Shri Narayana had one origin still to tell Narada, the origin of the Manus yet to come, a story that wakes devotion to the Devi in anyone who so much as remembers it. Vaivasvata Manu had six sons of bright fame, Karusha, Prishadhra, Nabhaga, Dishta, Sharyati and Trishanku, every one of them mighty in arms, and the six of them went together to the holy bank of the Kalindi, the Yamuna, and sat down there to worship the Bhagavati. They took no food. They held their breath in check. Each of them shaped his own image of the goddess out of the river earth, and they honored those earthen images with offering upon offering, water and flowers, incense and lamps and all the rest the rite asks for. Then they began to take food away from themselves by degrees. They lived first on dry leaves, then on air, then on water, then on smoke, and at the last on nothing except the rays of the sun, and the austerity grew fiercer at every step.
Twelve years passed. Worshiping her without a pause, the brothers felt a pure understanding rise in them, the kind that burns off every delusion; their minds rested on the Devi’s feet and nowhere else, and soon, by that clarity, they saw the whole world inside themselves, a state past wondering at. Then, at the end of the twelfth year, the mistress of the world appeared before them, bright as a thousand suns. The six princes, humbled and overcome, praised her with devoted hearts: Maheshvari, Ishani, the supreme one, the house of compassion; she who is pleased by the worship of the vagbhava bija and taught through the vagbhava mantra; she whose body is the syllable Klim and who gives delight when worshiped with it; she who gladdens the heart of Kameshvara and satisfies Parameshvara; Mahamaya, giver of great empire, who wears the forms of Vishnu and Surya and Hara and Indra and all the rest, the increaser of every enjoyment: victory to her. The goddess’s face was lovely with grace, and her words were kind. “Great princes, by my worship and your tapas you have become stainless and pure of mind. Ask quickly for the boon in your hearts. I am very pleased, and whatever is in your minds now I shall surely give.” They knew what they wanted, and they asked for it in one breath. “A kingdom without a thorn in it, long-lived children, enjoyment that never breaks, fame as we wish it, splendor, understanding, and that no one who stands against us prevails: this is the boon good for us.” “So be it,” she said. “All your heart’s desires will be fulfilled. Now hear one word more from me. By my grace each of you in turn will become the lord of a Manvantara, with long-lived children and many enjoyments, and strength and lordship and fame and splendor and glory unbroken.” Having given these boons, Bhramari Jagadambika vanished at once. The brothers enjoyed great kingdoms and every earthly pleasure in that birth; they begot unbroken lines and set them firm upon the earth; and in a later birth, each bearing the title Savarni, they became the lords of the Manvantaras one after another. Daksha-Savarni was the ninth Manu, of unobstructed strength and great lordship by the Devi’s grace. Meru-Savarni was the tenth. Surya-Savarni, of great energy, formed by his own tapas, was the eleventh. Chandra-Savarni was the twelfth, Rudra-Savarni, lord of the earth, the thirteenth, and Vishnu-Savarni, a king famed in the worlds, the fourteenth. All fourteen Manus, Narayana said, hold their splendor and their strength by the worship and the grace of Bhagavati Bhramari, and the worlds honor them for it to this day.
Here Narada broke in. “Who is this Bhramari Devi? How did she appear, and what is her nature? Tell me that wondrous tale; it destroys sorrow. I drink the nectar of the Devi’s story and I am never sated. Those who drink amrita may still die; one who hears this never does.” Narayana said he would tell it, the play of the mother of the world, whose form no thought reaches and no eye has ever seen in full, a play that gives moksha to the one who hears it. Every deed of the Shri Devi, he said, is done for the good of the world out of a compassion with no cause behind it, the way everything a mother does is done for her son.
Aruna’s Austerity and Brahma’s Boon
Long ago there was a daitya named Aruna, mighty and vile, a hater of the gods, who lived in Patala, the home of the daityas beneath the earth. He wanted the gods beaten, and he had worked out who could give him that: the lotus-born Brahma alone, he reasoned, could be the protector of his kind. So he went to the Himalaya and stood in the Ganga where its water runs coldest, close under the mountain, and there he began a fierce tapas to please Brahma. He lived on ripe leaves that had fallen of themselves. He held his breath. Full of tamas, with a wish riding on every hour of it, given over to yoga, he sank into japa of the Gayatri mantra, the mantra the Brahmins of the earth murmur to the rising sun, and he did not come up. For ten thousand years he drank only drops of water. For ten thousand more he lived on air. For ten thousand more he took nothing at all.
