Trimbakeshwar

Suta tells what he heard from his guru Vyasa. In earlier times the rishi Goutama and his wife Ahalya lived on the mountain Brahmagiri in the south, and Goutama had practised austerities there for ten thousand years. A terrible drought then lasted a hundred years. Not a moist sprout could be seen, and sages, people, animals and birds fled in every direction. The rishis stayed where they were, absorbed in pranayama and dhyana.

Goutama performed austerities for Varuna, six months of pranayama, until Varuna appeared. He asked not for rain but for something enduring: since you are lord of waters, give me water, eternal and divine, that always yields fruit. Varuna told him to dig a pit, and Goutama dug one a hand's length deep. Varuna filled it with divine water. The water would be eternal, he said, and the place would become a tirtha known by Goutama's name, and donations, oblations, austerities, sacrifices and shraddhas performed there would be inexhaustible.

The Purana then reflects on the nature of great people: they cannot bear the miseries of others and relieve them even at cost to themselves, like trees, gold, sandalwood and sugarcane that exist for others. Goutama sowed rice, barley and other grain, and the forest flourished. Many rishis came with their families, along with animals and birds, and settled there.

One day Goutama sent his disciples to fetch water. At the pool, the wives of the other rishis stopped them: we are rishis' wives, we will take it first, go away. The disciples returned and told Ahalya. She comforted them, went herself, took the water and gave it to Goutama, who used it for his daily rites.

The rishis' wives were angry and, crooked in mind, reported the opposite to their husbands. Under the sway of their own karma, the rishis grew angry with Goutama, and, though he had saved them from famine, they worshipped Ganesha with offerings, wanting to create an obstacle for him.

Ganesha was pleased and appeared, offering a boon. The rishis asked that Goutama be expelled from the hermitage and censured. Ganesha laughed and tried to make them understand: anger without an offence leads to harm, it is wrong to cause misery to someone who has done you good, and your austerities were meant to win fruit, not to injure. He recalled that it was Goutama who ended their hunger. They did not listen. Eventually Ganesha said, "I will do as you ask, but what is to happen will happen," and vanished.

Ganesha took the form of a feeble cow and went into Goutama's field to eat the rice and barley. Goutama saw her and gently tried to drive her off with a blade of grass. She touched it, fell and died on the spot. The rishis and their wives, hiding nearby, shouted, "What has Goutama done?" Goutama was appalled and told Ahalya that he feared Maheshvara was angry.

The rishis and their wives and Goutama's own disciples and sons reproached him. "Your face cannot be seen. The fire and the ancestors will not accept our offerings while you are in the hermitage." They threw stones at him. Goutama said he would leave and go elsewhere, and made his hermitage one krosha away. He lived there a month, unable to perform Vedic rites, then asked the rishis how to cleanse the sin.

They offered several ways: go around the earth three times proclaiming the sin; observe a month-long vrata and circle Brahmagiri 101 times; bathe in the Ganga after making a crore of parthiva lingams; or circle the mountain eleven times and bathe a parthiva lingam with a hundred pots of water. Goutama chose to circle the mountain and worship a parthiva lingam, and Ahalya did the same with the disciples serving them both.

Shiva, pleased, appeared with his ganas and told Goutama to ask for a boon. Goutama asked to be cleansed of sin. Shiva replied that he had always been free of sin. It was those who deceived him who were sinners, and those who are ungrateful can never be saved. He told Goutama in detail what the rishis had done.

Goutama's answer is the heart of this episode. Those rishis, he said, had done him a great good turn, for without it he would never have seen Shiva. "Blessed are those rishis." Shiva was pleased even more and said, ask for an excellent boon. Goutama thought about how things spread in the world, and chose to do good for the worlds. He asked for Ganga.

The text says Shiva had earlier extracted the essence of earth and heaven and saved it. Brahma had been given part of this at his marriage, and Shambhu now gave the rest. The water of Ganga took a supreme feminine form. Goutama praised her and asked her to purify him. Shiva told her to follow his command and purify Goutama.

Ganga agreed to cleanse the rishi and his family but said she would then return. Shiva said she should remain there until the coming of kali yuga, when Vaivasvata becomes the twenty-eighth Manu. Ganga's condition was that Shiva also stay near her, with Amba and his ganas. Shiva agreed: "I am not separate from you. Nevertheless I will remain here, and you must also stay."

The devas, ancient rishis, tirthas and kshetras came, shouted "Victory" and worshipped Goutama, Ganga and Girisha. They asked the two to stay for the pleasure of humans. Ganga replied that they should stay too. They agreed: whenever Guru (Brihaspati) is in Simha rashi, they all will come, because after eleven years of purifying the worlds they become polluted themselves and need to cleanse themselves in her. As long as Brihaspati is in Simha they would bathe in her three times a day and see Shankara.

So Shankara and the best of rivers stayed. The river is called Goutami, and the lingam Tryambaka. The Purana says that since that day, whenever Brihaspati enters Simha, all the tirthas, kshetras, devas, rivers and lakes remain on the banks of Goutami, and cannot yield their own fruits in their own places while they are away. Suta concludes that one who sees, worships and praises Tryambaka is freed from all sins.

The rishis ask how Ganga took water form, and what happened to the accusers. Suta tells them that when Goutama asked, Ganga came swiftly down from Brahmagiri. The flow issued from the branches of an udumbara tree. Goutama bathed and rejoiced, and his disciples came and bathed too. The place became known as Gangadvara, where merely seeing it destroys sin.

When the accusing rishis came to bathe, Ganga vanished. Goutama went and pleaded with her, saying they were blind with pride and prosperity and she should show herself to them. Ganga's voice came from the sky: they are ungrateful rogues whose sight should be avoided. Goutama answered with Bhagavan's own words: "If a person does a good turn to one who has injured him, I am purified by that." Ganga accepted, but said they must first do prayashchitta by circling the mountain 101 times.

They did it, then begged Goutama's pardon. Goutama created a place named Kushavarta just below Gangadvara, and Ganga came out again for his pleasure. Kushavarta became a tirtha where a person who bathes becomes worthy of emancipation and obtains vijnana, which is hard to find. Goutama and the others met, and the rishis were ashamed at their former ingratitude.

The rishis then say they have also heard a different account, in which Goutama cursed the brahmanas. Suta confirms that this is also true, and explains: these differences occur because incidents happen in different kalpas. This is the Purana's own way of keeping both versions.

In this second telling, the rishis' wives were angry at the water quarrel and goaded their husbands. The brahmanas made an artificial cow and made it feed on the grain. When Goutama touched it with a blade of grass it fell and died. When he learned the truth he was furious and cursed them all. They would turn away from the Vedas and from the path of devotion to Shiva, put mud on their foreheads, treat Shiva as just one deva among others, and, along with their descendants, fall into hell and then be born as chandalas, deceitful and poor. The text says they went to live in Kanchi and that many of them will be born as crooked people in the coming kali yuga.

This page tells both versions because the Purana does. The Purana does not rank them. It says only that both happened, in different kalpas.