Brahma Temple, Pushkar

Deity

Brahma with Gayatri, beside the Pushkar sarovar

Where

Ajmer, Rajasthan · 26.49N 74.55E

Usual hours

5 am – 1 pm, 4 pm – 9 pm — hours change with festivals and the season; check before travelling. Were these right when you went?

Grahas

Guru Ketu

Visited for

One of the very few Brahma temples anywhere; the sarovar is a tarpanam tirtha. Kartik Purnima and the camel fair are its days.

The sthala purana has it that Brahma let a lotus fall to the earth to choose a place for a sacrifice, and that the lake formed where the petals struck.

The sacrifice had to begin at a fixed hour and his wife Savitri had not arrived, so he is said to have married Gayatri and begun without her. Savitri, coming late and finding it done, is said to have cursed him to be worshipped nowhere on earth but at Pushkar — which is offered as the reason there are almost no Brahma temples anywhere.

The Savitri temple stands on the hill above the town and the Gayatri temple on the hill opposite, which keeps the quarrel in the landscape.

Pushkar is one of the very few Brahma temples in regular worship anywhere in India. The building is not ancient; the shrine has been rebuilt more than once, and what stands is of relatively recent date on a long-used site.

The lake is ringed by fifty-two ghats, each associated with a different ruler or family, and it is a tarpanam tirtha rather than only a bathing place.

The temple has a red spire with a hamsa above it, and a four-faced Brahma image in the sanctum. A silver turtle is set into the floor of the hall in front.

The ghats run all round the lake and are walked in the evening; shoes come off well before the water.

The Savitri temple is reached by a long flight of steps or a ropeway, and the view of the lake and the desert from the top is the reason to climb it.

Kartik Purnima is the great day: the bath in the lake at that full moon is the observance the place is known for, and the fair around it fills the town.

The camel fair runs in the same season and is a separate, secular event on the dunes outside. Tarpanam at the ghats is done all year.

Also called

Jagatpita Brahma Mandir, Pushkar Sarovar, Tirtha Raj

Reaching it

Pushkar is about 11 km from Ajmer over a low range of hills. Ajmer is the nearest railway station and is roughly 135 km from Jaipur.

• Khatu Shyamji Temple 131.7 km · Vaishnava
• Salasar Balaji Temple 137.4 km · Other
• Shrinathji Temple, Nathdwara 188.3 km · Vaishnava
• Karni Mata Temple, Deshnoke 188.6 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Trinetra Ganesh Temple, Ranthambore 196.5 km · Ganapathi
• Shri Eklingji Temple, Kailashpuri 210.6 km · Saiva

Been to this temple? The things that change — whether the hours on this page were right, whether the sannidhi was open, how long the queue was on a Saturday — are exactly what no printed source keeps current, and what the next person travelling here needs.

• Were the hours right when you went?
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