Sri Vishwanath Temple BHU Varanasi – A Model Temple

For years I have dodged the question – which is my favorite temple?. How does one pick when one has visited and studied so many? Is one temple more important than the rest of temples? Do temples not have different roles at different points in time? All these questions bothered me, till I figured out that the temple closest to where you live is the best one for each of us. However, the question of what makes a temple perfect or worth emulating is a question that stayed with me for the longest time. Deep down, I was looking for this answer, without much success.

The answer came to me when I was spending a couple of months as a scholar in residence at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi. That is Sri Vishwanath temple on the campus of BHU.

Sri Vishwanath Temple BHU Varanasi – A Model Temple

Now, Varanasi is full of temples, some known, some not so well known. You stumble upon small temples at every nook and corner, every step of the ghats as you walk around the oldest living city in the world. It is not within the confines of the city bound by Varuna and Assi rivers that I found my answer. I found it in the BHU campus itself. Yes, I am talking about the Vishwanath temple in the middle of the university campus and not the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi.

Walk to your nearest temple

For two months, I walked to this temple every morning from my guest house. Slowly, I  started discovering the different elements like the smaller temples that surround the main Vishwanath temple, the temples on the first floor or the Nataraja temple on the side, the Yagnashalas and the plants around it.

The main temple is dedicated to Shiva as Vishwanath, represented through a large Linga along with Vedas. On either side of the temple are smaller temples of Hanuman ji and Ma Saraswati. One side of Vishwanath is Mata Parvati with Ganesha and on the other side is a Chaturmukhlinga.

On the first floor, you see another Shiva temple right on top of the ground floor one, surrounded by Mahamaya and Lakshmi Narayana on either side. Slowly, I started stopping in front of the rising Sun that illuminates the temple as it rises. It appears almost like a deity from the first floor. Behind the temple are trees like Amla that are worshipped too.

Knowedge on walls of the BHU Vishwanath Temple

The walls of the temple are full of small snippets and verses from Vedas,…