Hindu PantheonSacred Site
Mount Kailash
The sacred peak in western Tibet revered in Hindu tradition as the abode of Shiva and Parvati, identified with the mythic Kailasa of the Puranas and circled by pilgrims of several faiths.
About Mount Kailash
Shiva's peak, not a mapped palace
Kailasa in the Puranas and the Mahabharata is Shiva and Parvati's mountain in the north, a cosmic axis adjacent to Meru in some reckonings. Kubera also keeps a house there. The Tibetan peak now called Kailash is a later identification used by Hindu, Buddhist, and Bon pilgrims; the epics do not give GPS. No festival is invented here beyond the long practice of circumambulation. The texts give a god's mountain; the pilgrimage is a later overlay.
On the map
Mount Kailash among other places of the Hindu Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Mahabharata, Vana Parva (Kailasa descriptions)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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