Sutapas and Vishṇu’s Māyā

Sutapas Vishṇumāyā, “Sutapas and the māyā of Vishṇu”

This is the account, told by the son of King Kāmadamana to his father and retold by Vyāsa to the munis in the Brahma Purāṇa, of the ṛshi Sutapas, who asked Bhagavān Vishṇu to show him his māyā. Vishṇu warned him that no one can know it and told him how Nārada, asking the same, had lived a whole life as a princess. Still Sutapas insisted, and at Vishṇu’s word he plunged into Kokāmukha tīrtha. He rose as a girl in a cāṇḍāla’s house, was married to the poor and ugly cāṇḍāla Subāhu and bore him two blind sons and a deaf daughter, until one day, bathing in the river, he rose again as the ṛshi Sutapas. Through the same tīrtha Subāhu was freed of his pāpas and went to svarga, and Sutapas followed him. Kāmadamana’s son tells this as his own birth three lives before.

Sutapas asks for the vara

After many births as man, deva, gandharva, nāga and others, the prince says, he was born as a great ṛshi named Sutapas, with firm bhakti to Janārdana, Lokanātha, ruler of the worlds, the slayer of Madhu. He pleased Bhagavān Vishṇu, who bears the cakra, the gadā and the khaḍga, with many vratas and fasts. Wishing to grant him a vara, Bhagavān Vishṇu came mounted on Garuḍa and said in a loud voice: “Brāhmaṇa, ask whatever vara you wish.”

Sutapas said: “If you are pleased with me, tell me the truth of your māyā.” Bhagavān Vishṇu answered: “I will give you dharma, artha and kāma, excellent sons and freedom from every affliction. What will you do by knowing my māyā?” Sutapas said: “What must be conquered even through dharma, artha and kāma is your māyā alone. O Puṇḍarīkāksha, show me its truth.”

The warning of Nārada’s life

Bhagavān Vishṇu said that no one has known his māyā and no one will. He told Sutapas how Nārada had asked the same vara and, plunging into water at his word, had risen as Suśīlā, daughter of the king of Kāśī; had married Sudharma of Vidarbha and lived happily with sons and grandsons; had lost them all in war; and, entering their pyre crying “Alas, my son!”, had become Nārada again, while the fire turned into a cool lake, which became the tīrtha Sitoda. “I told you this to awaken you,” Bhagavān Vishṇu said. “You cannot know my māyā. If you still wish to know it, plunge into this Kokāmukha tīrtha.”

The cāṇḍāla woman

Bound by his own coming fate, Sutapas plunged into the water, and at once he became a girl in the house of a cāṇḍāla, beautiful, of good conduct and good qualities. When she grew up she was married to Subāhu, a cāṇḍāla’s son, who was ugly. Her husband was not dear to her, but she was dear to him. She bore two blind sons and a deaf daughter. Her husband was poor, and that innocent woman went to the river every day and wept.

One day she took a pot and went to the river, entered the water to bathe, and as she rose she was changed back into her first form, the brāhmaṇa Sutapas.

Subāhu’s grief and release

Subāhu, finding she had been gone long, came to the river and found only the pot. Not seeing her on the bank, he wept so that the place echoed, and his blind sons and deaf daughter came and wept with him. He asked the brāhmaṇas there, and they said: “We saw her go down into the river, but we did not see her come up.”

Seeing them weep, Sutapas felt great pain and remembered that until that moment he himself had been the cāṇḍāla woman. “Why do you weep so?” he said. “However much you weep, she will not come back.” Subāhu said: “These two sons are blind and the daughter is deaf. How shall I comfort them, how shall I raise them?” The more he wept, the more compassion Sutapas felt, and he stopped his weeping and told him the whole account.

Subāhu, deeply distressed, plunged into Kokāmukha tīrtha. As soon as he entered the water, by the power of the tīrtha he was freed of his pāpas, and as Sutapas watched he mounted a vimāna shining like the moon and went to svarga. A deluding grief came over Sutapas too, and he also plunged into the holy water of Kokā and went to svarga.

Afterwards

In his next birth he was born in a vaiśya family and, by the power of Kokāmukha, remembered his former birth; with great vairāgya he went to the tīrtha, gave up his body there under a vrata and reached svarga; and coming down, he was born by Vishṇu‘s grace as the son of Kāmadamana. That prince worshipped Śrī Mahāvishṇu as Varāha at Kokāmukha and attained siddhi.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 229

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 229