Kapalamochana

Kapalamochana is a Shiva temple of Puri, one of the five Pancha Pandava Shiva temples associated with the Jagannath temple. Devotional sources place the shrine near the horse gate, the southern gate, of the Jagannath temple and describe it as lying far below ground level. Kapalamochana means the one who frees from the skull. The name recalls the Puranic story of Shiva carrying the skull of Brahma and being released from it. One source dates the temple to the tenth century, which is unverified.

According to the Puranas, Shiva cut off one of the five heads of Brahma, and the skull, called the kapala, stuck to his hand as a sign of the sin of killing a Brahmin. He wandered as a mendicant, and the skull fell from his hand only at a holy place, which was then named Kapalamochana, the release...