Bharadvaja, the rishi

Birth and name: ‘bhara dvajam’

The Bhagavata (9.20.36-38) says that Mamata was the wife of Brihaspati’s brother Utathya, and that this son was born of Brihaspati against her will. After the birth each kept telling the other ‘you bring up this child born of two’ (bhara dvajam), and both went away and left him; hence the name Bharadvaja. The Vishnu Purana (4.19) gives the same derivation.

At that time the line of Emperor Bharata of the Puru dynasty (son of Dushyanta and Shakuntala) was in danger, for his sons had not lived. Bharata was performing a sacrifice to the Maruts (the Marutstoma) for a son, and the Maruts, who had reared the abandoned child, gave him to Bharata (Bhagavata 9.20.34-35, 39; Vishnu Purana 4.19). As Bharata’s son he was named Vitatha, and Bharata’s line went on through him: his son Manyu, and in the same line Rantideva (Bhagavata 9.21.1-2).

The hermitage at Prayaga: Rama and Bharata

In the Valmiki Ramayana (Ayodhya Kanda, sarga 54), on the way into exile Rama, Sita and Lakshmana reached Bharadvaja’s hermitage at the meeting of the Ganga and Yamuna at dusk. The sage was offering the agnihotra among his disciples. He welcomed them with arghya, madhuparka, fruits and roots and asked them to spend the years of exile there. Rama said the place was close to where people lived and they would keep coming to look; the sage then told him to live on Mount Chitrakuta, and the next morning showed him the way across the Yamuna and blessed him as a father blesses a son (sarga 55).

Bharata too came here on his way to bring Rama back (sarga 90). He left his army far behind, put off his weapons and royal clothes, and came on foot behind Vasishtha. The sage asked whether he meant Rama any harm; Bharata’s eyes filled with tears, and the sage then said he had known his heart and had asked only so that his resolve would be known to all. In the next sarga (91) the text says that Bharadvaja, by the power of mantra and tapas, called on Vishvakarma and the gods and gave Bharata’s whole army a feast and rest. On his way back Bharata told him that he was carrying Rama’s sandals (sarga 113).

Drona, Ayurveda and the Rigveda

According to the Mahabharata (Adi Parva, sections 131 and 168 in Ganguli’s order) Bharadvaja lived under strict vows near the place where the Ganga leaves the mountains. Seeing the apsara Ghritachi, his seed fell, and he kept it in a pot (drona); from it Drona was born, and so he got his name. Bharadvaja had taught the Agneya weapon to his pupil Agnivesha, and Agnivesha passed it on to Drona, his teacher’s son. Drupada, son of the Panchala king Prishata, played and studied with Drona at Bharadvaja’s hermitage.

The Charaka Samhita (Sutrasthana 1.3-26) says that when diseases began to hinder tapas, fasting, study and life itself, the rishis met on the Himalaya and Bharadvaja offered to go to Indra himself. Ayurveda had passed from Brahma to Prajapati, then to the Ashvins and then to Indra; Indra gave it to Bharadvaja in three aphorisms, cause, sign and remedy, and Bharadvaja taught it to the rishis just as he had received it. Further on (1.30-31) Atreya Punarvasu passed the knowledge on to six pupils, Agnivesha and the others. In the Mahabharata’s Shanti Parva (from section 182) Bhrigu answers Bharadvaja’s questions about creation, the varnas and dharma.

Of the sixth book of the Rigveda, Griffith writes that all its hymns but a few are ascribed to Bharadvaja, and in 1.112.13 the Ashvins are praised for having helped Bharadvaja. By tradition, people of the Bharadvaja gotra are counted as descendants of this rishi.

Where the sources differ

• Where the hermitage was: at Prayaga, where the Ganga and Yamuna meet, in the Ramayana; near the place where the Ganga comes down from the mountains to the plains, in the Mahabharata (Adi Parva). According to Wikipedia, James Lochtefeld takes the Bharadvaja of the Ramayana to be different from the Vedic sage named by Panini. In the Ramayana’s Bala Kanda (sarga 2) a disciple of Valmiki is also named Bharadvaja; he is not the sage of Prayaga.
• Sons: in the Adi Parva Drona is Bharadvaja’s son, but the story of Yavakri in the Vana Parva (section 135) says Bharadvaja had only one son, Yavakri. In the Bhagavata and the Vishnu Purana, as Bharata’s adopted son, his son is Manyu (Bhavanmanyu in the Vishnu Purana). According to Wilson’s note, in the Harivamsha Bharadvaja comes to Bharata not as a child but as a sage to perform the sacrifice.
• The Bharadvaja of the Rigveda and of Ayurveda: tradition gives the sixth book to Bharadvaja Barhaspatya; according to Wikipedia, scholars hold that many of its hymns were composed by later poets of the Bharadvaja family. The Charaka Samhita does not call its Bharadvaja a son of Brihaspati, only ‘Bharadvaja’, and it also names another teacher, ‘Kumarashira Bharadvaja’.

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