Daksha’s Yajna and the Burning of Sati

About 13 min read · 2,063 words

The Assembly at Prayaga

In the ancient days, on the bank of Prayaga, all the great-souled sages gathered, and a yajna of enormous scale was arranged with every proper rite. Sanaka and the other perfected ones came, the divine sages, the Prajapatis, and the gods; Brahma himself arrived with his whole household. Into that gathering came Lord Rudra as well, with Sati and his attendants at his side. Everyone bowed to him in devotion, Brahma among them; then, receiving Shiva’s leave, all took their appointed seats.

It was then that Daksha, lord even over the Prajapatis, mighty in splendor, walked in. In those days he ruled the whole of creation, and that very office had soiled a mind already empty of the knowledge of truth. The divine sages folded their hands and bent their heads to him. Maheshwara alone stayed on his seat exactly as he was. He who is himself the free and sovereign Supreme Lord, before whom would he lower his head?

A fire flared inside Daksha. Fixing a cruel stare on Rudra, he spoke loud enough for the whole assembly to hear. “Gods, asuras, brahmins, sages, all of them bow their heads to me, yet this shameless creature who lives among the funeral pyres offers me no salute. This drunken one flouts even the ordinance of the shastra; he stands outside the four varnas. I curse him: let him be shut out of the yajna, and let him receive no share in the sacrifice alongside the gods.”

Curse upon Curse

The moment those words rang out, Bhrigu and a great many other sages, their judgment clouded by Shiva’s maya, began to add their voices to the reviling of Rudra. Nandi, the son of Shilada, could not endure it. He thundered, “You supreme fool, Daksha! My master Maheshwara, at whose mere remembrance yajnas succeed and holy places are made clean, him you would shut out of the yajna? The maker, the sustainer, and the destroyer of the worlds, that blameless great Lord, him you mock?”

Daksha boiled over. He cursed the hosts of Rudra to be cast out from the Veda, to take up false doctrine, to wear matted locks and smeared ash, and to stay sunk in wine. In reply Nandi cursed the brahmin race: that brahmins who set themselves against Shiva would lose themselves in mere talk of the Veda, be emptied of the knowledge of truth, and turn into beggars drowning in pleasures, some of them becoming brahma-rakshasas; and that this Daksha, forgetting the knowledge of the self, would sink to the level of a beast and would soon be given the face of a goat.

An outcry broke out on every side. Then Sadashiva, half smiling, calmed Nandi in gentle words. “Nandin, you are supremely wise; anger does not suit you. No curse from anyone can so much as touch us. And the Vedas are made of mantra, are the very form of the divine; in every single mantra the Supreme is enshrined. Do not waste a curse upon the brahmin race.” Nandi grew still. The knot of resentment in Daksha’s heart stayed exactly as it was.

Daksha’s Great Yajna

In time Daksha resolved on a great yajna. Gods and sages were invited; only the one without whom a yajna is no yajna went uncalled. Daksha said openly that Shiva had been left out on purpose. “Dadhichi ji, then say no such thing; let us all together make this yajna a success.” At that, with everyone listening, Dadhichi answered, “Daksha, without Lord Shiva this great yajna has become no yajna at all; and mark this above all, in this very sacrifice your own destruction will come to pass.” With those words Dadhichi set out alone on the road to his ashram, and the chief devotees of Shiva walked out with him. Daksha mocked them, saying the brahmins who had left were brahmins in name only and their going was a blessing; and such was the reach of Shiva’s maya that the divine sages who stayed behind bent to the worship and the fire-offering.

Come, This Very Day

Far away, on Mount Gandhamadana, in a fountain-house hung with canopies, Daksha’s daughter Sati was at play with her companions. Her gaze drifted upward, and she saw the moon-god Chandra passing by with Rohini. Sati sent her friend Vijaya to inquire; learning from Chandra the whole account of the yajna festival, Vijaya returned, and the news set Sati’s heart in turmoil. So vast a yajna at her father’s house, and not even a word of it sent to her own home? She went at once to her lord. “My lord, at my father’s house a great yajna is under way; all the divine sages are gathering there. Why does no wish rise in you to go? It is the dharma of kinsfolk to visit their kin. Grant my prayer, and come with me this very day.”

Maheshwara’s heart had already been wounded by Daksha’s arrows of speech. In gentle words he said, “Devi, your father has turned into our particular enemy. Those who go uninvited into another’s house meet a dishonor there more painful than death itself. So, beloved, neither you nor I ought to go.” But anger rose in Sati’s mind. “You, at whose coming the yajna itself is made a success, my wicked father did not invite! I want to know what that evil soul intends. Lord, give me your word, and I will go this very day.”

The all-knowing Rudra saw that her resolve was fixed, and he said, “Then go with my leave. Mount this adorned bull, worthy of a queen, and travel with the hosts of the Pramathas.” Shiva gave her garments, ornaments, a parasol, a chamara, every appointment fit for royalty. Sixty thousand of the Rudra hosts went with her, leaping and bounding in high spirits, singing the glory of Sati and of Shiva, and the three worlds rang with their cries of victory.

