Bhimashankar

Bhima is a rakshasa, the son of Kumbhakarna and of a rakshasi named Karkati. He lives with his mother on the Sahya mountain. One day he asks her who his father was.

Karkati tells him. His father was Kumbhakarna, Ravana's younger brother, who came to the mountain, took her by force and went back to Lanka; Rama later killed him. Her own husband, Viradha, was also killed by Rama. Her parents, Karkata and Pushkasi, were burned to ashes by Sutikshna, a disciple of Agastya, when they tried to eat him.

Bhima's anger turns on Vishnu, who as Rama killed his father and his mother's husband. He vows to harass Vishnu and performs a thousand-year penance directed at Brahma. The heat of it scorches the gods, who ask Brahma to intervene, and Brahma grants Bhima unequalled strength.

With it Bhima defeats Indra and the gods, then Vishnu, and sets out to conquer the earth. He attacks Sudakshina, king of Kamarupa and a devotee of Shiva, defeats him, binds him, and shuts him in an isolated cell. In captivity the king makes an earthen image of Shiva and worships it with the five-syllabled mantra, and his wife Dakshina joins him. Bhima meanwhile stops sacrifices and rites everywhere and demands that the offerings be made to him.

The gods, led by Brahma and Vishnu, go to the banks of the Mahakoshi, make an earthen image of their own, and worship Shiva. He appears, hears them, and promises to kill Bhima.

Bhima is told that the king is working sorcery against him before the image. He rushes into the cell with a drawn sword and taunts the king, demanding that he give up Shiva. The king refuses. Bhima swings the sword at the earthen image, and Shiva comes out of it: "See, I am Bhimeshvara." He splits the sword with his bow Pinaka; spear, lance and iron club follow and are broken in turn. The fight shakes the earth and the oceans. Narada asks Shiva to end it, and Shiva burns Bhima and his army to ashes with the single sound "Hum". The ashes scatter through the forest, and from them grow herbs of many uses.

The gods and sages ask Shiva to stay. He agrees, to be worshipped there as the linga Bhimashankara.

The chapters set the king in Kamarupa, which the translator identifies with the Guwahati region of Assam, and put Bhima's home on the Sahya mountain, which the translator places in the northern Western Ghats — the range this temple stands in. They do not name the spot where Shiva remained. That silence is why Bhimashankar in Pune district and temples in Assam and elsewhere all claim the Jyotirlinga.