Saṃvarta Muni, the Hidden Yogī

Saṃvarta Muni was a great yogī who lived hidden in Vārāṇasī. He was naked, smeared with filth, and ate only the food he gathered as bhikshā (alms). He wandered with no fixed home and meditated on Parameśvara. He was a son of Bṛhaspati, the guru of the devas, and he stayed hidden partly to escape King Marutta, who kept asking him to be the priest at his yajña (fire ritual).

This account is from the Kaumārika Khaṇḍa of the Skanda Mahā Purāṇa. It tells how Lomaśa Muni sent Indradyumna and four cursed beings to find Saṃvarta, and how Saṃvarta sent them on to the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama, where they were freed.

Lomaśa names Saṃvarta

Lomaśa Muni had taught Indradyumna at Kalāpagrāma about antaryoga (inner yoga), bahiryoga (outer yoga) and the greatness of Śiva-pūjā. Then four cursed beings came to him. They were the crane Nāḍījaṅgha, the owl Prākārakarṇa, the Garuḍa Kuśadhvaja, and the turtle Jayadata, who had taken the form of a kūrma (turtle).

They said they were Śiva-gaṇas who had fallen because of their śāpas (curses). They asked Lomaśa to show them one place of liberation, a place that would give the fruit of all tīrthas (holy places).

Lomaśa answered: “Ask Saṃvarta Muni. He can truly tell you of the place that gives the fruit of all tīrthas.” The four asked: “Devā! Where is this yogī Saṃvarta? We do not know him.” Lomaśa thought carefully. Then he told them where Saṃvarta lives and how to know him.

How to find Saṃvarta

Lomaśa described how Saṃvarta hides: “This Saṃvarta lives in Vārāṇasī with his signs hidden. He smears his whole body with filth. He goes naked. He eats only bhikshā, and he gathers it only in the eighth part of the day (late morning). He takes nothing else. He keeps the Oṃkāra in his mind and meditates on Parameśvara as the highest brahman. After he eats, he goes out in the evening to a grove, and no one knows where. He is a yogīśvara (lord of yogīs).

“This is how to know him. At night, put a corpse in the middle of the royal road of the city, without anyone seeing you, and stand at a distance. The one who comes to that spot and suddenly turns back without going on is Saṃvarta. He will not step over a corpse. When you know him, go to him with humility. If he asks who told you of him, say, ‘Nārada told us.’ Then say at once, ‘and he has entered the fire.’ He will believe that.”

Nārada enters the fire

The group came to Vārāṇasī. They put the corpse in the royal road as Lomaśa had said, and they waited. Saṃvarta came, hungry, to that spot and turned back at once. They knew him and followed him.

Saṃvarta was angry. He said: “Who told you of me? Speak quickly. If you do not, I will turn you to ash with the fire of my śāpa. And if you do not tell the truth, I will burn you to cinders.” The group trembled and said: “O best of brāhmaṇas! Nārada told us of you. Then he entered the fire at once. We do not know why.”

Saṃvarta asked in anger: “And where did that wretch go?” He called Nārada durmārga (one on a wrong path). He said: “Wherever he goes, I will turn that brahma-bandhu (kinsman of Brahmā) to ash with my fire.”

The account says that Nārada had entered the fire so that Saṃvarta would trust the group. When they said, “He has already entered the fire,” Saṃvarta stopped. He said: “He has done to himself exactly what I meant to do to him. Now tell me what you want. I will not stay here long.”

Nārada cannot be harmed by fire, ocean, wind, trees, mountains or any weapon. He went into the fire as one goes into a garden of flowers, and it did not touch him. He came out unharmed and honoured.

Saṃvarta names the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama

The group said to Saṃvarta: “We are four beings cursed and fallen from our rightful state. Show us a tīrtha that gives liberation, a place that gives the fruit of all tīrthas together.”

Saṃvarta was calm now. He first bowed in reverence to Kumārasvāmi and the Durgā-śaktis. Then he said:

“I will tell you of the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama tīrtha. This great king Indradyumna, this lion among kings, once performed a yajña. It heated the earth to a depth of two aṅgulas (finger-widths). As sap comes out of a heated tree, the holy waters of all directions flowed out of the body of the earth. That flow became the river Mahī. It is the very essence of all the tīrtha waters on earth.

