The Story of Aurva

Vasiṣṭha, seeing him set on it, held him back with a story.

There was once a king called Kṛtavīrya, he said, who honoured the Bhṛgus, his priests, and gave them grain and great wealth at the end of his sacrifices. After he died, his descendants, who were kṣatriyas, of the warrior class that kings come from, needed wealth, and knowing that the Bhṛgus were rich, they came to ask them for it. Some of the Bhṛgus buried their wealth, some gave it to brahmins out of fear of the kṣatriyas, and some gave the kṣatriyas what they asked. Then by chance a kṣatriya digging in the ground found wealth hidden in a Bhṛgu's house, and the kṣatriyas, in anger, killed all the Bhṛgus who came to them for refuge, cutting down even the unborn children in the womb.

The wives of the Bhṛgus fled in fear to the Himālaya, and one of them hid her child in her thigh. The kṣatriyas found her, shining with her own power. But the child broke out of her thigh and blinded them all, like the sun at noon, and they wandered blind in the mountains. They begged the brahmin woman to give them back their sight. It is not I who took it, she said. It is my son, born of my thigh, who is angry with you for the killing of his kin. I carried him in my thigh for a hundred years, and the whole Veda with its six limbs entered him in the womb. Ask him. And they begged him, and he was gracious, and they had their sight again. Because he was born from his mother's thigh, the ūru, he was called Aurva.

But Aurva set his mind on destroying all the worlds, to avenge the Bhṛgus, and by his fierce austerity he began to burn the gods and demons and men. Then the ancestors of the Bhṛgus came down from their world and said to him: We have seen your power, my son. Be gracious to the worlds and hold back your anger. It was not for want of power that we let them kill us. When our long life grew wearisome to us, we wanted to die at the kṣatriyas' hands. It was we who buried that wealth in a Bhṛgu's house, to anger them, for what use is wealth to us who seek heaven? A man who kills himself does not reach the good worlds, and so we would not kill ourselves. What you wish to do does not please us. Turn your mind from this sin.

I made a vow in my anger to destroy the worlds, said Aurva, and it cannot be in vain. If my anger is not released it will burn me as fire burns its wood. When I lay in my mother's thigh, I heard the cries of the women of my family as the Bhṛgus were killed, and no one in all the worlds would protect them. One who can stop a sin and does not, shares in it. But I cannot go against your word. Tell me what to do.

The ancestors said: Let this fire of your anger go into the waters, for the worlds rest on the waters. So it will burn the waters, your vow will be kept, and the worlds will not perish. So Aurva let the fire of his anger go into the sea, where it became the great Horse's Head that those learned in the Veda speak of, the fire that lives in the ocean, and from its mouth it pours out fire and drinks the waters of the ocean.

So you too, Parāśara, said Vasiṣṭha, should not destroy the worlds. You know the higher dharma, and you are the best of those who know.