The Curse at the Sacrifice

The Bhāgavata tells of Bhṛgu at two sacrifices: one held by the makers of the world, and one held by Dakṣa, a son of Brahmā the creator, whose daughter Satī was the wife of the god Śiva. Śiva is also called Bhava, Hara and Rudra.

Long ago the makers of the world held a long sacrifice, and the highest seers came to it, and all the hosts of the gods with their followers, and the sages, and the fires. When Dakṣa came in, shining like the sun, everyone in that gathering rose from their seats, all but Brahmā and Śiva. Dakṣa bowed to Brahmā, the teacher of the world, and sat down at his word. But when he saw Śiva seated there, who had not risen to honour him, he could not bear it. He looked at him sideways, as though his eyes would burn him, and said:

Hear me, seers of Brahman, and you gods and fires. I speak neither in ignorance nor in spite. This shameless one has stained the good name of the guardians of the world, and fouled the road that good men walk. He became my pupil when he took my daughter's hand before the fire and the brahmins. He took the hand of a girl with a fawn's eyes, this one with a monkey's eyes, and yet he has not offered me even a word of greeting, though I am one he should rise for and greet. Unwilling as I was, I gave my girl to him, though his rites have lapsed and he is unclean and proud and has broken every bound, as one might give the sacred word to a śūdra. He wanders in the dreadful places of the dead with ghosts and troops of spirits, naked like a madman, his hair loose, laughing and weeping, bathed in the ash of pyres, wearing garlands from the dead and the bones of men for ornaments. He is called the auspicious one, and he is not auspicious. He is mad, and the mad love him, and he is the lord of the goblin hordes, whose whole nature is darkness. To him, the lord of madness, whose purity is gone and whose heart is wicked, I gave a good girl, alas, at the bidding of Brahmā.

Śiva stood there and answered nothing. Dakṣa touched water and, in his anger, cursed him: At the sacrifice to the gods, let this Bhava, the lowest of the gods, have no share with Indra and Viṣṇu and the rest. The chief men of the gathering tried to hold him back, but he let the curse go, and walked out in swelling anger, and went home.

When Nandīśvara, the first of Śiva's followers, heard the curse, he flushed with rage and laid a hard curse on Dakṣa, and on the brahmins who had approved what should never have been said. Whoever wrongs the lord, who wrongs no one, for the sake of this mortal body, he said, is a fool who sees things as separate, and he will be turned away from the truth. Let Dakṣa forget the way of the self; let him cling to a household of false duties and the pleasures of the village, and spread out his rites, his understanding ruined by talk of the Veda; let him be a beast, in love with women, and before long let him have the face of a goat. Let him and those who followed him in slighting Śiva go round and round in birth and death. Let those who hate Hara be bewildered by the flowering, honey-scented words of the Veda. And let the brahmins eat anything at all, hold their learning and their austerities and vows only for a living, delight in wealth and body and senses, and wander here as beggars.

When Bhṛgu heard that curse spoken against the whole race of brahmins, he sent back a curse of his own, the rod of a brahmin, which no one escapes. Let those who keep the vow of Bhava, he said, and all who follow them, become heretics, enemies of the true scriptures. Let them lose their purity and their wits, and wear matted hair and ash and bones, and enter the initiation of Śiva, where wine and strong drink are their god. Because you revile the Veda and the brahmins, who hold men within their bounds, you have taken refuge in heresy. For the Veda is the good and ancient road of the worlds, which those before us kept, and Viṣṇu is its warrant. You revile the Veda, highest and pure, the ancient way of the good: go, then, to heresy, where your god is the king of the spirits.

While Bhṛgu was speaking his curse, the lord Bhava rose and went out with his followers, seeming a little troubled in his mind. And the makers of the world carried their sacrifice through for a thousand years, with Viṣṇu as the one they worshipped. They bathed at its close where the Gaṅgā meets the Yamunā, and went home, each to his own place, made clean.