Aśvabhānu Tīrtha

Aśvabhānu Tīrtha · aśva-bhānu tīrtha, “the tīrtha of the horse and the sun”

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

Aśvabhānu Tīrtha, the tīrtha of the horse and the sun, is a tīrtha on the Gautamī, the Godāvarī, in Janasthāna, near the splendid confluence of the rivers Aruṇā and Varuṇā with the Gaṅgā. It is called Aśva Tīrtha because there Ushā, the daughter of Tvashṭṛ, in the form of a mare, met her husband Bhagavān Sūrya, who had come in the form of a horse, and the Aśvins were born; and it is called Bhānu Tīrtha, where the āśrama with five banyan trees stands. Brahmā tells Nārada its account in the Gautamī Māhātmya of the Brahma Purāṇa: Ushā’s shadow Chāyā, Yama’s śāpa, Sūrya’s pursuit of Ushā from the land of the Uttara Kurus to the Gautamī, and the birth of the twin devas in the Gaṅgā. Twenty-seven thousand tīrthas of the devas are there, and a bath and dāna give everlasting puṇya.

Ushā and her shadow

Brahmā tells Nārada that Āditya (Bhagavān Sūrya), the eldest son of Kaśyapa, is the eye of the three worlds, with hot and mighty rays and seven horses to draw his chariot. His wife was Ushā, the daughter of Tvashṭṛ, the most beautiful woman in the three worlds. Her children by Vivasvān were the wise Manu and Yama and the holy river Yamunā. Unable to bear the fierceness of her husband’s heat, Ushā made, with effort, a shadow (chāyā) of herself in her own form, and said to her: “Be like me. Look after my husband and children, and be my husband’s beloved until I return. Tell neither my children nor my husband.” The shadow agreed, and Ushā left the house.

Longing for her husband’s form to grow gentle, she went to her father and told him everything. Tvashṭṛ, though he loved her, said it was not right for a married woman to act as she pleased, and told her to go back. She said “No, no” again and again, and went to the land of the Uttara Kurus. There she took the form of a mare (vaḍavā) and performed severe tapas, her mind fixed on her husband.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19

Chāyā and Yama

Meanwhile Chāyā, in Ushā‘s form, lived with Sūrya as his wife and bore him Manu Sāvarṇi, Śani and a wicked daughter, Vishṭi. She treated her own children and Ushā’s children differently, and Yama, ruler of the southern quarter, grew angry and kicked her. Chāyā pronounced a śāpa (a curse) on him: “Sinner, may your foot rot.” Weeping, Yama went to his father with his rotting foot and said: “She is not my mother. A true mother is not angered even when her children wrong her. A mother, mātā, is so called because all that her child does, good or bad, is measured in her. She stares at me every day as if to burn me, and speaks words as fierce as black fire.”

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19

Sūrya follows Ushā

Bhagavān Sūrya understood: “This is Chāyā, not Ushā. To make me gentle, the daughter of Tvashṭṛ is performing tapas in the Uttara Kuru land in the form of a mare.” He went there in the form of a horse (aśva). Seeing the horse rush towards her, the chaste Ushā, who did not know who it was, fled south in fear, wondering who would save her, the ṛshis or the devas. Wherever she went, Sūrya followed. They crossed the Bhāgīrathī, the Narmadā and other rivers, parks, forests and the Vindhya mountain. Having heard that in Janasthāna on the Gautamī there were ṛshis who could protect her, the mare came to the āśrama of the ṛshis there.

The horse followed, and the people of Janasthāna stopped it. Bhagavān Sūrya, the husband of Ushā, pronounced a śāpa on them: “Since you stopped me, you shall become banyan trees (vaṭa).” With the eye of knowledge the ṛshis saw that he was Ushā’s husband, and they praised him with great joy.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19

The birth of the Aśvins

While the ṛshis praised him, Sūrya came near the mare, and the face of the horse touched the face of the mare. Knowing now that it was her husband, the daughter of Tvashṭṛ shed his seed from her mouth, and from it the Aśvins, the twin devas, were born in the river Gaṅgā.

To see this wonder there came the hosts of devas, the Siddhas, the ṛshis, the rivers, the cows, the healing herbs and the hosts of the luminaries; the holy chariot of the seven-horsed Sūrya and his charioteer Aruṇa; Yama, Manu, Varuṇa and Śani the son of Sūrya; the holy rivers Yamunā, Tāpī and Mahānadī, which out of wonder had taken embodied form; and Sūrya’s father-in-law Tvashṭṛ. Sūrya said to him: “O Tvashṭṛ, set me on the lathe and pare away my blazing parts, to please Ushā, who has performed excellent tapas. Cut them away until she is pleased.” Saying “So be it,” Tvashṭṛ began to pare away the blazing parts of Sūrya in the presence of Somanātha, at the place known as Prabhāsa.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19

The names of the tīrtha

The place where Ushā in the form of a mare met her husband, where the Aśvins were born, is called Aśva Tīrtha. It is also called Bhānu Tīrtha, where the āśrama with five banyan trees stands. The Tāpī and the Yamunā came there to see their father, Sūrya, and the confluence of the Aruṇā and the Varuṇā with the Gaṅgā there is splendid.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19

The twenty-seven thousand tīrthas

There are twenty-seven thousand (“nine times three thousand”) tīrthas of the devas there, one for each deva who came to that tīrtha. All of them are good.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19

The rite and its phala

• Snāna (bathing) and dāna there give great and everlasting (akshaya) puṇya.
• Whoever remembers, reads or hears this account is freed from all pāpas and becomes dhārmika (righteous) and happy.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19