Brahmā Mohinī

The Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa tells this episode in Chapters 31 to 33 of the Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa. It is about the apsarā Mohinī, Brahmā, and Manmatha, who is also called Kāmadeva. Mohinī is struck by desire when she sees Brahmā, and she asks Manmatha for help. Brahmā is shaken but recovers by remembering Kṛshṇa. Brahmā and Mohinī then lay a śāpa (a curse) on each other. At the end Brahmā is made pure again by Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, who gives him Bhāratī, who is Sarasvatī, as his wife.

The setting: Raivata Manvantara and King Sucandra

The events happen in the Raivata Manvantara, the fifth of the fourteen manvantaras. The account opens with King Sucandra, a great and righteous king of that time. He did very strong tapas (austerity) aimed at the Paramātmā. His tapas was so high that a golden chariot came down from Goloka itself to carry him straight to the divine world. This event is the start of the larger account.

Mohinī sees Brahmā

Mohinī was an apsarā of great beauty, known in all three worlds for the power of her form to trouble even the most self-controlled of beings. One day, in the celestial garden (nandana-vana) of Brahmā’s world, among flowering trees and beside celestial lakes and in air sweet with divine blossoms, Mohinī met Brahmā himself.

Brahmā, the four-faced Pitāmaha (grandfather of all creation), was walking in his garden in the calm of creative thought. The sight of him, the first being of creation, shining with the authority of the cosmos, struck Mohinī with a sudden and overwhelming rush of kāma (desire). It came without her choice and she could not hold it back.

Mohinī was overcome, but she knew she could not come near Brahmā without divine help, so she asked for advice. The celestial dancer Rambhā was the most experienced of the apsarās in such matters, and she told Mohinī to go to Pushkara, the great tīrtha (holy place) of Brahmā, which is also dear to Manmatha. There she was to do tapas to please Manmatha, the deva of love and desire, who alone had the power to shake Brahmā’s calm and make an opening for Mohinī’s purpose.

The Mohinī Stotra: praise of Manmatha

At Pushkara, Mohinī did tapas and recited the Mohinī Stotra. It is a stotra (a hymn of praise) to Manmatha that the great ṛshi Durvāsa had taught at Gandhamādana. It honours Manmatha in his cosmic place, far beyond his common link with human desire.

In the stotra:

• Manmatha is an aṃśa (a partial form) of Vishṇu himself, born from Vishṇu’s manas (mind), and so the embodiment of divine creative will.
• He is Maheśvara’s ātman, the inner principle of Bhagavān Śiva’s creative impulse.
• He is the son of Jagannātha, the master of the universe, and he is Ratīnātha, the master of Rati, his śakti and wife.
• He holds five flower-arrows. Each works on the heart in its own way: longing, excitement, intoxication, piercing and dissolution.
• His bow is the sugarcane and his bowstring is a row of bees.

The stotra shows Manmatha not as an enemy of dharma but as the creative force without which creation cannot go on. He is the urge toward union that keeps up all species and all dharmic lines. At the cosmic level, Manmatha’s work is the same as the hlādinī-śakti of Kṛshṇa, the bliss-force that moves all creation toward return to its source.

Manmatha was pleased by the stotra. He agreed to help Mohinī and went with her to Brahmā’s world.

Manmatha’s seven arrows against Brahmā

When Mohinī came to Brahmā’s world with Manmatha’s help, Manmatha shot his arrows at Brahmā one after another, to break down his calm step by step. The Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa names the seven arrows, five usual and two more.

The five main arrows were:

1. Sammoha (confusion)
2. Samudvega (agitation)
3. Sṛshṭibīja (the seed of the urge to create)
4. Stambhana (the freezing of the power to discern)
5. Unmatta (intoxication)

Two stronger arrows were added to these:

1. Jvalana (the burning of desire)
2. Caitanya-haraṇa (the theft of clear awareness)

Under the force of all seven arrows together, even Brahmā, the maker of all worlds, the master of the four Vedas and of all knowledge, was shaken for a moment. His eyes softened as Mohinī danced before him with all her celestial skill. For a moment the creative mind that holds up all dharmic creation wavered.