Inside the Crowded Yajna Hall

At the door of the yajna hall Sati stepped down from Nandi and went inside alone. Her mother Asikni and her sisters came forward and welcomed her warmly, but Daksha saw her and said not a single word; the rest, out of fear of Daksha and under the spell of Shiva’s maya, held their silence. Even after this cold welcome, Sati bowed her head at the feet of her mother and her father. Then she raised her eyes and saw that the yajna held shares set out for Vishnu and the other gods, yet Shambhu’s share was nowhere among them. At that, an unbearable fury broke from her; scorching Daksha with her very look, she said, “Prajapati, why was the supremely auspicious Lord Shiva not invited? He who is himself the yajna, its every limb, its dakshina and its yajaman alike, without him this whole sacrifice turns impure. Your judgment has been corrupted today; that is why, though you are my father, you seem base to me. And these gods, Vishnu and Brahma and the others, and these sages, how have they come here at all, without their own Lord present?” Vishnu and all the rest kept silent.

Daksha flared up. “Bhadre, what is gained by all this talk? You have no business here. Go or stay, as you please. Everyone knows your husband is inauspicious in form, without noble birth, cast out from the Veda, the lord of ghosts and spirits. That is exactly why Rudra was not invited. Daughter, this fool arranged that marriage at Brahma’s urging. Leave him and be at peace; and since you have come, take up your own share yourself.”

On one side stood her father, reviling her husband with his own mouth; on the other rose the thought of what she would answer when Shankara asked her for news. Drawing a long breath, the mother of the three worlds spoke. “He who reviles Mahadeva and he who listens to that reviling, both remain in hell for as long as the sun and moon endure. So, father, I will give up this body; I will enter the fire. Seeing my lord dishonored, what use is this life to me now? If a man has the power, let him cut out the tongue of anyone who reviles Shiva; if he has not, let him stop his ears and walk away.”

Then, though she already repented having come, she spoke without fear. “Father, you revile Shankara, and for this you will suffer torment. He whose two-syllable name, Shiva, spoken from the tongue but once destroys the whole heap of sin, against him you hold hatred! In truth, the one inauspicious in form is you yourself. Lord Shankara is Parabrahman, the Supreme; neither action toward the world nor withdrawal from it can reach him at all. Our glory is unmanifest, and it is not with you. On the day Lord Shiva calls me Dakshayani, naming me by my tie to you, on that day my heart will grieve. So this body, born of your portion, loathsome as a corpse, I will cast off at once. And you, gods and sages, to all of you the reviling of Shiva was a pleasure to hear; the full punishment for this evil deed will find you.” Having said this much, Sati fell silent, and inwardly she began to hold Shambhu, the beloved of her life, in her thoughts.

The Fire That Rose from Within

She sat down on the ground in silence, sipped the ritual water, closed her eyes, and settled into the path of yoga. She joined prana and apana and held them steady in the navel-wheel; she carried udana, together with the intellect, into the heart, then led it up through the passage of the throat to the point between her brows. Through all her limbs she fixed, by the method of yoga, the concentration on air and on fire, and as she meditated on the lotus feet of her lord, nothing else appeared to her at all. In that same instant Sati’s sinless body dropped, and by her own will, by the fire of yoga, it was reduced to ash on the spot. The tale current in the world shows Sati leaping into the sacrificial pit, but the Shiva Purana says that the fire rose within her own body, kindled by yoga, with no flame reaching her from outside.

Those who witnessed it cried out, and their cry spread everywhere, across the sky and over the earth. People were saying, “Alas! Shankara’s dearest beloved has given up her life through the cruelty of what wicked man! His own daughter set herself to give up her life, and this Shankara-hating Daksha did not even stop her!”

The sixty thousand mighty attendants of Shankara standing at the door filled with rage. Crying “Shame, shame,” they raised a great lament; many, unhinged by grief, struck their own limbs with their own weapons. Twenty thousand of the attendants perished in that very moment along with Sati. Those who survived caught up their arms and rushed to kill Daksha. Then Bhrigu, using the Yajus mantra ordained for the destruction of those who obstruct, poured an oblation into the southern fire, and out of the sacrificial pit thousands of powerful hero-gods called the Ribhus rose up, burning brands in their hands; a battle so terrible followed that any onlooker shuddered, and under the blows of that brahma-radiance the hosts of the Pramathas broke and fled. All of this came to pass by the mighty will of Lord Shiva himself.

Now a heavy silence settled over the yajna hall. No one there felt any triumph; only dread hung in the air. The rishis, Indra and the other gods, the Marut hosts, the Vishvedevas, and the guardians of the worlds all fell silent; all of them prayed to Vishnu that this calamity might pass, and Shri Vishnu himself, weighing the outcome to come, was troubled. A vast disaster had descended on the great yajna of Shankara-hating Daksha, and the news of it had not yet reached Kailasa. What happened on the day it did arrive, hear in the story that follows.

Source: Shiva Purana (Gita Press, Sankshipta Shivapurana Anka), Rudra Samhita (Sati Khanda)