Brahma – Brahmaputra – {Ep.193} – Stories From India – Podcast

Today’s story is about my brother, who’s also a river! He’s also a major river in India that is male. We are talking about Brahmaputra!

Introduction

Welcome to “Stories From India”. This is a podcast that will take you on a journey through the rich mythology, folklore and history of the Indian subcontinent. I am Narada Muni, the celestial storyteller and the original “time lord”. With my ability to travel through space and time, I can bring you exciting and fascinating stories from the past, the present, and the future. From the epic tales of the Mahabharata and Ramayana to the folktales of the Panchatantra to stories of Akbar-Birbal and Tenali Raman, I have a story for every occasion.

The purpose of the stories is neither to pass judgment nor to indoctrinate. My goal is only to share these stories with people who may not have heard them before and to make them more entertaining for those who have.

Today’s Story

In this episode, we’ll cover the origins of one of my brothers. You know I have a lot of brothers. Not a surprise when your father is Brahma, the creator of the Universe. The brother in today’s story is special though. Because unlike other brothers, he’s also a free flowing river.

That might make you think that family reunions get a little weird. Like we have to have them outdoors. But better not get me started on family reunions. Always having them outdoors is the least weird thing about them. That’s because Brahma’s family tree includes characters like the supervillain Ravana. And Kumbhakarna – who was the size of a mountain and left no food for any of the rest of us. Anyway, Brahmaputra is the only major male river in India. 

I had the privilege of witnessing today’s story personally. On the day that this story started, I was hanging around with Dad in Kashmir.

You should know that my dad is Brahma and he’s the creator of the Universe! I’m also going to let you in on a family secret – Brahma is immensely proud of some of his creations. Like the whole Earth. What a beautiful planet this is going to turn out to be in the 30th century! But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Brahma is so proud of his creations, that often he goes out of his way to admire them. And that’s why we were in the Kashmir valley on this day. Because Brahma wanted to admire his beautiful work. But really, I think he was just misremembering a bit. You see it wasn’t Brahma, but the rishi Kashyap who created the Kashmir valley. I hadn’t the heart to remind my dad of this fact. But that’s a separate story. And besides, Brahma was responsible for Kashyap’s creation, so I suppose he can take indirect credit.

So there we were on a houseboat in Dal lake. The boat was anchored, and we quietly sat on deck in armchairs sipping lassi and watching the sunset. It was just one of those father-son moments.

That’s when the phone rang. Yeah, this story is set several millennia ago before phones were invented. But being a time-traveling space-faring person has its privileges. I had previously rigged up a telephone for my Dad as a birthday gift. Now you might think what use is a telephone if no one can call him on it? Aha, but you’re missing the point. What I did is to route all prayers to Brahma’s telephone. So that he need not go in person to whomever was praying to him. He could just answer their calls while sitting in his armchair on the houseboat in Dal lake. 

The person praying would see a holographic projection of Brahma, so there was no drop in the quality of experience for the average prayer. Occasionally, there might be a little static as the signals had to travel over a lot of space and time. But that was usually okay.

Anyway, this was just the first time that Brahma was using this instrument. “Hello! Brahma speaking this side”

“Hi I am calling from sewa dhan bank. Our bank is offering a special free credit card for a very limited time to select customers like you. This is a lifetime free card – you don’t have to give any money.”

Brahma said politely that he wasn’t interested.

“Are, benefits to sun lijiye!” the sales rep said. “You get free benefits like free movie tickets and rewards which no other credit card company is offering. Sirf aap ke liye nahin, poori family ke liye.”

Somehow knowing the size of Brahma’s family, I doubted it. Bet you couldn’t stuff us all into an entire movie theater. But I didn’t say anything.

The salesperson continued “Sacchi, sir! Humare jaisa card kahin se nahi milega. Aur ye to free hai, aap kyon behas kar rahe ho?”

Brahma hung up and glared at me, as I apologized. I quickly tinkered with my acoustic screwdriver. A few minutes later, I was sure it was going to work.

The phone rang again, and this time Brahma made me pick it up. Thankfully it wasn’t a call for a personal loan, nor was it about my car’s extended warranty. It was indeed someone praying to Brahma. “Hello, Brahma, is that you? Why do you look like Narada?” the voice asked. I realized my mistake as I quickly pointed the phone towards Brahma. “Oh, that’s weird. You look like Brahma now”

I silently pointed Brahma towards the caller id. It said it was the Rishi Shantanu. Brahma asked for Shantanu’s file, so I pulled it out quickly from Brahma’s filing cabinet. I know Brahma doesn’t take the filing cabinet with him everywhere he goes. But remember, I can travel anywhere in space and time, so with me it was the work of a moment to dip into Brahma’s home, grab the file for Shantanu and take it back to Brahma, before even Brahma had finished saying hello. 

Now I grabbed two files. Because they were two Shantanus. There was a King and a Rishi. So I grabbed both. You never know, even though the caller id said it was the Rishi Shantanu, maybe this might be a case of a King Shantanu turning into a Rishi. Like Vishwamitra had. There was certainly a King called Shantanu in the Mahabharata. 

It was safer to just get both files. Besides, my caller id may not necessarily be working perfectly.

