The Ruin of the Sacrifice

A long time passed, and the son-in-law and the father-in-law held to their enmity. When Brahmā made Dakṣa overlord of all the lords of creatures, pride took hold of him, and he began a great sacrifice, and all the seers and gods and fathers came to it with their wives. Satī heard of her father's festival and longed to see her own people, and she asked Śiva to go there with her. Śiva told her that Dakṣa hated him, and that if she set her husband's word aside and went, no good would come of it, for a slight from one's own people is as good as death. Then he fell silent, seeing that whether she went or stayed, harm would come to his wife; and in grief and anger she left him and went to her father's house, and Śiva's followers went with her in thousands. There her father gave her no word of welcome, and she saw that the sacrifice held no share for Śiva. Angry at Dakṣa, she sat down on the ground facing north and entered the road of yoga, and thinking of nothing but her husband's feet, she blazed up in the fire born of her own meditation.

A great cry went up, and her attendants rose with their weapons raised to kill Dakṣa. Bhṛgu saw them rushing in, and he poured an offering into the southern fire with the sacrificial formula that slays the slayers of a sacrifice. As he poured, gods sprang up in their thousands, the Ṛbhus, who had won the soma by their austerity, and with firebrands blazing with the power of Brahman they beat Śiva's followers and drove them to every quarter.

When Śiva learned from Nārada that Satī was dead, and that the Ṛbhus of that sacrifice had scattered his followers, his anger knew no bounds. He bit his lip, tore out a lock of his matted hair blazing like lightning and fire, and stood up laughing and threw it down on the earth with a deep roar. From it rose a being so huge that he touched the sky, with a thousand arms, dark as a raincloud, three suns for his eyes, terrible tusks and hair of blazing fire, a garland of skulls, and weapons of every kind raised high. With folded hands he asked, What shall I do? And Śiva said to him: Kill Dakṣa and his sacrifice. You lead my soldiers; you are a share of me.

He walked round Śiva and rushed out with his trident raised, roaring, and Śiva's followers roared behind him. The priests and the sacrificer and the gathering saw dust rising in the north and wondered where the darkness came from. Śiva's followers surrounded the great sacrifice. They broke down its halls, smashed its vessels, put out its fires, made water in the fire pits, broke the girdles of the altar, set upon the sages, threatened the wives, and seized the gods who stayed and the gods who ran. Of Śiva's followers, Maṇimān bound Bhṛgu, Vīrabhadra bound Dakṣa, Caṇḍeśa bound the god Pūṣan, and Nandīśvara seized the god Bhaga, and all the priests and the gathering and the gods fled in every direction under a rain of stones.

Then, there in the assembly, the one born of Śiva's hair, who was a share of Śiva himself, plucked out the beard of Bhṛgu, who stood ladle in hand making the offering. He threw Bhaga to the ground and tore out his eyes, for Bhaga had urged the curser on with a glance. He knocked out Pūṣan's teeth, for Pūṣan had laughed and shown his teeth while the honoured one was being cursed. He set his foot on Dakṣa's chest and cut at him with a sharp-edged weapon, and yet he could not get the head off. Even weapons charged with spells would not break the skin, and he was astonished and pondered a long while. Then he saw how the victim is put to death at a sacrifice, and in that way he took the head from the body of Dakṣa, who was himself the beast of that sacrifice. The spirits and the ghosts and the ghouls shouted Well done, praising his deed, and from the others came the opposite cry. In his anger he offered the head into the southern fire, and he burned the place where the gods were worshipped, and went away to the dwelling of the Guhyakas.