Rameshwaram is a beautiful island city south of India and one of the holiest places housing one among the 12 jyotirlingas for lord Shiva. It is connected with Indian mainland with the scenic Pamban bridge and it's located merely 40km away from the tip of Srilanka. You may recall the story of a magical floating bridge a monkey army is believed to have built in order to help Lord Ram cross over to Sri Lanka and free his kidnapped wife Sita. Though the style of Chola dynasty is stamped over the temple architecture, Rameshwaram temple is believed to have even more ancient origins. This mythological tale involves a yagna and it has largely two popular versions.
One of the versions goes like this. After the bloody war with Sita's abductor Ravan- the demon king, Lord Ram started building a Shiva temple to atone for the gravest sin of Brahmahatya (killing a brahmin). Ram sat down to participate in that yagna with wife Sita and brother Lakshman, sending his trusted leutinent Hanuman to fetch a shivlinga for the temple. As the yagna was getting delayed and Hanuman was nowhere yet in sight, Sita meanwhile made a shivlinga out of sand from the seashore itself. That brittle shivlinga made out of sand is considered to have withstood the test of time, and still kept in sanctum sanctorum of the temple.
The second version, well, it's a bit longer one and often unheard of. How about I tell you this mythological folktale next Tuesday?
nice, i will wait for the second version