Navratri Day 2 – Story of Brahmacharini / A Penance(Tapas) that performe...

Story of Brahmacharini

 

 

Devi Brahmacharini is the goddess who is worshiped on the 2^nd
day of Navratri. In this avatar, Maa Durga follows ‘tapa’ or penance.

 

The name Brahmacharini is derived from 2 words; Brahma
means Tapa or Penance and ‘Charini’ means an ardent female follower.

 

Bhramacharini is represented as holding a rosary in her
right hand and a kamandala in her left hand.

 

 

 

Story of Brahmacharini

 

In yesterday’s video, I had told the reason for the goddess
Sathi to jump into the sacrificial fire of the yajna, performed by her father.

 After immolating
herself, she was reborn as the daughter of the king of mountains. She was
called as Parvati.

 

Years later, sage Narada visited her. He revealed to her
about her true self and told her the cause of her rebirth. He also said that
she could be able to marry Lord shiva even in this birth, only if she followed
a great tapas.

 

Determined, Parvati embarked upon an extremely difficult
regime of penance and devotion. For the first thousand years, she only ate
fruits and flowers. Thereafter, for a hundred years, she ate only vegetables.
Followed by the next three thousand years by eating only fallen leaves. She
slept on the wide floor of the forest under an open sky for years in order to
complete her tapas or penance.

 

This way, she earned the name Brahmacharini which means the
one who follows the path of tapas.

 

Soon, her tapas created havoc in the 3 worlds among gods,
demi-gods and demons. Everyone was impressed and admired her strength. Very
soon, lord Brahma visited her and said that he and all the other gods were
happy with her tapas, he also assured her that she would definitely marry the lord
shiva.

 

In Kailas, where shiva was meditating, he felt the same
love and devotion in Bhramacharini as he saw in his wife, Sathi. He was
impressed too. Soon, He had found out that she herself was Sathi! But he still
had the last test for her.

 

Lord Shiva disguised himself as an old sage and paid a
visit to Bhramacharini. She greeted him with great love and affection. Then the
sage asked her the reason for this tapas. When she replied to it as lord shiva,
the sage stood up and started discriminating against him. Looks like lord shiva wanted
to test whether Sathi had the same thoughts and devotion to him in this birth
too.

 

So, he said, “look, the daughter of the great Himalaya, who
gave up all her worldly comforts to complete this tapas and who is known
everywhere as Bhramacharini is doing all this to impress that SHIVA! This is no
way a good choice, a princess as strong and powerful as you must be married to
a great prince who has a huge palace and not to someone who does not even
embrace a home!”

 

That was when Brahmacharini could not bear anything more.
She had wanted lord shiva as her husband and could not hear a word against him.
So she respectively said that she was firm about her decision and there was no one
who would be successful in stopping her. She even said that she would not end the
tapas until lord shiva would show himself and accept her as his honorable
wife.

 

This was when Shiva was delighted. He showed his real
avatar and said that he would be glad to have a wife so dutiful and divine as
her.

In the end, they were married.