Upamanyu in the Linga Purana
उपमन्यु
The boy who wanted milk and asked for devotion
Upamanyu is a boy who begins by wanting only milk and ends with an ocean of it, adopted by Shiva and Parvati. The Linga Purana tells this in chapter 107 and follows it in chapter 108 with Krishna coming to Upamanyu for the Pashupata vow. It is one of the best-known stories of devotion in Shaivism. This page retells the Linga Purana's version.
A boy and the milk
Upamanyu is a young brahmin, said to shine like Kartikeya, living at his maternal uncle's hermitage with his mother. He gets only a little milk, while his uncle's son drinks as much as he likes. He begs his mother for real cow's milk, hot and plentiful. She grinds some seeds she has gleaned one by one, stirs the paste in water and gives it to him as milk. He tastes it and says, "Mother, this is not milk."
What his mother says
She is unhappy and wipes his eyes. She tells him that everything comes through the grace of Shiva and that people who lack devotion to him do not receive kingdom, heaven, liberation or even a good meal. She says that they have not worshipped Mahadeva. The text has her add that what can be gained is gained through exalting Shiva, not Vishnu or any other lord. The boy answers that if Mahadeva exists anywhere, he will one day have the ocean of milk. With her permission he goes to the Himalaya and lives on wind alone.
The test
His austerity shakes the universe, and the gods go to Vishnu, who goes to Shiva and asks him to curb the boy. Shiva takes the form of Indra, with Uma as Shachi, rides a white elephant to the hermitage, and tells Upamanyu he is pleased and will grant a boon. Upamanyu asks for devotion to Shiva. "Indra" pretends anger: he is lord of the three worlds, and the boy should give up Rudra, who has no qualities, and worship him. Upamanyu repeats Om Namah Shivaya and says some low being must have come in Indra's guise to disturb his vow.
The sharp turn
He then says, in his own words, that he must have sinned in a past life to be made to hear Shiva insulted, and that anyone who hears Shiva criticised should kill the speaker at once and give up the body, and that pulling out the speaker's tongue lifts twenty-one generations of the family. The translators comment that this shows the sectarian attitude of the Purana. This page reports it as the text's own and does not endorse it. Upamanyu takes a handful of ash and launches the Atharva missile against "Indra", and meditates on Shiva so as to burn his own body. Shiva stops the missile with the moon missile at Nandi's request and shows his own form with the crescent moon.
The gift
Streams of milk appear around him, and oceans of curd, ghee, honey and fruit, with mountains of cakes. Shiva looks at Parvati and says that Upamanyu is now his son and she his mother, and gives him all those oceans, immortality, and permanent chieftaincy of the ganas. He tells him to choose any boon. Parvati gives him the power of yoga and the knowledge of Brahman. Upamanyu asks for firm devotion, faith and lasting nearness to Shiva, and Shiva vanishes. The text also names perpetual celibacy among what he receives.
Krishna comes to Upamanyu
Chapter 108 says that Krishna, son of Vasudeva, though he is an incarnation, still wishes to purify the body and to obtain sons, and goes to Upamanyu's hermitage. He walks round the sage three times and bows. By the sage's mere sight the body's impurities fall away, and Upamanyu rubs him with ash while reciting the mantras beginning Agni and Vayu, and gives him the knowledge of Pashupati. At the end of a year of penance Krishna sees Maheshvara with Amba and the ganas, and obtains a son named Samba. From then on, the text says, the sages devoted to Pashupati gather around Krishna.
A rite of giving, and the close
The chapter ends with a rite in which a householder makes a golden girdle, a staff-holder, a golden sphere, a fan, an inkpot, a pen, a knife or scissors and a vessel, dusts his body with ash, and gives them to a devotee of Pashupati, with a vessel of gold, silver or copper according to his means, and then honours the yogins. The text says this frees the family from sin. It adds that gifts to yogins please Shiva quickly, that the body is uncertain and should be used to reach what is fixed, and that the Pashupata vow is the cause of crossing the ocean of existence. This closes the first part of the Linga Purana. The claims of benefit are the text's own.
Read the source chapters
Source note
Retold in our own words from the English translation of the Linga Purana by a board of scholars led by J.L. Shastri (Motilal Banarsidass), chapters 107 and 108, checked against page images of the printed book. The Mahabharata also contains an Upamanyu story, and the Vayaviya Samhita of the Shiva Purana on this site has Upamanyu as a teacher. Neither was compared line by line for this page. The Sanskrit was not consulted.