In that moment Mohinī danced the full range of her art before him, using every gesture and expression in the language of celestial dance.

Brahmā recovers through Kṛshṇa-bhakti

While Mohinī danced and Manmatha’s arrows went on working, Brahmā remembered Kṛshṇa in his heart, for his inmost nature always turns to the Paramātmā. The Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa stresses this turning point. When the practice of Kṛshṇa-bhakti is deep and true, it works against all of Manmatha’s arrows. The remembrance of Kṛshṇa, the antaryāmin who lives in every heart as the eternal witness, clears away the confusion that Manmatha makes.

As bhakti rose in him, Brahmā regained his calm. The smoke of the passing confusion cleared. He now looked at Mohinī with the eyes of dharma and not of desire. He saw clearly that she had been driven by kāma to come to the wrong one, at the wrong time, in the wrong way.

Brahmā then recited a Kṛshṇa stotra of his own, addressed to Śrīhari. He called on Bhagavān Śrīhari from within the kāma-sāgara (the ocean of desire) in which he had found himself for a moment sunk. The stotra called on Kṛshṇa as the one who frees from every kind of bondage, including the bondage of desire. It was both Brahmā’s own prayer for recovery and a teaching for all souls who find themselves in the same trouble.

Brahmā also laid a śāpa on Manmatha for daring to aim arrows at the creator himself. “Your pride,” Brahmā said, “shall be broken.” This śāpa looks ahead to the later episode in which Bhagavān Śiva burns Manmatha to ash.

Brahmā’s talk on pativratā-dharma and karma

Having recovered, Brahmā did not send Mohinī away with scorn. He spoke to her at length and with kindness about dharma, karma and the true nature of a woman’s life.

On pativratā-dharma: Brahmā said that the highest dharma open to a woman in her human birth is that of the pativratā, devotion to her husband as a form of devotion to the Paramātmā. He said this is not only a custom of society but a law of the cosmos. The bond of husband and wife mirrors the bond of Purusha and Prakṛti at the cosmic level. When a woman honours and serves her husband with true love and devotion, she shares in the same mystery that Rādhā acts out at the cosmic level in her bond with Kṛshṇa. The fruit of pativratā-dharma is moksha, and not only a good rebirth.

On kula (family line): Brahmā taught that the urge to break the dharma of one’s kula, to step outside the bounds of one’s family’s righteous way, destroys the inheritance of karma of many generations. The kula is not only a unit of society. It is a field of dharma that the forefathers have tended through many lives. To break it is to scatter that field.

On karma: Brahmā spoke at length and in depth. He said that every being’s birth, form, family, standing, beauty and circumstances are fixed by the karma of former lives. Mohinī’s urge toward Brahmā was itself a result of karma, a desire arising from an unfinished experience of a former life. The right answer to such a desire of karma is not to give in to it but to understand where it comes from and to seek its end by the ways of dharma.

Mohinī’s karma-vāda argument

Mohinī did not simply accept Brahmā’s words. She answered with an argument of her own. She gave a long account of karma-vāda, the teaching that karma alone fixes all action and experience, and used it to argue that her desire for Brahmā was itself an event fixed by karma, and so not open to moral judgement.

Her argument ran like this. If all births, all circumstances and all urges are fixed by earlier karma, then her desire for Brahmā was a result of karma, not a free choice to be judged by dharma. How can karma-vāda blame an action and also insist that all actions are fixed by karma? To say “this is adharma” is to claim a place outside karma, which karma-vāda itself does not allow.

The Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa gives this as a serious argument. Mohinī is shown not as a simple seductress but as a thoughtful speaker who understands the way of thinking Brahmā has called on and turns it back on him.

The ṛshis arrive

Mohinī still pressed her purpose and went on insisting. At this point a company of great ṛshis came to Brahmā’s world: Atri, Pulastya, Vasishṭha, Śukra, Bṛhaspati, Parāśara, Mārkaṇḍeya, Durvāsa and others.