“The Mahī is born in the Mālavā country and flows south to the western sea. Both its banks are holy. Where it meets the sea, at the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama, a person gets the merit of bathing in all tīrthas. These include Vārāṇasī, Kurukshetra, Gaṅgā, Revā, Sarasvatī, Tāpī, Payoshṇī, Nirvindhyā, Candrabhāgā, Irāvatī, Kāverī, Śarayū, Gaṇḍakī, Naimisha, Gayā, Godāvarī, and many hundreds of other holy rivers. The water of the Mahī carries the holy essence of twenty thousand six hundred yojanas of tīrthas.

“I lived there myself for many years, but I came away in fear of Marutta. He was parted from his guru Bṛhaspati, who is also my father, for some other reason. Now that wicked Marutta keeps looking for me, to make me the priest at his yajña. That ritual is rough, harsh and lifeless. What use is it to me? When the means (the samidhas or firewood, the grass and the flowers) are lifeless, the result must be lifeless too. Go there quickly with this king.”

Bhartṛyajña and the mongoose

Saṃvarta added that a devotee was already at the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama. He said: “At the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama there is a brāhmaṇa named Bhartṛyajña. He is a great devotee of Śiva. He worships the Mahākāla liṅga, which appeared there by itself. Go and find him.”

Saṃvarta then told how Bhartṛyajña was born, through the śāpa of a mongoose (nakula).

Yājñavalkya and the mongoose

The great ṛshi Yājñavalkya was once in his āśrama (hermitage) at Mithilā when a nakula came wandering in. Yājñavalkya said to his wife Gārgī: “Gārgī! This nakula has come. Be careful of the milk. Drive it away.”

The mongoose had been cursed in past lives by Jamadagni’s ancestors and had an unusual awareness. It was enraged that Yājñavalkya used the word “nakula” so carelessly and with contempt. The word means the animal, the mongoose, but he used it as a word of dismissal. The mongoose spoke to him sharply and at length:

“How shameless these people are, who do wrong! They know they will suffer harsh torment in naraka after death. How can they commit pāpa (sin)? A man’s life is not sure for even one moment. How can he do wrong? O muni! You think you are of good birth and learned, and in your pride you insult me by calling me ‘nakula’! What have you read? What is your yoga? You are insulting one who has done nothing to you! What kind of study is this? In which Veda or Smṛti is it written that one should call out to another so harshly? Do you not know this? Harsh words aimed at others become the shafts of arrows. Yama’s servants drive iron stakes into the ears of one who speaks like this, while that wicked person cries out in pain.

“You dharmadhvajas (those who carry the flag of dharma but are false) rob ordinary people with a thousand hands in the name of dharma. A harsh word (parusha-vākya) is equal to the vajra (Indra’s weapon), to a poisoned blade, to the kālakūṭa poison, to death itself. An arrow or a thorn in the ear can be pulled out. But the shaft of a cruel word cannot be pulled out. It sleeps in the heart. It is better to kill a person with an instrument of torture than to destroy him with cruel words.”

Yājñavalkya heard this wonderful speech from a mongoose. He was deeply moved and ashamed. With joined hands he begged pardon. He said: “I thought I was a paṇḍita (a learned man), but this was pride. Brahmā, Vishṇu, Candra and Indra have all been deluded. What can we expect of ourselves? One who thinks ‘I know dharma’ is a fool trying to grasp the wind in his fist. Some fall through not knowing. Others fall through jñāna-mada (pride in knowledge). Others fall through laziness even after they have knowledge. One who does not follow dharma in all its four feet, from the Veda to the Purāṇa, will surely reach Yama’s home crying.”

He then recited the teaching of the Gṛhyakāra that one should not call any creature by an insulting name or wound another’s heart with words.

The mongoose replied: “Your apology does not undo the harm. Even if all others behave as you did, a great man should not. The example a great person sets becomes the way of the world. So now I place a śāpa on you. Because you called me ‘nakula’, you will be reborn as a man of low birth, a kulādhama, which means one without a family line (kulahīna).”

