Saptarishi – Godavari – {Ep.274}

Today’s episode is the story of how the Godavari river originated. Also featuring” a Maharishi who wants to wash away his sins, a gift from Shiva, and Valmiki’s genetic cloning experiments!

Namaskar and 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 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’re doing a story that explains the origin of the river Godavari. I’ll cover all the boring geographical facts later, at the end of the episode. Let’s jump right away…. not into the river. Because it didn’t yet exist and we’d just fall flat on our faces on hard, dry ground. Instead let’s land gently onto a little clearing in the Brahmagiri hills. Giri means hill so that’s redundant. I really should just say Brahmagiri. Otherwise I risk putting Brahmagiri Hills into the category of Naan Bread, Ghee Butter and Chai Tea.

Anyway, back to this hill and the little clearing. It contained some huts, and there lived a few rishis. If this story were set in modern India you might be perfectly justified in thinking that the huts were all occupied by a bunch of guys all named Rishi. You know, like Rishi Kapoor, Rishi Sunak. But this story is set in Ancient India when Rishi was not just a name – it was a profession.

The most famous of those Rishis was Gautum. He wasn’t just a Rishi, but a Maharishi, and a Saptarishi to boot. Being a Maharishi was okay, but being a Saptarishi put him in the hall of fame. The Saptarishis are the 7 rishis who are up in the sky as the Big Dipper, Great Bear, or the Ursa Major constellation. He lived in one of the huts with his wife Ahalya. This is the same Ahalya who was character of the week back in Episode 17. More about her later.

Gautam and Ahalya lived in this hut as happily as they could manage. The primary reason they didn’t live a comfortable life was the drought and famine that had struck the land. It’s a good thing they were rishis and used to fasting and such. Ordinary mortals might not have survived those tough times.

Gautam had made up his mind to do something about it. They needed a source of water – a well of some kind. Gods help those who help themselves, he knew. So he took matters into his own hands. Not by digging for the well, but praying to the heavens for it. Well, when you’re a rishi of Gautam’s caliber, your prayers get fast tracked. And so Varuna, the God of the Seas, granted Gautum’s wish. And when Gautum went back from his prayer spot on the slopes of one of the Brahmagiris, he found a fully constructed well, complete with a pulley, a bucket, spare rope, spare buckets. And a container and irrigation channels in his barren yard. 

With water gushing out of the well, the yard did not stay barren for long. Gautum and Ahalya had enough water not just to drink and cook their food in, but also for a swimming pool, a water fountains, a decorative pond. They would have also created a turbine and a hydroelectric dam, if they had the other raw materials.

Despite all these quality of life improvements there was one major problem with this heavenly gift. The water was only available in Gautam and Ahalya’s property. Varuna must not have raised the water table for the whole area, but just to the precise 40*60 plot that Gautum and Ahalya lived on. That meant when other Rishis tried to dig their own wells, they only hit dirt, not pay dirt. Gautum and Ahalya were more than happy to share their water and their well, but whenever anyone attempted to carry any water out of the boundaries of their property it simply disappeared.

You can imagine how the other Rishis felt about it.

It was all very well for them to feel upset about it. I totally see their point of view. Maybe if they prayed to Varuna they could get similar wells of water as well. But then they might repeat the same problem that they now faced. This would be a barrier to entry for any new Rishis, including their own children, who tried to set up their own huts in this place.

So they prayed to the God who specializes in removing obstacles. I am talking about Ganesha. Incidentally just a week ago, it was Ganesha’s birthday. I met him and we had a blast, and I had an awful amount of Modaks. But that’s a story for another time.

Anyway, Ganesh was quick to answer the prayers of the rest of the Brahmagiri Rishis. When many Rishis are praying together, there is amplification of their voices and that takes them to the top of the wait-list, with most gods. There’s a tip for you from an insider. Use it well.

Anyway, Ganesha agreed to help them. And he did. The very next day, a cow came strolling by. It was alarming that she just showed up in their midst. It was strange that the rishi who doubled as a Chowkidar hadn’t seen her. But it turned out he had been sleeping and hadn’t really been paying attention.

No one knew where the cow had come from. The nearest settlement was miles and miles away. And with the lack of water everywhere, everyone thought it was a miracle that she had survived. Not only survived but she seemed reasonably healthy.

But wait a minute! Appearances are usually deceptive. The cow was not actually healthy. She was rather weak, disabled. But none of the Rishis realized that.

The cow ambled towards the only source of food she could find. The lush green grass that grew all over Gautum and Ahalya’s land. Though the land was fully green, there wasn’t a single blade of grass outside of a rectangular plot. If the cow noticed this and found it strange she didn’t say so. Or she might have and it might have come out as “Moooo”. I don’t know, I don’t speak cow.

Nearby two Rishis were observing all this and wondering if this was Ganesha’s solution.

“Too much of a coincidence, if it isn’t,” remarked Rishi 1. “We told us just yesterday that he’s going to solve this problem, and today there’s a cow here. When was the last time we had any animals wander in here?”

Rishi 2 stroked his gray beard and said with the voice of experience “it very well could be, m’boy. It very well could be”

“What I don’t get is how this cow helps solve our problem. I wonder if she’s Kamadhenu. You know the wish-granting cow? She makes you whatever you are thinking of, and hardly eats any food herself.”

At that moment the cow in question showed one symptom of not being Kamadhena. She began to eat the grass. Gautum rishi who had been meditating heard the cow. He approached her with Kusha grass. A Kusha grass is basically just a few blades of grass arranged in a specific way and that has special religious significance.

There was no malice. Not on his part, not on the Rishis. And certainly not on the part of the cow. A cow was considered sacred, and no one would dream of intentionally harming her or even shooing her away. All he did was to approach her and stroke her gently as if to calm her and to urge her to continue eating.