A fire rose out of his body as he sat, and it began to burn the whole world, a thing nobody had seen before. “What is this, what is this?” the gods said, trembling, and every living being was terrified. They ran to Brahma for refuge and told him, and the four-faced one, hearing it, went gladly to the place, riding his swan, with Gayatri at his side. He saw the daitya: a body that was a net of hundreds of veins with only breath still moving in it, the belly dried up, the limbs wasted away, the eyes shut in meditation, and the whole of him blazing with his own heat like a second fire. Brahma spoke the words that satisfy by their mere hearing. “Child, may it be well with you. Ask for whatever is in your mind.”
The voice reached Aruna like a stream of nectar. He opened his eyes and saw the lotus-born god standing before him with Gayatri, the four Vedas about him, a rosary of beads in one hand and a water pot in the other, the eternal Brahman on his lips. He rose, bowed, praised him with hymn upon hymn, and asked for the boon he had carried through thirty thousand years. “May I never die.” Brahma answered him with courtesy. “When Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesha and the rest become the morsel of death, what of others? Ask another boon, a fitting one, one that I can give. The wise never insist on this.” Aruna bowed again and reshaped his wish with care, closing every door he could think of. “Then give me this. May my death come neither in battle, nor by astra or shastra, the missile or the blade, nor from a man, nor from a woman, nor from any two-footed creature, nor from any four-footed one, nor from any being that is both shapes at once. And give me strength so great that victory over the gods will be mine.” “Tathastu,” said Brahma. So be it. And having given the boon he went at once to his own world.
The boon made Aruna proud, and pride made him move. He called up the daityas of Patala who owed him allegiance; they came out of the underworld and made him king of the daityas, and he sent an envoy to Amaravati, Indra’s city, to declare war. Indra heard the envoy out and shook with fear, and he went quickly with the gods to Brahmaloka, and from there, with Brahma and Vishnu walking in front, to the world of Shiva, where they sat in council over how the enemies of the gods might be killed. At that same hour Aruna, surrounded by the daitya army, went straight up to heaven, Trivishtapa, and took it. Then, by the power of his tapas, he put on many forms at once and gathered to himself, one by one, the offices of Surya, of Chandra, of Yama and of Agni, so that the sun rose, the moon waxed, the dead were judged and the fire burned at a daitya’s pleasure. The gods, driven from their seats, went to Kailasa and told Shankara their sorrows one after another, each with his own.
Giving Up the Gayatri
Shankara too fell into deep thought. What now? Brahma’s boon stood, and it had been drawn with care: death could reach Aruna neither in battle nor by weapons, neither from a man nor from a woman, from nothing two-footed, nothing four-footed, nothing of both shapes. They sat distraught in that worry, every one of them, and no one could do a thing. Then a bodiless voice spoke aloud out of the sky, and it gladdened their hearts. “Worship Bhagavati Bhuvaneshvari; she will do your work. The daitya king Aruna is absorbed in japa of the Gayatri. If he gives up the worship of Gayatri, his death can happen.”
The gods took counsel over the divine voice, and the plan had two halves. Indra called Brihaspati, the guru of the gods, and gave him the first. “For the gods’ sake, go to the asura Aruna and try by any means to make him give up his japa of the Gayatri. Meanwhile we will worship the Parameshvari through dhyana-yoga; pleased, she will surely help you.” With the guru sent on his way, all the gods went to Bhagavati Jambunadeshvari, sure that the auspicious one would protect gods terrified of a daitya, and there they gave themselves to the Devi-yajna, absorbed in japa of the maya-bija, in a tapas fierce and steady, while Brihaspati made quickly for Aruna.
The daitya king watched the sage arrive and asked him, “Where have you come from, and for what purpose? Tell me. I am no friend of your side; I have always been your enemy.” The chief of sages answered him with perfect ease. “The Devi whom we worship, you too worship constantly. So tell me, are you then not on our side?” The words went in. Deluded by the maya of the gods, out of pride, the daitya gave up japa of the supreme Gayatri mantra, and the moment the japa stopped he was empty of tejas, a lamp with the oil poured out. His work done, Brihaspati left and told Indra the whole account, and the gods, content, went on worshiping the Devi Parameshvari.
