Rohitatīrtha · rohita-tīrtha, “the tīrtha of Rohita”

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

Rohitatīrtha is a tīrtha on the southern bank of the Gautamī, named after Rohita, the son of King Hariścandra of the Ikshvāku line. It is one of the twenty-two thousand tīrthas that arose there from Hariścandra’s naramedha. Brahmā tells Nārada its account in the Gautamī Māhātmya of the Brahma Purāṇa. Hariścandra gained Rohita by the grace of Varuṇa on the bank of the Gautamī, promising to offer the boy to Varuṇa in a yajña, and put off the offering again and again. When at last he called his son, Rohita took his divine bow and went away to the forest on the Gaṅgā; Varuṇa struck the king with illness; and in the sixth year Rohita bought the brāhmaṇa boy Śunaḥśepa from his father Ajīgarta to take his place. At the word of a divine voice the king performed the yajña on the Gautamī, and through Viśvāmitra‘s plea the devas let it be completed without killing Śunaḥśepa. A bath and dāna here give the fruit of a naramedha, and hearing its greatness gives a son to one who has none.

Hariścandra’s wish for a son

Brahmā tells Nārada the account. There was a king born in the vaṃśa of Ikshvāku named Hariścandra. The ṛshis Nārada and Parvata came to his palace, and he received them with great ātithya (hospitality). Then he asked them: “The whole world suffers for the sake of a son. What does one gain from a son, whether wise or foolish, excellent or middling?”

The two ṛshis said that the answer could be one, a hundred or a thousand, and all would be good. To a man without a son, they said, neither the other world nor this world is open. A man who bathes at the birth of his son gains the fruit of the avabhṛtha (closing bath) of ten aśvamedhas. Through a son one gains honour and may become foremost among the immortals; what the devas gain through amṛta, men gain through a son. A son frees his father and grandfathers from the three debts (ṛṇa-traya). Of what use is living on roots and water, or a long beard, or tapas, without a son? A son leads to svarga and moksha. The son alone is the other world, dharma, kāma and artha; the son is moksha and the great light, who carries embodied beings across. A dāna or a yajña without a son bears no fruit; through a son one is freed from the debt to the pitṛs and redeemed from pāpa. A father who sees the face of his living son rejoices and gains every enjoyment of the mortal world and of svarga. There is nothing in the three worlds as dear as a son.

Hariścandra was filled with wonder. “Tell me how I can gain a son,” he said. “I will go anywhere and do anything, by effort, by japa of mantras, by yajña or by dāna.” The ṛshis meditated for a short while and said: “Go to the Gautamī. There Varuṇa, ruler of the waters, whom the ṛshis praise as the giver of everything, fulfils every wish held in the mind. When he is pleased he will grant you a son.”