Vāgīśvara

Vāgīśvara · vāk-īśvara, “the lord of speech”

Vāgīśvara, “the Īśvara (ruler) of speech”, is Hara, Bhagavān Śiva, as the presiding deity of the Vāṇīsaṅgama, the confluence where the river Vāṇī joins the Gautamī. The Brahma Purāṇa says that one who stays pure, bathes at the confluence and has darśana of Vāgīśvara attains moksha by that alone.

The account

In the Gautamī Māhātmya, Brahmā tells Nārada how the tīrtha arose. When Brahmā and Vishṇu disputed who was the greater, Mahādeva appeared between them as a column of fiery light. Brahmā could not reach its end, yet he spoke an untrue word, that he had seen it. Hari and Hara pronounced a śāpa on Vāc, the speech that had uttered it, that she would become a river. When she bowed and praised them, they promised that her body would be pure again when she merged in the Gaṅgā. Vāc joined the Gaṅgā and regained her own body; where she joins the Gautamī she is known as Vāṇī. The place where the divine Vāc worshipped Bhagavān Śiva, the ruler of the devas, and was freed of her śāpa is a tīrtha honoured everywhere.

The phala

The Vāṇīsaṅgama rids one of all pāpa and grants all cherished desires, and snāna and dāna there dispel even the pāpa of brahmahatyā. One who stays pure, bathes at the confluence and has darśana of Vāgīśvara attains moksha by that alone; one who performs dāna, homa or upavāsa there is not born again. There are one thousand nine hundred tīrthas on either side of the river there.

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 65