“What’s he doing? What’s in his hand? Is he going to turn that grass into a Brahmastra?!” exclaimed an excited rishi 1.

Rishi 2 didn’t have the chance to respond. Because the moment Gautum touched the cow, she collapsed and died on the spot.

There were shocked voices and everyone came running to see. The Rishi who doubled as the medical examiner and the tripled as the veterinarian examined her and pronounced her dead. Heart failure likely. He said he would need to examine her more to determine exact time of death. Which some Rishis tried pointing out was completely unnecessary. But the medical examiner insisted on it. It was a procedure and he intended to rigorously follow it.

But that didn’t stop the rishis from coming to a conclusion on cause of death. Gautum was responsible they all said. If he hadnt touched her she would have been okay. She only collapsed after Gautum touched her. That made Gautum a murderer! And worse than a regular murderer, it made him a cow murderer.

He tried to protest in a rather long winded way. “Remember that time when there was a-circle-the-world race?” he asked them.

“That was Ganesha and Kartikeya,” Rishi 1 said, “with Narada judging. It was episode 7.5 on Narada’s podcast if I recall”

“That’s the one everyone pays attention to!” Gautum said, frustrated. “No one remembers the race for Rishis. I ran, and won this one!”

“What does that have to do with the matter at hand?”

“I won the race by circling a cow,” Gautum exclaimed. “Seriously how come no one’s heard of this?”

Most hadn’t heard of it. But even if it were true, they didn’t think it was an original idea. Still it didn’t matter.

Gautum went on to elaborate that if he thought a cow was the entire world because of all the ways she helps humans, wasn’t it inconceivable that he would intentionally harm one?

That was a good point. And yet the rishis were not satisfied. A cow was dead, and if it hadn’t been for Gautum she would have been alive. That’s the same kind of logic that Scar used in the Lion King to convince Simba that he was responsible for Mufasa’s death.

Anyway, the Rishis were not convinced. And if they were not convinced no one would be. Because Rishis were some of the most respected people in the ancient Indian world.

Gautum came to accept his crime. When in doubt the solution was to pray to the gods. But which god? Ideally what he wanted was something to wash away his sin. And what was the best way to wash away your sins? If you said the river Ganga, you would be absolutely correct. Though any modern day visitor, upon observing all the pollutants being dumped into this mighty river, might disagree.

In Gautum’s time the river was not quite as polluted. So that’s the path he chose. The Ganga was hundreds of kilometers away. But if Gautum couldn’t go to the river, the river could come to Gautum. And because he was a Maharishi, a Saptarishi and all that that was totally possible. He prayed to Shiva. Shiva is the destroyer of the universe, one of the holy Trinity together with Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver. But hang on, Gautum wasn’t getting confused and mixing up his Gods and Goddesses. He was praying to Shiva in order to get to Ganga.

Shiva appeared and knew exactly what Gautum had in mind. What Gautum had in mind was what Shiva had on his head. You see the Ganga flows from Shiva’s hair. You might have seen some pictures and paintings with a little waterfall in his hair, together with the moon. Anyway, Shiva was more than happy to part with a little trickle of water. That little trickle was a torrent. It not only washed away the cow, but it continues to flow to this day, flowing from that place in Gautum’s yard. And that is the river we know as the Godavari today. Even the name means
“Cow given stream”, if you translate that literally.

Needless to say, the drought was immediately over. The place where all this happened is Trimbakeshwar. Nearby the city of Nashik is one of the hubs for the Kumbh Mela.

That’s all for now

Some notes on the show

The Godavari is called the Dakshin Ganga, or the southern Ganga. It originates only about 80 kilometers from the Arabian Sea. And yet the river travels one thousand four hundred and sixty file kilometers and empties into the Bay of Bengal instead. The idea is that Gautum wanted the river to solve drought problems over a much larger part of the country. And that’s why he directed the river to flow east.

Ram, Sita and Laxman spent a fair bit of time along the banks of the Godavari. Panchavati and Chitrakoot, both of which feature in the Ramayana, are along the Godavari banks.

Gautam’s wife Ahalya featured as character of the week a long long time ago, back in Episode 17. When Indra, the King of the Devas sort of tricked her by pretending to be Gautum, and when Gautum caught them both together, he cursed Ahalya to be turned to stone, even though she was completely blameless. Her salvation came in the form of Ram in the Ramayana, when he touched the stone with his feet. That changed her back instantly,  because, you know, Ram was an avatar of Vishnu. And that meant he had all kinds of superpowers.

Another interesting story about Kusha grass and the Ramayana, which included genetic cloning millenia ahead of modern times. This version happened after Rama exiled Sita, and she went on to live in Valmiki’s ashram. You heard in the regular version of the Ramayana that Sita then gave birth to twins. Well in this alternate version, she only had one child Lava. And everyday she used to go out wandering for fruits and berries, while Valmiki babysat. One day, she took Lava with her, but neglected to keep Valmiki informed. Imagine Valmiki’s panic when he realized Sita was out as usual, but Lava was nowhere to be seen. Jumping to the conclusion that Lava must have been carried away by a wild animal, and fearing a mother’s wrath, Valmiki took a piece of Kusha grass, and magically transformed it into a living, breathing, genetic clone of Lava. When Sita returned with Lava all hale and hearty, well – there was a tiny bit of embarrassment. But only for a while. Sita raised both copies of Lava as twins. 

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, we’ll do an Akbar Birbal story.

After my comment last week, I realized this show is hitting not one or two, but three big numbers. We’re not only at 300 episodes, and almost at 5 years, but we’ve almost at a million unique listens.
And as I mentioned last time, watch this space next week for an update on the future of this show.

Feedback

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