Bhramari Appears
A long time passed. Then one day the Jagajjanani, she who does the world’s good, appeared. She was bright as crores of suns and beautiful as crores of Kamadevas. Wondrous unguents lay on her limbs; she wore two lovely garments and wondrous garlands and ornaments; and in her fist she held wondrous bees. Her hands made the gestures of boon and of fearlessness. She was calm, an ocean of the nectar of compassion, and she shone with a garland of flowers thick with bees of many kinds; countless wondrous bhramaris surrounded her, and on every side crores upon crores of bees sang the mantra Hrim. Adorned with every adornment, praised by all the Vedas, she was the self of all, made of all, auspicious to all, knowing all, mother of all, formed as all, ruler of all. The gods saw her, and with Brahma in front of them they bowed, glad at heart, and praised her in the Vedas’ own words. They bowed to the Devi, to Mahavidya, who makes the creation, the keeping and the ending of the world, lotus-petal-eyed, the support of all; to her who is vishva and taijasa and prajna, virat and sutratma, the manifest and the unmoving one within; to Durga without origin, the bolt that holds the wicked back, reached by a love that no bar stops; to Shri Kalika, Nilasarasvati, Ugratara; to Pitambara, Tripurasundari, Bhairavi, Matangi, Dhumavati; to Chhinnamasta, daughter of the Milk Ocean, Shakambhari, Raktadantika; to the slayer of Shumbha and Nishumbha, the destroyer of Raktabija and Dhumralochana and Vritrasura, the crusher of Chanda and Munda; to Vijaya, Ganga, Sharada; to her who is earth and compassion and tejas and prana, the body of the universe and of dharma and of the gods, of light and of knowledge; to Gayatri, Savitri, Sarasvati, Svaha, Svadha, Dakshina. “We worship the supreme deity, the inner self, whom every scripture knows only by saying ‘not this, not this.’ Because she is surrounded by bhramaras, by bees, she is called Bhramari: to that Devi we bow, always. We bow at your sides, behind you, before you, above you and below you and everywhere. Be gracious, dweller in Manidvipa, mistress of endless crores of universes, Jagadambika. Victory to you, Jaganmata, Paratpara, Shri Bhuvaneshi, best of the best, treasury of every auspicious quality, archway of the world: be pleased.”
The gods’ words were bold and sweet, and Jagadamba, whose voice is like an intoxicated koel’s, answered them. “I am the crest-jewel of boon-givers, and I am always pleased. Tell me what you wish to do.” Then, very humbly, the gods told her the cause of their sorrow: the deeds of the wicked daitya that were ruining the world, his contempt for gods and Brahmins and Vedas and his wrecking of them wherever he found them, the gods thrown down from their own places; and they told her exactly the boon that Brahma had given him, no battle, no weapon, no man, no woman, no two-footed thing, no four-footed thing, nothing of both shapes.
The Deluge of Bees
Mahabhagavati Bhramari heard them out, and then she set the bees moving, the bees of many forms that rested in her hands, at her sides and before her, and at the same time she brought forth many more, until the three worlds were full of them. Their swarms came out like hordes of locusts. The whole middle air was covered with bees, darkness fell over the earth, and in the sky, on the mountain peaks, on the trees and in the forests there were bees and only bees, a sight past all wonder. Pouring out, they drove into the chests of the daityas the way angry honeybees sting a man who has taken their honey.
No astra could answer them, and no shastra. The daityas could neither fight nor speak; they saw nothing in front of them except their own death. Wherever each daitya stood, in whatever state he was, there in that state he died, laughing aloud, the laugh still on his face. None of them got a word to another. In a single moment every chief of the daityas perished, and the host that had taken heaven and the sun and the moon and the fire was gone. Their work done, the bees came back to the Devi.
“This is a wonder,” everyone said; yet for Jagadamba, whose maya is such as this, what deed is a wonder? Then all the gods, sunk in an ocean of joy, with Brahma and Vishnu in front, worshiped the Devi with offering upon offering, put gifts into her hands with their own, shouted “Jaya” and rained flowers on her. Drums sounded in the sky, the apsaras danced, the gandharvas and the others sang, the best of the sages recited the Vedas, and the three worlds filled with the sound of mridanga and muraja, vina and dhakka, damaru and bell and conch. Praising her with hymn after hymn, their folded hands raised to their heads, the gods cried, “Victory to you, Mother! Victory to you, Ishani!” Mahadevi, well pleased, gave each god his own separate boon and gave them all the abundant devotion to herself that they had asked for, and then, as they watched, she vanished. That, Narayana told Narada, is the whole glorious story of Bhramari. It destroys every sin of the one who reads it or hears it, it is wondrous to hear, and it carries one across the ocean of samsara; the stories of the other Manus likewise destroy sin, being full of the Devi’s greatness, and bring good to those who read or hear them. Whoever reads this story every day, or hears it constantly, is freed from all sins and attains sayujya, union, with the Devi.
Source: Shrimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapurana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)