How did the jyotirling come to Trimbakeshwar?

Gautama lived on Brahmagiri, in the south, with his wife Ahalya, and he had done penance on that hill for ten thousand years. Then the rain stopped, and for a hundred years not a drop fell. There was not a green shoot anywhere on the earth, and everyone who could leave left, rishis and animals and birds, going off in every direction to look for somewhere to live.

Gautama did something else. For six months he prayed to Varuna, the lord of the waters, and would not stop, until Varuna came to him. I am pleased with you, Varuna said. Say what you want and I will give it.

Gautama asked for rain.

I cannot, Varuna said. The gods have ordered this, and how can I go against the gods? Ask for something else, and I will give it.

Lord, Gautama said, then let the boon be the one I choose. You are the lord of the waters, so give me water — water from heaven, that never runs out.

Dig a ditch here, Varuna said.

Gautama dug a ditch, no deeper than a hand, and Varuna filled it with water from heaven. Let there always be water in this ditch, he said. It is holy now, and it will be known on the earth by your name. Whatever is given here, whatever rite or penance or sacrifice is done here, and whatever shraddh is offered here to the ancestors, none of it will ever be lost. A श्राद्ध shraddh is the rite for a family’s dead. Then Varuna was gone.

So Gautama had water when nobody else on earth did. He did his rites with it, and sowed grain and barley beside it for his sacrifices, and everything grew. The rishis heard, and they came in their thousands, with their students and their children and their wives. They sowed grain of their own beside his and lived on it, and nobody on that hill felt the drought at all.

One day Gautama sent his students down to the ditch for water. The wives of the other rishis were there already, filling their pots, and they would not let the students near the water. We are the wives of the rishis, they said. We take water first. You stand over there, and take yours when we have finished.

The students went back and told Ahalya. She went down herself, calmed the women, filled her pot and took it up to Gautama, and he did his rites with it. That was all that happened. But the women had not liked being calmed, and they went back to their huts angry, and by the time they had told their husbands what had happened at the water it was a different story from the one that had happened. The rishis heard it and were furious with Gautama, the man whose water they were drinking, because that was how it was meant to go.

They decided to be rid of him, and they went to Ganesha for it. They worshipped him with flowers and everything else a worship needs, until he stood in front of them and said, I am pleased with you. Ask.

Give us this, they said. Let Gautama be shamed in front of us and turned out of his own ashram.

Ganesha laughed. Then he spoke to them gently, the way you speak to people who are about to do something stupid. Listen, he said. This is not right. People who get angry when nobody has wronged them lose by it. Bring misery on a man who has helped you, and ruin follows.

Lord, they said, you must do this for us. Nothing else will do.

So he tried again. Brahma himself has said it, he told them. A bad man never turns good, and a good man never turns bad. When you were starving, Gautama gave you happiness. Now you want to give him misery. Cheating is beneath you. Ask for something else.

They would not.

So Ganesha said, coolly, I will do what you are all asking me to do. What is going to happen is going to happen. And he vanished.

Gautama knew nothing about any of it. He went on with his days, with Ahalya beside him, perfectly happy.

A thin, tottering cow came into Gautama’s field of grain and started to eat, and Gautama, who was kind, waved it off with a bunch of grass. The moment the grass touched it, the cow fell down dead in front of him.

The cow was Ganesha, in the shape the boon had given him. And the rishis and their wives, who had been hiding at the edge of the field waiting for exactly this, jumped up shouting. Look! Look what Gautama has done!

Gautama called for Ahalya. What has happened, he said to her, and how did it happen? Shiva must be angry with me. I have killed a cow, so what do we do now, and where do we go?

The brahmins turned on him. Their wives turned on Ahalya. Their sons and students stood round saying shame, shame, over and over. Your face is not fit to be looked at, the rishis said. A man who sees the face of a cow-killer has to bathe with his clothes on. While you are in this ashram the fires will not take our offerings and the ancestors will not take our gifts. Get out, and take your people with you.

Then they threw stones at him, and they called Gautama and Ahalya every name they had. Gautama said, I am going. I will live somewhere else. And he went a short way off and made a new ashram there, with their permission, and they called after him that as long as this was on him, no rite of his counted, not for the gods, not for the ancestors, nothing.

For half a month Gautama lived like that. Then he went to them. Pity me, he said. Tell me how to wash this off, and I will do whatever you say. They said nothing. He asked again, and they went off and talked among themselves and kept away from him. So he stood at a distance and bowed to them and asked once more, what must I do?

Then they told him. Nobody gets clean for nothing, they said, so you will do the rites that make up for it. Go three times round the earth telling everyone what you did, and when you come back, keep a vow here for a month. Or walk round this mountain a hundred and one times. Or fetch water from the Ganga and bathe in it, and please Shiva by making a crore of his lings. Or eleven times round the mountain first, and then a bath in the Ganga. And a hundred pots of water poured over a ling made of earth, and it is done.

Gautama agreed to the lot. He went round Brahmagiri, and he made lings out of earth and worshipped them, and Ahalya did the same beside him, and their students waited on the two of them while they did it.

