A hunter who lived by killing had gone out for deer and been caught by the dark far from home. He climbed a bilva tree to be safe from the animals and to see the water-hole below, and to keep himself awake he broke off leaves one by one and dropped them. All night the leaves fell, and all night, though he did not know it, they fell on a linga at the foot of the tree. Deer came to drink and he could not bring himself to shoot them. By morning he had fasted, watched, offered bilva and spared life for a whole night of Shiva without intending any of it, and Shiva took the offering and freed him. The Shiva Purana tells it of a hunter named Gurudruha; in Java and Bali he is Lubdhaka and the story was made a poem, the Siwaratrikalpa, in the fifteenth century. It is the tradition's own explanation of the night vigil and the bilva leaf.
The Himalaya · Kashmir (Herath); Nepal (Pashupatinath); Tiruvannamalai; Kanyakumari; MandiShaiva
The night is kept very differently from place to place. Kashmiri Pandits keep Herath for twenty-three days, with walnuts soaked in earthen pots and buried; at Pashupatinath the gathering of sadhus from across South Asia doubles as Nepal's Army Day; at Tiruvannamalai pilgrims walk the fourteen kilometres around the hill barefoot, and in Kanyakumari runners cover twelve shrines in one night; at Mandi in Himachal more than two hundred village gods are carried to a week-long fair; Katas Raj in Pakistan, Mauritius's Ganga Talao, Oman and the Caribbean keep it too, and Bali has its own Siwa Ratri.
What is different here:
Observance rather than story; the Kashmir rationale for twenty-three days is not found.
A fourth: on this night Shiva swallowed the halahala and held it in his throat, and the gods stayed awake beside him so that he would not sleep and let it sink.
What is different here:
Ties the night to the churning; the vigil keeps the god awake.
A fifth, from the Linga Purana: it was on this night that the endless column of fire stood between Brahma the swan and Vishnu the boar, and the linga first appeared to the gods. Tiruvannamalai keeps the same event on Karthigai Deepam instead.
What is different here:
Ties the night to Lingodbhava (recorded in full with the Trimurti interactions); the Tamil south celebrates the pillar on another day.