Aruṇā (River, Gautamī)

Aruṇā · aruṇā, “the reddish one”

Aruṇā is a river that joins the Gautamī Gaṅgā together with the Varuṇā. Brahmā tells Nārada, in the Gautamī Māhātmya of the Brahma Purāṇa, that the Aruṇā and the Varuṇā are very auspicious and that their confluence with the Gaṅgā is very holy, giving more puṇya than Lake Mānasa, the tīrtha Prayāga and the river Mandākinī. The confluence lies at the Aśvabhānu Tīrtha, where Ushā, the wife of Bhagavān Sūrya, met her husband in the form of a mare and where the two Aśvins were born.

The account of the tīrtha

“Listen now to its origin, which destroys all pāpas,” Brahmā says. Āditya, Bhagavān Sūrya, the eldest son of Kaśyapa, is the eye of the three worlds, with hot and powerful rays and seven horses to draw his chariot. His wife was Ushā, daughter of Tvashṭṛ, the most beautiful woman in the three worlds, and her children by him were the wise Manu and Yama and the holy river Yamunā. Unable to bear the heat of her husband, she made her own shadow, Chāyā, in her own form and said to her: “Be like me. Look after my husband and children, and tell no one, until I come back.” Then she went to her father’s house. Tvashṭṛ told her it was not right for a married woman to do as she pleased and sent her back, but she said “No, no” again and again and went to the land of the Uttara Kurus. There, in the form of a mare, she performed severe tapas, meditating steadily on her husband, wishing his form to become gentle.

Chāyā lived with Sūrya in Ushā’s form and bore him Manu Sāvarṇi, Śani and a daughter, Vishṭi. She treated her own children and Ushā’s differently, and Yama, the ruler of the southern quarter, in anger kicked her. Chāyā pronounced a śāpa that his foot would rot. Weeping, Yama went to his father: “She is not my mother. A true mother is never angry with her children, whatever they do; a mother is called mātā because all that a child does is measured in her. She looks at me as if to burn me.” Bhagavān Sūrya understood that this was Chāyā, not Ushā, and that Ushā was performing tapas in the Uttara Kuru land as a mare to make him gentle.

He went there in the form of a horse. Ushā, not knowing him, fled south in fear, across the Bhāgīrathī, the Narmadā and the Vindhya mountain, and came to the Gautamī, for she had heard that in Janasthāna there were ṛshis who could protect her. “If anyone comes under the sway of Kāma, what does he not do?” says Brahmā. The people of Janasthāna stopped the horse, and Bhagavān Sūrya pronounced a śāpa that they would become banyan trees. With the eye of knowledge the ṛshis saw that he was Ushā’s husband and praised him with great joy. Then the horse’s face touched the mare’s face, Ushā knew her husband, and from what she let fall from her mouth the Aśvins were born in the river Gaṅgā.

Devas, siddhas, ṛshis, rivers, cows, oshadhis (healing herbs), the hosts of the luminaries, the holy chariot of Sūrya, his charioteer Aruṇa, Yama, Manu, Varuṇa, Śani, the Yamunā, the Tāpī, the Mahānadī and Tvashṭṛ came to see the wonder, the rivers taking their own forms. Sūrya said to Tvashṭṛ: “Mount me on the lathe and pare off my blazing parts until Ushā, who has performed excellent tapas, is pleased.” Tvashṭṛ did so in the presence of Somanātha, at the place known as Prabhāsa.

The confluence and its tīrthas

The place where Ushā as a mare met her husband and 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, Bhagavān Sūrya. The confluence of the Aruṇā and the Varuṇā with the Gaṅgā there is splendid. There are nine times three thousand, twenty-seven thousand, tīrthas of the devas at that place, one for each deva who came there, and all of them are good.

Rites and their phala

Snāna (holy bath) and dāna at this place give great and akshaya (unending) puṇya. By remembering, reading or listening to this account, O Nārada, a man is freed from all pāpas and becomes dhārmika and happy.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 19