Ṛcīka and Satyavatī

Ṛcīka was a great ṛshi of the Bhṛgu line. He married Satyavatī, the daughter of King Gādhi. He made two caru (cooked offerings) filled with the power of mantras, one for Satyavatī and one for her mother. The two women exchanged them. Because of this, Jamadagni was born to Satyavatī and Viśvāmitra was born to her mother. The Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa and the Mahābhārata both tell this account.

The Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa account

Ṛcīka and the bride-price

Ṛcīka wished to marry Satyavatī, the daughter of King Gādhi of the Kuśika line, which the text also calls Paurava. Gādhi did not want to give his daughter to a ṛshi. So he asked for a bride-price that seemed impossible: one thousand horses, each śyāma (dark or bay) in colour, each with one white ear.

Ṛcīka was not troubled. He went to Varuṇa at the tīrtha (holy place) on the Gaṅgā and asked for the horses. Varuṇa gave them, and Ṛcīka paid the bride-price. Satyavatī was given to him in marriage.

The two caru

In time, Satyavatī and her mother both wished for sons. Ṛcīka prepared two caru, each made holy with strong mantras.

• One caru was made with mantras of brāhmaṇa-teja (the radiance of a brāhmaṇa). It was meant for Satyavatī, so that she would bear a son with the qualities of a true brāhmaṇa: learned, calm, and devoted to tapas and the Vedas.
• The other caru was made with mantras of kshatriya-vīrya (the strength of a kshatriya). It was meant for Satyavatī’s mother, Gādhi’s queen, so that she would bear a son of courage and strength in battle.

Ṛcīka gave the two caru to Satyavatī and told her which was for herself and which was for her mother. Then he left to do tapas.

The exchange

Satyavatī’s mother heard about the two caru. She wished her own son to be the greater one, and she persuaded Satyavatī to exchange them. Satyavatī loved her mother. She gave her the brāhmaṇa-teja caru and ate the kshatriya-vīrya caru herself.

When Ṛcīka came back and looked at Satyavatī, he saw at once, with the sight of a ṛshi (ṛshi-dṛshṭi), that the exchange had been made. He grieved and said to Satyavatī: “You have done a great wrong. Your son will be born with the fierceness of a kshatriya, not the peace of a brāhmaṇa.”

Satyavatī was afraid and sorry. She begged Ṛcīka that it should be her grandson, and not her son, who would have the kshatriya qualities. Ṛcīka agreed to this change.

Jamadagni and Viśvāmitra

It happened as he had said.

• Satyavatī bore Jamadagni. He was born a brāhmaṇa but had fierce strength because of the kshatriya caru. His son was Paraśurāma, who would become the greatest of warrior ṛshis.
• Satyavatī’s mother bore Viśvāmitra. He was a kshatriya by birth, the son of King Gādhi, but he was filled with brāhmaṇa-teja. He spent his life striving to become a brahmarshi (the highest kind of ṛshi), and he was at last accepted as one.

The Purāṇa shows the exchange of the caru as the root of the well-known rivalry between Paraśurāma, the son of Jamadagni, and the kshatriyas. It is also the root of Viśvāmitra’s great journey from royal kshatriya to brahmarshi.

Satyavatī becomes the Kauśikī river

Later in her life Satyavatī saw what great destinies had come from her one act of exchange. She did great tapas. She was changed into the holy river Kauśikī, named after her father Kuśika or Kuśa. The Purāṇas count the Kauśikī among the holy rivers, made sacred by the tapas of this brāhmaṇī who stood at the centre of two great lines.

Viśvāmitra’s gotras

Chapter 66 also gives a long list of the gotras of Viśvāmitra, the brāhmaṇa clans that trace their line to him. They include, among many others: Pārtava, Devarāta, Yājñavalkya, Samarpaṇa, Udumbara, Vāṭadya, Talakāyana, Cāndrava, Lohiṇī, Reṇu, Kārīshava, Phaṇina, Babhru, Dhyāna, Upya, Śyāmāyana, Hiraṇyāksha, Sālaṃkṛta, Gālava, Devala, Yāmadūta, Śālaṃkāyana, Bhāshkala, Lālāṭya, Bādara, and many more.

The Mahābhārata account

The Anuśāsana Parva of the Mahābhārata tells this account more fully. Bhīshma tells it to Yudhishṭhira, in answer to the question of how Viśvāmitra, born a kshatriya, became a brāhmaṇa.

The line of Gādhi

Bhīshma gives the line from which Gādhi came: Ajamīḍha, then Jahnu (the king who took Gaṅgā as his daughter), then Sindhudvīpa, Balākāśva, Vallabha, Kuśika, and Gādhi. Gādhi had no child for a long time. He lived in the forest and performed soma-yajñas and many acts of puṇya (merit). Through these, his daughter Satyavatī was born, a woman of unmatched beauty.

The bride-price

Ṛcīka here is plainly the son of Cyavana of the Bhṛgu line. He asked for Satyavatī’s hand. Gādhi thought the ṛshi was poor and at first refused. Then he gave way and asked for one thousand horses, white as the moon, swift as the wind, each with one dark (śyāma) ear.