Yājñavalkya is born as Bhartṛyajña

Yājñavalkya accepted this. He was reborn in a brāhmaṇa family of no standing as Bhartṛyajña, a man born in a lowered line, whose very name carried the mark of the śāpa. But this was Yājñavalkya continuing. He used jātismara (memory of past births) to understand what had happened, and he made his way to the hidden holy place of the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama.

There he worshipped Śiva’s Mahākāla liṅga, which had appeared there by itself. Little by little the dosha (fault) of his lowered birth was cleansed, as a snake sheds its skin. The greatness of Śiva’s liṅga burned away even the fault of birth.

The tīrtha took the name Babbru-tīrtha (babbru means mongoose) in memory of this event.

The group reaches Mahīsāgara

The whole group went to the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama. It was Indradyumna, Mārkaṇḍeya, the crane, the owl, the Garuḍa, the turtle, and Lomaśa himself, who had set them on this path. There they found Bhartṛyajña. He knew them as divine beings, Śiva-gaṇas in their different forms, and welcomed them. He said that their coming to this hidden holy ground (gupta-kshetra) was itself the fruit of great puṇya (merit).

He then taught the full greatness of the tīrtha (tīrtha-māhātmya) and the greatness of the Śataraudrīya liṅgas (Śataraudrīya-liṅga-māhātmya). These are the liṅgas worshipped by different beings across the three worlds. His main teaching was that dharma, artha, kāma and moksha can all be gained by worshipping Śiva. One who recites the Śataraudrīya every day at dawn receives every vara (boon) by Śiva’s grace.

Śiva appears and frees them

The group worshipped the pañca-liṅgas (five liṅgas) at Mahīsāgara for a long time, with meditation on Śiva and devotion. Then Bhagavān Śiva himself appeared before them. He said:

“O Baka (crane), Kūrma (turtle), Ulūka (owl), Gṛdha (Garuḍa), and King Indradyumna, all of you will gain sārūpya-mukti (liberation in my own form) and live in my loka. Lomaśa and Mārkaṇḍeya will also become jīvanmuktas (those freed while alive).”

At that moment Indradyumna set up the Indradyumneśvara liṅga at the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama. He prayed: “May this liṅga shine for ever, as long as Sūrya, Candra and Bhūmi last!” Śiva said “Tathāstu” (so be it). He added: “Whoever worships this Indradyumneśvara liṅga, set up by this king, will become my gaṇa and live in my loka.”

All five were changed. The fallen forms of the four animals fell away, their own divine forms returned, and all gained the state of a Śiva-gaṇa (śivagaṇatva). Indradyumna had always refused svarga (heaven) because he wanted to be with Śiva. He now received the Śiva-gaṇa state he wished for. The Mahī, born from the heat of Indradyumna’s yajña and carrying the waters of all tīrthas, went on flowing to the western sea. Its saṃgama stands as the highest place of liberation.

Marutta in the Mahābhārata

King Marutta is the son of Avīkshita. His great yajña is told in the account of Marutta. In that telling Saṃvarta’s own brother Bṛhaspati refuses to be the priest, and Saṃvarta later serves as purohita (house priest) in the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa’s telling.

The great wealth of that yajña was buried by Marutta in the earth. It is the treasure that the Pāṇḍavas went to the Himālaya to bring back for Yudhishṭhira’s own Aśvamedha after the Kurukshetra war. The Mahābhārata tells this in the Aśvamedhika Parva, Chapters 63–65.

Saṃvarta in the Mahābhārata

The Mahābhārata’s Aśvamedhika Parva (Chapters 5–10) tells of the same Saṃvarta, hidden and unknown in Vārāṇasī. He is found by the same test of the corpse in the road, and he is running from a king named Marutta.

In that account King Marutta himself finds Saṃvarta, not Indradyumna’s party. After testing Marutta severely, Saṃvarta agrees to become his yājaka (priest of the yajña). He goes against both Bṛhaspati and Indra. He shows Marutta a mountain of hidden gold, and in the end he is reconciled with Indra.

Sources

• Skanda Mahā Purāṇa, Māheśvara Khaṇḍa, Kaumārika Khaṇḍa, Chapter 13
• Mahābhārata, Aśvamedhika Parva, Chapters 5–10 and Chapters 63–65
• Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa (Marutta’s yajña, Saṃvarta as purohita)