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Maybe the sight of devotees offering liquor to the deity will shock you, but it is also served as ‘prasad’ to the devotees who come to the Kal Bhairav temple in Ujjain.
What Is It?
If you believed India couldn’t get anymore weird, you thought wrong. The Kal Bhairav temple in Ujjain will literally shock you! Here, the devotees offer liquor to the deity, and it is also given away as ‘prasad’ to the visitors of the temple. Kal Bhairava is a representation of the Hindu Lord Shiva often recognized with a fiery expression and a coiled snake around the neck. In Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, there is a temple of Kal Bhairava where liquor is offered as ‘chadhava’.
It is believed that the liquor offered is only special to Lord Bhairava and shouldn’t be offered to any other Hindu God. You will find vendors outside the temple selling a ‘puja’ basket containing flowers, coconut and a quarter of country liquor. The liquor for this temple is funded by the state government.
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What’s In It?
In this temple, plenty of devotees come to pray to Lord Bhairava with their ‘offerings’ and with undying faith in the God. It is known that the deity ‘drinks up’ a quarter of the alcohol within a couple of minutes. He isn’t fussy about the brands, and mainly the devotees are there to offer country liquor.
The morning ritual starts with a temple priest who offers a big bottle of red wine or rum to the deity along with other puja material. The worshiping is done during that period. The liquor is poured into a shallow cup or plate and put close to the mouth of the deity. The liquor slowly starts going down and the cup is taken away once the deity has taken up all of it.
Once this is done, the leftover alcohol is given to the devotees as prasad.
What Else?
During the festive seasons, hundreds of bottles of liquor are offered to the deity. It has been happening over centuries and no one knows where all the liquor goes.
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Deets
Address: Bhairavgarh, Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh 456003
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