Godhā Moksha

While King Rukmāṅgada was keeping his Ekādaśī vrata (vow), a godhā (monitor lizard) fell from a tree and touched his foot. At that moment the lizard was set free. It was in truth a brāhmaṇa who had been cursed to take that low birth.

This episode belongs to the Rukmāṅgada and Mohinī account in the Nārada Mahā Purāṇa.

What happened

King Rukmāṅgada was keeping his Ekādaśī vrata. He was walking through his land in a procession of devotion. As he walked under the trees, a godhā resting on a branch above lost its hold and fell straight onto the king’s feet.

At the very moment of that touch, a divine light blazed out. The godhā gave up its animal body and stood before Rukmāṅgada in the glowing form of a brahmarshi, a brāhmaṇa of great spiritual light, with his pāpa wholly burned away. With joined hands he praised Rukmāṅgada and Bhagavān Śrī Hari, and then he rose to the higher lokas.

The śāpa is told

The freed being explained who he was. He had been a learned brāhmaṇa. Because of a particular wrong in his earlier life, a maharshi had given him a śāpa (a curse) to live as a godhā. He had lived many years in that animal body.

What finally set him free was the chance touch of Rukmāṅgada’s foot on the holy day of Hari-vāsara. This is the eleventh tithi, the day when all pāpa lives in food, when pāpa runs away even from an Ekādaśī kept by chance, and when the dust of the feet of a devotee of Vishṇu holds the gathered power of endless tapas.

What the episode shows

The godhā did not mean to touch Rukmāṅgada. It simply fell. Yet its freedom was full and came at once. This shows the greatness (mahimā) of Hari-dina, the day of Hari, which works even without any intention.

Rukmāṅgada’s Ekādaśī dharma reached the creatures near him, among them one that was held in a lower birth.

Sources

• Nārada Mahā Purāṇa, Uttarardha, Chapter 14