But it was the Rishi Shantanu. 

He explained that the reason he had prayed to Brahma for all these years was so that he and his wife could be blessed with a child.

I rolled my eyes. If he wanted a child, he should have spent time at home, with his wife instead of on a mountaintop praying to Brahma. But hey, what do I know about becoming a parent? It’s true that I once had a family – children, and grandchildren. But it was all a fake experience. We covered that story in our very first episode Episode 0 – Rock Star.

“Alright, alright go home I’ll look into it,” Brahma told Shantanu. 

When he hung up, my dad told me that this whole telephone thing wasn’t quite working out. It’s really not a very good solution when they can see me and I can’t see them. Come along and I’ll show you what in-person interaction looks like.

So I tagged along. Kind of like it was a “bring-your-child-to-work” day. When we got to Shantanu’s home it became clear what exactly it was that Brahma was after. The God of creation just wanted to admire yet another of his creations – Amogha.

Amogha was Shantanu’s wife. And Brahma and I showed up. 

I guess when you’re a god they don’t leave you standing on the welcome mat, they welcome you in, and your plus one too. We had a very warm welcome from Shantanu and Amogha. The couple had practically laid out the red carpet for us. Brahma couldn’t help stare at Amogha. She was yet another of his creations. And he was proud of them. I had to elbow him to stop making it seem a little awkward.

Shantanu politely reminded Brahma about the whole getting a son thing. Brahma seemed not to notice, he was marveling so much at his own work. I felt compelled to chime in. “Yes, a child is all you need, we can totally help with that! Isn’t that right, dad?”

No answer. So I tried again and this time I nudged him with my elbow

“Oh yes, yes. Just tell my boy here what you need and I’ll get on it right away”

Brahma didn’t say anything else. He continued staring with pride at his accomplishment.

I decided it was best to be quick about this. I quickly jotted down a few bullet points from Shantanu and Amogha.

Number 1 – they preferred a boy. They claimed they weren’t part of the patriarchy, it’s just that having a boy was in fashion

Number 2 – they wanted a boy who would help millions of people. Not just now but in the future.

Number 3 – they wanted his influence to stretch all over the world from Tibet, to India to Bangladesh – which I guess was the extent of their geographical knowledge

Two of the constraints seemed reasonable. The gender preference was something that I wasn’t comfortable with. But hey, I don’t get to make the decisions here. I was just taking a message for Brahma. 

Later that evening, when we returned home, I told him strongly, to make their child a girl. That’ll teach them, I said. But I don’t know if Brahma just didn’t listen to me, or whether he’s contractually obligated to follow the wishes of people who pray to him. He made them a child. But I guess he was still a little distracted from his memory of Amogha. The boy that was born to them wasn’t a boy. It was a river. 

True to what they said, the river helped millions of people, and continues to do so today. And it does stretch all the way from Tibet to Bangladesh and covers many parts of India in between.

That river was called the son of Brahma. The Sanskrit word for Son is Putra, so Brahmaputra. You can in theory call me Brahmaputra too, seeing as I too am the son of Brahma. But I prefer if you don’t. It’ll just be too confusing otherwise.

There’s another origin story of the river Brahmaputra. This one features Parshuram. The avatar of Vishnu. We’ve seen his origin story in Episode 86 where he was responsible for a terrible act – that of executing his own mother. He did it on his father’s orders, but that didn’t make it okay.

In order to repent, he visited some holy places as some other rishis advised. In Brahmakund where he was visiting, he noticed that the people there had a lot of troubles. They didn’t have clean running water for their use, and irrigating their crops was a problem, it was only left up to the rains. And that was far from ideal. So Parshuram did the thing that made the most sense for him with all his awesome superpowers. He struck a nearby mountain with his Ax. If an average person strikes a mountain with an ax, nothing much will happen. Certainly, an average person should not expect a fountain of water to erupt out of the mountain. And they should certainly not expect that fountain to evolve into a full grown river that sustains millions of people. But with Parshuram that is exactly what happened. And that’s another explanation for Brahmaputra’s origin. 

A third origin of the Brahmaputra is that it originated from the Buddha. Yes, the very same Buddha whom we know from Jataka Tales. There was a large reservoir on the Chang Tan plateau in Tibet. The Buddha heard the unspoken ask from the human masses that clamored for water. So the Buddha obliged! He waved his hand and suddenly there was a giant valley with an outlet for the water. That’s how the Tsangpo river was born. Tsangpo literally means Great River. 

So there you have it. Three origin stories for the river Brahmaputra.

That’s all for now

Some notes on the show

Brahmaputra is only called Brahmaputra in parts of India. In Tibet, he is called Yarlung Tsangpo. Also sometimes nicknamed the “Everest of Rivers” an indication of greatness, not of height. Rivers aren’t very tall usually. This same river is also called Siang in Arunachal Pradesh and Luit in Assam and Jamuna in parts of Bangladesh. Jamuna should not be confused with the Yamuna which is a different river that flows into the Ganga. Confusingly, the Yamuna is sometimes called the Jamuna.

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, we’ll do a story from the Hitopadesha. It’s about a vulture, a cat and some birds. And it really teaches us why a very thorough interview process is needed when picking a security guard.

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