Ajīgarta

Ajīgarta

Vimāna has other meanings too: see all meanings of Vimāna. Vishṇupada has other meanings too: see all meanings of Vishṇupada. Devarāta has other meanings too: see all meanings of Devarāta. Paiśāca has other meanings too: see all meanings of Paiśāca.

Ajīgarta, also printed Ajīgarti, was a ṛshi, the son of Suyava, who lived in want on the bank of the Gaṅgā with his wife and three sons. Overwhelmed by famine and the burden of his family, he sold his middle son Śunaḥśepa to Prince Rohita, to be the paśu (offering) in the yajña of King Hariścandra. For that deed he fell into naraka, passed through many births and became a piśāca, until Śunaḥśepa, by then the son of Viśvāmitra, freed him with an offering at the Gautamī and he rose in a vimāna to the abode of Vishṇu. Brahmā tells his account to Nārada in the Gautamī Māhātmya of the Brahma Purāṇa.

The sale of Śunaḥśepa

Brahmā tells Nārada that King Hariścandra of the line of Ikshvāku had promised Varuṇa his son Rohita as the paśu of a yajña, and put off the offering again and again. When Rohita was sixteen he refused, went to the forest on the bank of the Gaṅgā, and lived there while Varuṇa afflicted his father with dropsy. In the sixth year Rohita saw the excellent ṛshi Ajīgarta wandering on the bank of the Gaṅgā with his three sons and his wife, without any means of livelihood. The prince bowed and asked why he was so gloomy and lean.

“I have no means to support my family,” Ajīgarta answered. “We will die without food. I have no gold, silver, cows, grain or garments. I have three sons and a wife, and I am the fifth, and there is no one to buy any of us for food.” Rohita asked what he would take from him, and Ajīgarta said: “Take one of my three sons, or me, or my wife. We shall stay alive by this sale.” Rohita asked for a youthful son. Ajīgarta said: “I will not sell my eldest son, Śunaḥpuccha, and the mother will not sell the youngest. I shall sell Śunaḥśepa, the one between them.” When Rohita said the paśu was for Varuṇa, Ajīgarta agreed and set the price: a thousand cows, grain, gold coins and clothes. Rohita gave him the wealth and the clothes and took Śunaḥśepa to his father.

Hariścandra would not make a brāhmaṇa the paśu, and a divine voice sent him to the Gautamī, where the yajña was completed without the killing of Śunaḥśepa, and Viśvāmitra made Śunaḥśepa the eldest of his sons.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 34

His fall and his release

Brahmā tells Nārada of the Paiśāca Tīrtha on the northern bank of the Gaṅgā. Ajīgarti, son of Suyava, distressed by the burden of his family, by famine and want, sold his middle son Śunaḥśepa, best of the knowers of Brahman, to a kshatriya for a great sum, to be the victim in a yajña. “What pāpa does a person in distress not commit, even if he is learned?” the Purāṇa says. He also took much money as the fee for doing the slaughter, and he was struck by an incurable disease.

In time he died and was thrown into naraka. At Yama’s command the Yamadūtas moved him through many wombs, and then he became a terrible piśāca of frightful shape. They dragged him through lonely forests, dry woods and waterless wastes burning with the forest fires of summer, and as the fruit of his pāpa ripened they cooked and roasted his body, and he cried aloud, remembering what he had done. The Purāṇa teaches here that those who sell their daughters, sons, land, horses and cows do not return from naraka until the pralaya.

Once Śunaḥśepa, going along the road, heard a preta lamenting again and again, and knew the voice of his father. “You are in great distress! Who are you?” he asked. “I am the father of Śunaḥśepa,” said Ajīgarti. “After a deed of pāpa I have come to this terrible state. I have been cooked and roasted in the narakas, and now I hang between births. This is the goal of all who do evil.” His son answered: “O father, I am your son. You sold me, and so you went to the narakas. Now I shall make you go to svarga.”

Śunaḥśepa meditated on the Gaṅgā, went at once to the Gautamī and bathed. Pure in mind and body, he remembered Śambhu and Vishṇu and offered tarpaṇa (an offering of water) to his father. By that offering alone Ajīgarti was purified and gained a body of great puṇya. By the power of his son and of the Gaṅgā, Śambhu, Hari and Vidhātṛ, he shone with the radiance of ten thousand suns, and seated in a vimāna he reached the abode of Vishṇu, where the hosts of devas dwell. From then on that tīrtha has been famed as the Paiśāca Tīrtha, the destroyer of the piśāca state.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 80

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapters 34, 80