Suvarcā, Wife of Dadhīci

Suvarcā was the devoted wife of the great ṛshi Dadhīci Bhārgava. His āśrama (hermitage) stood at the meeting of the Candrabhāgā and Śābhramatī rivers. She is the mother of Pippalāda, an avatāra of Rudra.

When the devas took Dadhīci’s bones to make the Brahmaśiras weapon, Suvarcā was overcome with grief and anger. She pronounced a śāpa (a curse) on all the devas that they would never have children. She then cut open her own belly at the root of an aśvattha tree to bring out her unborn son, Pippalāda, and went on to join her husband.

Her name

Suvarcā means “of great brilliance”. The Padma Mahā Purāṇa presents her through her bond with her husband and through her fierce answer to what the devas did with his sacrifice. She showed the protective and fierce side of a patnī’s (wife’s) dharma.

Her grief

Suvarcā learned that the devas had left their weapons with Dadhīci. They could not get them back in any other way, so they had asked him for his bones. Dadhīci gave up his life willingly through yoga, so that his backbone could become the Brahmaśiras weapon. The devas then called Surabhi, the divine cow, to lick his body clean. When Suvarcā learned all this, that her husband’s body had been used at the request of the devas, she was filled with grief and righteous anger.

The curse

In her grief, Suvarcā pronounced a śāpa on all the devas: they would be forever childless (apatyahīna). The Padma Mahā Purāṇa says that she spoke it as a woman of great tapobala (power of austerity).

The birth of Pippalāda

After the śāpa, Suvarcā decided to join her husband. She cut open her own belly at the root of an aśvattha tree, also called the pippala tree. She placed her unborn child at the root. She told the newborn to live near the aśvattha and to live on its fruits. She then entered deep meditation and went up to join Dadhīci in the higher worlds.

The child born in this way was Pippalāda. He was revealed to be an avatāra of Rudra himself.

The Śata Rudra Saṃhitā account

The Śata Rudra Saṃhitā of the Śiva Purāṇa adds a detail that the Padma Purāṇa does not give. Suvarcā had delivered Pippalāda at the root of the aśvattha tree and was about to enter the fire to join Dadhīci. Then an ākāśavāṇī (a divine voice from the sky) stopped her from entering the fire at once. This command halted her satī. She was held back from following her husband at that moment, and she struck her womb, which placed the unborn child at the root of the tree.

The Śata Rudra Saṃhitā tells this as part of the Pippalāda Avatāra. It says that the son born is Bhagavān Śiva himself, born from his own aṃśa (part), who came down because of the situation that Dadhīci’s sacrifice had created.

Sources

• Padma Mahā Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 155
• Śiva Purāṇa, Śata Rudra Saṃhitā, Chapters 24–25