They came because ṛshis feel disturbances in the cosmos, and this had brought them to the place of this strange meeting. They found Brahmā in a position that needed explaining. Brahmā saw at once how the scene must look and tried to put it in another light. He said that Mohinī had been dancing before him as his daughter, a performance and not an advance.

Mohinī saw through this at once and was furious. She felt that Brahmā was giving a false account of what had happened and was using the authority of his place in the cosmos to escape being called to account.

The two śāpas: Mohinī’s śāpa on Brahmā

Mohinī was furious at Brahmā’s attempt to cover the matter with a social fiction, and she spoke a śāpa on him:

“You, Brahmā, the maker of all worlds and the keeper of all dharma, you who have just taught me about pativratā and kula-dharma while hiding your own moment of failing behind my name, shall be apūjya (not fit for pūjā). The devas shall not offer you regular pūjā. The world shall not keep temples in your name. You shall go without the honour that every other deva of the cosmos receives.”

The Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa gives this śāpa of apūjyatā on Brahmā as the reason that, alone among the great devas, Brahmā has very few temples and receives very little pūjā. Only on one sacred occasion, Māgha Saṅkrānti, shall Brahmā receive pūjā.

After speaking the śāpa, Mohinī herself was seized with sorrow. The anger that had driven her was replaced by the knowledge that she too had played a part in what had happened, for her own desire for Brahmā had started the chain of events. She was sorry for it.

Brahmā’s shame and his going to Nārāyaṇa

Brahmā carried the weight of Mohinī’s śāpa, and he knew how his moment of failing had harmed his cosmic dignity. He went to Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa. He was deeply ashamed, not only of the episode itself but of his attempt to cover it in front of the ṛshis, which had been the direct cause of the śāpa.

Before Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, Brahmā confessed everything and asked to be made pure.

The showing of the many Brahmās

Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa did not simply comfort Brahmā. He showed him that there is not one Brahmā, nor ten, nor a thousand, but as many Brahmās as there are hairs on Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa’s body.

Then two great forms appeared: a Brahmā with ten faces, instead of the usual four, and a Brahmā with one thousand faces.

This showed that the particular Brahmā who had met Mohinī is one among a countless number of Brahmās. Each of them arises within Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa’s cosmic body as naturally as hairs grow from skin. The form of “Brahmā” is a role, a function and a vibhūti (a power-form) of the Paramātmā, honoured in its place in the cosmic order but not an independent absolute. This freed Brahmā from his too great shame, and it taught him humility.

Brahmā’s purification and the gift of Bhāratī

Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa made Brahmā pure by his kṛpā-dṛshṭi (glance of grace). It cleared away the karma left by the episode and restored Brahmā’s inner clearness. This was more than the wiping away of a fault. It set Brahmā again in the cosmic order in which he works as the instrument of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa’s will to create.

As a gift to mark this restoration, Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa gave Brahmā Bhāratī as his wife. Bhāratī is the devī of speech and wisdom, and she is the same as Sarasvatī. She came from Goloka itself. She was no common being but an eternal companion of Rādhā and Kṛshṇa, sent by the grace of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa to be the fitting partner and śakti of Brahmā the creator. With the gift of Bhāratī, the devī of Vāk (divine speech), Brahmā, humbled, made pure and joined again to the Paramātmā, could go on with creation on a renewed footing of dharma.

The Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa thus gives this episode as the ground for Sarasvatī or Bhāratī being Brahmā’s wife: she was a gift of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa’s grace after Brahmā was made pure.

Sources

• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 31 (King Sucandra, Mohinī sees Brahmā, the Mohinī Stotra)
• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 32 (the seven arrows, Brahmā’s recovery, his talk on pativratā-dharma and karma, Mohinī’s karma-vāda argument)
• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 33 (the ṛshis arrive, Mohinī’s śāpa, Brahmā and Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, the gift of Bhāratī)