Ṛcīka told Gādhi to name the śulka (bride-price) without fear. Then he went to Varuṇa, called here Āditya, the son of Aditi and the lord of the waters, at a tīrtha near Kanyākubja. He asked Varuṇa for the horses. Varuṇa granted that the horses would appear wherever Ṛcīka wished. As soon as Ṛcīka thought of them, the thousand horses rose out of the waters of the Gaṅgā. That place has been known ever since as Aśvatīrtha.

Gādhi was amazed. He also feared the ṛshi’s śāpa (curse) if he refused again. So he gave Satyavatī to Ṛcīka in marriage with full honour.

The two trees and the two caru

Ṛcīka was pleased with Satyavatī’s conduct and offered her a vara (a boon). She told him that her mother still had no son and wished to have one through the power of her son-in-law. Ṛcīka agreed. He told the two women, who had both bathed after their monthly time (ṛtu-snātā), to each embrace a different tree at the moment they ate two separate caru that he had prepared and made holy with mantras. Satyavatī’s mother was to embrace one tree, with the caru of kshatra-tejas (the radiance of a kshatriya). Satyavatī herself was to embrace the udumbara tree, with the caru of brahma-tejas (the radiance of a brāhmaṇa). Mother and daughter did as they were told.

The exchange and what Ṛcīka saw

Both women conceived. Satyavatī’s mother wanted an even finer son for herself. She proposed that mother and daughter exchange both the caru and the trees they had embraced. She reasoned that if Ṛcīka himself had taken such care over the choice of the tree, an exchange might give a still better child. Out of love for her mother, Satyavatī agreed. The exchange was made in secret.

Some time later Ṛcīka saw that his wife was with child. By his tapas he knew that the caru and the trees had been switched. He grieved and said: “You have turned one thing into another, in the caru and in the tree. I had put all the brahma-tejas in your caru and all the kshatra-tejas in your mother’s. Because of this exchange, your mother will now bring forth a son famed in all three worlds as a brāhmaṇa. You, blessed one, will bring forth a son of fierce kshatriya deeds. What you did out of love for your mother was not good.”

Satyavatī was struck with grief at these words and fell to the ground like a cut creeper. When she recovered, she bowed to Ṛcīka and begged him: “I do not want a kshatriya son. If it cannot be avoided, let the kshatriya be born as my grandson, not as my own son.” Ṛcīka granted this.

Satyavatī then bore Jamadagni, who was mild by comparison. The kshatra-tejas she had eaten came out one generation later, in her grandson Paraśurāma. By the power of Ṛcīka’s grace, Gādhi’s queen bore the brahmavādin (speaker of the Veda) Viśvāmitra.

The teaching that saṃskāra outweighs seed

Bhīshma closes with this teaching. Viśvāmitra was a kshatriya by birth, the son of King Gādhi. But Ṛcīka had put the highest brahma-tejas into the caru that Viśvāmitra’s mother ate without knowing. So Viśvāmitra reached the state of a brāhmaṇa and of a brahmarshi in that very body, without another birth.

This is given as the answer to Yudhishṭhira’s question in Chapter 3. He had asked why Viśvāmitra could cross from kshatriya to brahmarshi in one life, while Mataṅga, a caṇḍāla muni, could never reach the state of a brāhmaṇa by tapas alone. The answer is that saṃskāra (the consecration of ritual and tejas) outweighs bīja (seed, or birth). The illustration given is the fig tree that grows even from a bamboo seed eaten in a forest fire.

Viśvāmitra’s sons

The chapter ends with a list of Viśvāmitra’s sons, who were brahmavādins and founders of gotras. They are: Madhucchandas, Devarāta (the adopted Śunaḥśepha), Akshīṇa, Śakunta, Babhru, Kālapatha, Yājñavalkya, Sthūṇa, Ulūka, Yamadūta, Saindhavāyani, Valgujaṅgha, Gālava, Vajramuni, Sālaṅkāyana, Līlāḍhya, Nārada, Kūrcamukha, Vāduli, Musala, Vakshogrīva, Āṅghrika, Śilāyūpa, Śita, Śuci, Cakraka, Mārutantavya, Vātaghna, Aśvalāyana, Śyāmāyana, Gārgya, Jābāli, Suśruta, Kārīshi, Saṃśrutya, Para, Paurava, Tantu, Kapila, Tāḍakāyana, Upagahana, Asurāyaṇa, Hiraṇyāksha, Jaṅghāri, Bābhravāyaṇi, Bhūti, Vibhūti, Sūta, Surakṛta, Arāli, Nācika, Cāmpeya, Ujjayana, Navatantu, Bakanakha, Ambhoruha, Cārumatya, Śirīshi, Gārdabhi, Ūrjayoni, and Udāpekshi.

Sources

• Brahmāṇḍa Mahā Purāṇa, Madhyama Bhāga, Chapter 66
• Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapters 3–4