Mukunda of Prayāga

Mukunda, “the giver of mukti”

The Pratisarga Parva of the Bhavishya Purāṇa tells of Mukunda, an excellent brāhmaṇa born in the gotra of Śaṅkarācārya, who was performing tapas at Prayāga with his twenty disciples. Learning that the mleccharāja Bābara had broken and ruined the images of the devas, Mukunda in grief offered his life as an āhuti (oblation) into the fire, and his twenty disciples followed the path of their guru. Once Mukunda had drunk a hair of a cow along with the cow’s milk, and because of this one fault he was born in his next birth in the mleccha yoni. When a son was born to Humāyūm, an ākāśavāṇī (a voice from the sky) declared that the child would be called Akbara and would not follow the path of the mlecchas, and that he was Mukunda of the former birth, whose disciples were Śrīdhara, Śrīpati, Śambhu, Vareṇya, Madhuvratī, Vimala, Devavān, Soma, Vardhana, Vartaka, Ruci, Māndhātā, Mānakāra, Keśava, Mādhava, Madhu, Devāpi, Somapā, Śūra and Madana. Sūta tells this to Śaunaka.

Sources

• Bhavishya Purāṇa, Pratisarga Parva, Khaṇḍa 4, Chapters 22–23