‘Been waiting for this…’: Ajay Devgn visits the famous Kashi Vishwanath Temple in UP

 

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A post shared by Ajay Devgn (@ajaydevgn)

In the accompanying caption, the Drishyam 2 actor wrote, “Been waiting for this for a very long time,” referring to offering prayers at the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, followed by “Har Har Mahadev” written in Hindi, which loosely translates to ‘Glory to Lord Shiva’.

In May this year, actor Kartik Aaryan, too, visited Varanasi. While spending a lot of time in the city, the Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 star posted this picture of the revered temple.

Photo: Instagram/@kartikaaryan

Prior to that, on December 13, 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had unveiled the Kashi Vishwanath corridor, which connects the ancient temple to the ghats of River Ganga.

The temple is located in the Vishwanath Gali of Varanasi, standing on the western bank of Ganga. It houses one of the 12 sacred jyotirlingas of Lord Shiva. Interestingly, it gets its name from the presiding deity Shri Vishwanath or Vishweshwara, meaning the ‘Lord of the Universe’ or the ‘Keeper of the Universe’. In ancient India, Varanasi — also known as ‘Benaras’ — was called Kashi, and this is what gave the temple its name.

Currently managed by the government of Uttar Pradesh, the edifice you see today was built by a Maratha ruler, Ahilya Bai Holkar of Indore, in the year 1780. The original temple was destroyed by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb — whom history remembers as an autocrat — who had instead raised the Gyanvapi Mosque here, which co-exists on an adjacent site.

According to shrikashivishwanath.org, the temple — that attracts visitors from all over the world — has been visited by saints like Adi Shankaracharya, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekanand, Goswami Tulsidas, Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati, Gurunanakji, and others.

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