Pippala (Rākshasa)

Pippala · pippala, “the holy fig”

Pippala has other meanings too: see all meanings of Pippala.

Pippala was a rākshasa, the younger of the two evil sons of Kaiṭabha, known in the world of the devas as Aśvattha and Pippala. He is not the pippala tree or the ṛshi Pippala. Brahmā tells his account to Nārada in the Gautamī Māhātmya of the Brahma Purāṇa, as the origin of the Aśvattha and Pippala tīrthas on the Gautamī.

At Agastya’s yajña

When Agastya Maharshi, on his way south, came to the Gautamī and performed a yajña of a year with a thousand ṛshis, the two brothers set out to destroy it. They took the forms they wished, these evil-minded dānavas: Aśvattha that of an aśvattha tree, Pippala that of a brāhmaṇa. Both harassed the brāhmaṇas every day. Pippala posed as a chanter of the Sāman and devoured his own disciples. Because of him, the text says, the Sāman chanters among the brāhmaṇas lack compassion even today.

Slain by Śani

Seeing the brāhmaṇas dwindle, the ṛshis went to Śanaiścara, son of Sūrya, who was doing tapas on the southern bank of the Gautamī, and gave him the fruit of their own tapas so that he could act before his tapas was complete. Śani, in a brāhmaṇa’s form, first went to Aśvattha and burned him to ashes from within. Then he came to Pippala, who was equally an abode of pāpa, and approached him humbly, as a disciple approaches his guru. As he always did, Pippala devoured him. Inside the rākshasa’s body Śani looked at his intestines, and the moment Śani’s gaze fell on him, Pippala was reduced to ashes.

From then on the place has been known as the Aśvattha and Pippala tīrthas, and bathing there and giving dāna give the fruit of all yajñas.

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 48