apasavya, up to the somasutra — and instructs that the steps be placed slowly and the somasutra never crossed. It forbids circumambulating inside the sanctum, on the grounds that the linga's shadow falls there and removed flowers are heaped on the floor. And it grades the corridors: of the five enclosures, a circuit in the outermost is the most meritorious.

• Agama: Kamikagama, Uttara Bhaga, chapter 27 (samanya prayascitta vidhi), vv. 31–38 (S. P. Sabharathnam Sivacharyar translation) himalayanacademy.com · seen 2026-09-18

The number of circuits, as commonly taught

A Sanskrit verse in wide circulation assigns a count per deity — one for Chandi, seven for the Sun, three for Ganesha, four for Vishnu, half for Shiva. It is printed in ritual manuals with no classical attribution, and no source naming its text could be found. The further claim that the Kamikagama itself prescribes one, three or seven circuits was tested against both volumes of the available scholarly translation and does not hold: every occurrence of circumambulation there is either priestly procedure or a festival-procession rule tied to drum patterns, and the chapter on the subject grades circuits by enclosure rather than counting them. One volume of the translation was unreachable, so the negative is very strong rather than complete.

Why the somasutra is not crossed, as commonly taught

The explanation given almost everywhere is that the drain channel carries the deity's energy, or forms part of the linga. That is not what the text says. The Kamikagama gives pollution and shadow as its reasons and instructs only that the channel not be crossed over. The energetic reading appears on devotional sites without any citation.