Vishṇutīrtha · vishṇu-tīrtha, “the tīrtha of Vishṇu”

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

Vishṇutīrtha, “the tīrtha of Vishṇu“, is the holy place at the mouth of the river Kokā on the Himālaya where Bhagavān Vishṇu, in the form of Varāha, lifted out the pitṛs (the ancestors) who had sunk beneath the river’s water. The Brahma Purāṇa tells its origin in Chapter 219, where Vyāsa, asked by the munis how śrāddha should be performed, bows to Jagannātha and to Varāha-mūrti and begins with this account: long ago Bhagavān Vishṇu, as Varāha, performed śrāddha and lifted the pitṛs out of the water of the Kokā.

The pitṛs fell from yoga when they accepted Ūrjā, the daughter of Candra, without her father’s giving; by Candra’s śāpa they fell to the foot of the Himālaya and Ūrjā became the river Kokā. When the rākshasas fell on them, the pitṛs moved a rock, the river flooded over them, and from beneath the water they took refuge in Bhagavān Vishṇu. Bhagavān Vishṇu as Varāha struck the rock away with his tusk and drew them up, and the place where he lifted them took the name Vishṇutīrtha.

The account of the tīrtha

Ūrjā comes to the pitṛs

Vyāsa tells the munis that long ago, at the junction of the Tretā and Dvāpara yugas, the pitṛs, both the divine and the human, lived on Mount Meru with the Viśvedevas. As they sat there, Kāntimatī, the daughter of Soma (Candra), a deva-kanyā, stood before them with joined palms. “Auspicious one, who are you? Who is your master?” they asked. She answered: “If it pleases you, I choose you as my masters. My first name is Ūrjā; after that I am called Svadhā. Just now you have called me Kokā.”

The pitṛs heard her and gazed at her face and could not have enough of looking. Seeing this, the Viśvedevas knew that the pitṛs had fallen from yoga, left them, and went to svarga.

The śāpa of Candra

Candra did not find his daughter Ūrjā at home, and his mind was troubled. In samādhi, by the power of his tapas, he learned that she had gone to the pitṛs out of desire and that they had accepted her with all their hearts. Then Śaśāṅka (Candra), angered, pronounced a śāpa (curse) on the pitṛs: “Fallen from yoga, your minds unsteady, you carried off my daughter, a sādhvī within her father’s bounds, though I did not give her. Therefore you shall fall.” And on his daughter: “Because this daughter of mine, acting on her own, left dharma and chose husbands, let her become a river named Kokā on the Himālaya.”

Under the śāpa the pitṛ-devatās, fallen from yoga, fell at the foot of the Himālaya. Ūrjā too fell there, on a plateau of the mountain, and under the name Kokā, with a hundred tīrthas, wetting the peak of the Himālaya, she flowed. Because she gave herself up and flowed, she was called a sarit, a river.

The pitṛs on the Himālaya

The pitṛs saw the great river with its cool water, but did not know that it was Ūrjā, the daughter of Candra. Seeing them suffer from hunger, a badarī tree (the jujube) and a cow that gave honey-milk were given to them. The divine milk, the water of the Kokā and the badarī fruit became the food of the pitṛ-devatās, and living on that food, ten thousand years passed for them like a single day.

The rākshasas and the flood

Because the world was without pitṛs and the utterance “svadhā” was no longer heard, the daityas, rākshasas and yātudhānas grew strong. They rose up and fell on the pitṛ-gaṇas, now parted from the Viśvedevas, from all four sides. The pitṛs, in anger, lifted a rock on the river bank and held it. As the rock was moved, the current of the river grew, and its water flooded over the pitṛs and over the Himālaya itself. When the pitṛs vanished under the water, the rākshasas climbed a tāṇḍra tree and hid there without food. The pitṛ-devatās, grieved by the flood and faint with hunger, stayed in the water and took refuge in Bhagavān Vishṇu.

The pitṛs’ stotra

From beneath the water the pitṛs praised him:

“Govinda, be victorious!”
“Jagannivāsa, dwelling-place of the world! O Keśava, by your grace may we too have victory!”
“You of unequalled prowess, lift us who are sunk in the water.”
“O Varāha-mūrti, protect us, who are terrified of those rākshasas of dreadful form.”
“When your holy names are sung, rākshasas, bhūtas, pretas, piśācas and the rest perish, and dharma and the other purushārthas are attained.”

Bhagavān Vishṇu as Varāha lifts the pitṛs

Hearing this praise, Bhagavān Vishṇu showed his divine form and saw the pitṛ-gaṇa at the mouth of the Kokā river, sunk in the water and holding the rock on their heads. Then Hari, as Varāha-mūrti, resolved to lift them. With his tusk he struck the rock, lifted it and flung it away, and he drew the pitṛs up out of the water. On the tusk of the divine boar the pitṛs shone like gold, and Bhagavān Vishṇu freed them from fear. The place where he lifted them got the name Vishṇutīrtha. There Hari gave them water to drink.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 219

The first śrāddha

Vyāsa goes on to tell how Bhagavān Vishṇu as Varāha then prepared śrāddha for the pitṛs. He took darbha grass born from the hairs of his body and sesame born from his sweat, made a firebrand shining like the sun, and, standing under the banyan called Koṭi-vaṭa, took the water of the tīrtha Gaṅgādhara from Tuṅgakūṭa. With the herbs fit for yajña, honey, milk, fragrances, flowers, dhūpa and dīpa, a cow from the lake and gems from the ocean, he made the ground ready with his tusk, invited the ṛshis, honoured the Viśvedevas, invited the divine and human pitṛs with mantras, offered arghya and the homa, and fed the brāhmaṇas.