When all of that had been done, Shiva came, with his people round him. Great rishi, he said, your devotion has pleased me. Ask for the boon you want.

Gautama bowed and praised him, over and over, and then stood with his palms together and said, lord, make me clean.

And Shiva said, you are blessed, rishi, and you can be at peace, because there is nothing on you to wash off. You were never guilty. Those cheats tricked you. The ones who are stained are the ones who did this to you, and there is no washing that off. Then he told him the whole of it, from the water at the ditch to the cow.

Gautama listened, astonished. Then he bowed again and said this. Lord, those rishis did me a great kindness. If they had not done what they did, when would I ever have seen you? They are the blessed ones. It was their so-called sin that gave me the thing I most wanted.

Shiva was more pleased than before. You are the best of all the rishis, he said. Now choose the best thing there is.

Gautama thought. The story that I killed a cow has gone out into the whole world, and once enough people have said a thing it cannot be unsaid. So let it stand. He bent his head and said, lord, what you say is true. Still, it has been said, so let it be. And if I have pleased you, then let the Ganga come to me. Let her help the whole world. I bow to you.

He held Shiva’s feet as he said it. He was not asking for himself.

And Shiva gave him the Ganga.

The water of the Ganga took the form of a woman and stood there. Gautama praised her and bowed to her. Mother, he said, you are blessed. The whole world is made clean by you. Make me clean too, or I will fall.

Ganga, Shiva said, you do good to everyone. At my word, make Gautama clean as well.

And the Ganga said, lord, I will make the rishi clean, and his people with him. And then I am going home.

Stay here, Shiva said. Stay on your own, goddess, until the Kali age comes.

The Ganga said, lord, if I am to be greater than every other river, then I will stay on the earth. And one thing more. Stay with me, you, with the goddess and your people.

Shiva said, Ganga, you are blessed. Listen. I am not different from you. But I will stay here, and so must you.

That pleased her, and she agreed.

While they were speaking, the gods came, and the rishis, and the holy places and the holy rivers, all of them, shouting victory, victory, and they bowed to Gautama and to the Ganga and to Parvati.

Stay here, the gods said to Shiva and to the river. Take pity on us and stay, for the good of men.

Why do you not stay here yourselves, the Ganga said, for the good of everyone? I will wash Gautama’s sin away and go back the way I came. How is anyone to tell what is special about me, apart from you? Show me that, and I will stay.

So the gods made her a promise. When Jupiter, who is everyone’s friend, comes into the sign of Leo, we will all come here, they said. For eleven years we make ourselves unclean washing the sins off men, and we will come to you, great goddess, to wash that off us. Shiva will stay here, and so will you. And we will stay for as long as Jupiter is in Leo, and bathe three times a day, and go and see Shiva, and then, with your permission, go home.

So Shiva stayed, gladly, because the gods asked him and Gautama asked him. And the Ganga stayed.

There the Ganga became known as Gautami. And the ling became known as Tryambaka. And from that day, whenever Jupiter enters Leo, the holy rivers and the holy places and the gods come there and live on the banks of the Gautami, and while they are there their own places lose their holiness, and get it back when they go home.

Then the Ganga came down off Brahmagiri. Her water ran out from the branches of a fig tree, and Gautama bathed in it, and his students came and bathed, and the other rishis. The place was called Gangadwar. गंगाद्वार Gangadwar is the door of the Ganga, the place where the river first shows herself, coming out of the rock.

Then the rishis who had cheated Gautama came down to bathe in her too. And the moment she saw them, the Ganga vanished.

Gautama ran to the place and praised her, again and again. Mother, he said, whether they are blind with pride, whether they are good or bad, let them see you, for the sake of this holy place.

A voice came out of the sky. These are the worst of rishis, she said. Ungrateful, traitors to the one who fed them, cheats. They are not fit to see me.

Mother, Gautama said, hear the words of the great lord, and make them true. He has said, I am made holy by the man who does good to those who harm him.

The voice came again, from above the water. Gautama, what you say is true. Still, let them make up for it a little. At your word, and with you leading them, let them go round this mountain. Then they may see me.

Forgive us, the rishis said to Gautama, ashamed, and he led them round the mountain.

When they had done it, Gautama dug a ditch just below Gangadwar, with the river’s own permission, and she flowed out through it for his sake, and that ditch is Kushavarta. Then Gautama and the rishis were friends again, and the ones who had been ungrateful were ashamed.

This is the jyotirling called Tryambaka, on the bank of the Gautami, and this is the ling Gautama worshipped.

The ling is in the temple in the middle of Trimbakeshwar, and it has three faces, for Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva together, where a ling is usually one upright stone for Shiva alone. That is the thing people go into the shrine to see, and the Trimbakeshwar temple says where to stand and where to look.

The Godavari rises on Brahmagiri, the hill above Trimbakeshwar. People say she disappears into the hill and comes out again at Kushavarta, and the source of the Godavari tells the whole of that story. Kushavarta is the kund in the middle of the town, the ditch Gautama dug. The year Jupiter is in Leo is the year the Kumbh comes to Nashik and Trimbakeshwar, and why it is called Simhastha has how that day is fixed. The twelve jyotirlings has the other eleven.