Bhauvana (City)

Bhauvana

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

Bhauvana is a well-known city on the top of a mountain. The Brahma Purāṇa names it in the Gautamī Māhātmya, where Brahmā tells Nārada of the Cakshustīrtha on the southern bank of the Gautamī. The city was ruled by a king also named Bhauvana, devoted to the dharma of a kshatriya.

The people of Bhauvana

In that excellent city lived a brāhmaṇa named Vṛddhakauśika. His son was Gautama, the most excellent of all who knew the Vedas. Because of a defect in his mother’s mind, this Gautama had contrary qualities. This brāhmaṇa of Bhauvana is not Gautama Maharshi who brought the Gaṅgā.

Gautama had a friend, a rich vaiśya named Maṇikuṇḍala, also called Kuṇḍala and Maṇimān. The brāhmaṇa was poor and the vaiśya prosperous, yet each wished for the other’s welfare.

What began in Bhauvana

Gautama urged Maṇikuṇḍala again and again, in secret, to go out with him to the mountains and the seas to earn wealth by his own arms. The vaiśya, sincere, gathered his wealth and jewels and gave them to Gautama, and the two set out from Bhauvana without their parents’ knowledge. Gautama meant to take the vaiśya’s wealth. On the road the two wagered over whether dharma or adharma is the stronger: Maṇikuṇḍala lost his wealth, then his hands, and at last, before Yogeśvara on the southern bank of the Gautamī, his eyes. Vibhīshaṇa and his son Vaibhīshaṇi restored him with a branch of the tree where the herb Viśalyakaraṇī had fallen, and the place became the tīrtha called Mṛtasañjīvana, Cakshustīrtha and Yogeśa.

Maṇikuṇḍala later became king of Mahāpura. He found Gautama, whose riches had all been taken by gamblers, honoured him, taught him the power of dharma and had him bathe in the Gaṅgā. The two friends and their kinsmen, among whom Vṛddhakauśika was the chief, performed yajñas near Yogeśvara, worshipped the devas and went to svarga.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 100

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 100