Daksha Yagnam

Daksha was a Prajāpati, one of the chief progenitors of creation, born to Svāyambhuva Manu and Shatarūpā. Entrusted with the continuation of life in the universe, he had many children, among them twenty-seven daughters who became the Nakshatras and were wedded to Chandra, the moon god. Another of his daughters was Satī, also called Dākshāyaṇī, the embodiment of Shakti herself, who in a later birth would return as Pārvatī.

Satī had chosen for her husband Lord Shiva, the great renunciant who smeared His body with ash, adorned Himself with serpents, and dwelt among ascetics in the snow-clad Himālayas. To Daksha, who prized worldly grandeur and status, Shiva seemed an unworthy outsider, and he never forgave what he took to be an affront in his daughter's marriage. He failed to understand that Shiva was no mere recluse but the Supreme Yogi and the greatest among the devotees of Sriman Nārāyaṇa.

His resentment found its opening at a grand yajna dedicated to Lord Vishṇu, where all the celestial beings had gathered, Brahmā and Shiva among them. When Daksha arrived, he offered his respects to the others but pointedly ignored Shiva. Shiva, who neither sought honor nor feared insult, remained unmoved; but Daksha mistook his silence for weakness and unleashed the anger he had long held within, declaring before the assembly that Shiva was unfit to sit among the righteous and cursing him to have no share in any yajna performed thereafter.

At this, Shiva's devoted attendant Nandi could not stay silent. He cursed Daksha in turn, saying his pride would be shattered and he would bear the face of a goat, and he cursed the assembled brahmins who had sat silent while dharma was mocked, that they would wander the earth in torn clothing, cut off from the true essence of the Vedas. The sage Bhrigu, angered by Nandi's words, cursed those who disregarded Vedic ritual, that they would become the ash-smeared devotees of Shiva who dwell in cremation grounds.

It is from this that the practice of smearing sacred ash, or bhasma, upon the body came to be associated with Shiva's devotees — not as a mark of impurity, but as a symbol of detachment from worldly illusion, even though the Vedas ordinarily regard anything connected with death as inauspicious.

Daksha's arrogance only grew, and he resolved to perform another great rite, the Brihaspati-sava Yajña, to which he invited all the celestials save Shiva and Satī. When Satī learned that she and her husband had been excluded, she was torn between her duty as a daughter and her devotion to her husband. Shiva, ever detached, told her she was free to go, but warned that where reverence is absent even the most sacred place becomes impure.

Satī went to the yajna and demanded to know why her husband had been slighted; when Daksha answered only with fresh insults against Shiva, her heart burned — not for herself, but for the offense against the greatest devotee of the Lord. Declaring that she would return the body her father had given her, she sat in a yogic posture, drew forth a fire from within herself, and was consumed by the flames.

When the Ganas carried word of Satī's fate to Shiva, He who had borne every insult in silence now acted. In His fury He tore a lock from His matted hair and struck it upon the ground, and from it arose Veerabhadra, a being of terrible wrath. Veerabhadra stormed into the yajna, scattered the fleeing celestials, severed Daksha's head, and plucked the moustache from Bhrigu's face. When the sages and Devas at last pacified him, the yajna lay in ruins. But the Lord does not destroy to punish; He destroys to transform.

At the pleading of the assembled beings, Shiva's wrath subsided, and Daksha was restored to life — but with the head of a goat, a mark of the folly of his pride, while a goat's beard was fixed upon Bhrigu's face. Only then, in true surrender, was the yajna completed. The lesson of this tale is that Shiva, the foremost devotee of Vishṇu, was insulted, and that to insult the Lord's devotee is, knowingly or not, to insult the Lord Himself, and to bear the consequences.

And though Satī was gone, she was destined to return as Pārvatī, daughter of the Himālayas, and once more find her way to Shiva.