Gautama, the rishi

Ahalya, Indra and Gautama’s curse

In the Valmiki Ramayana (Bala Kanda, sarga 48), seeing a lovely, deserted hermitage near Mithila, Rama asks whose it is. Vishvamitra tells him it was the hermitage of the sage Gautama, where he did tapas with Ahalya. One day, while Gautama was away, Indra came in his form. The text says Ahalya, though she knew him, gave in to him, and then asked him to leave quickly before Gautama saw him.

Just then Gautama came back from bathing, carrying fuel and kusha grass, and saw Indra leaving in his form. He cursed Indra to lose his manhood, and Ahalya to stay in that hermitage for thousands of years, living on air alone, lying in the dust, unseen by every creature, until Rama, the son of Dasharatha, came there; by welcoming him she would be cleansed and return to Gautama in her own form. Then Gautama left the hermitage to do tapas in the Himalaya.

Rama frees Ahalya, and Shatananda

In sarga 49, at Vishvamitra’s word, Rama and Lakshmana entered the hermitage. They touched Ahalya’s feet, and she, remembering Gautama’s words, received them with due hospitality; the text says the gods rained down flowers. Gautama, knowing of it through the power of his tapas, came back, rejoiced to find Ahalya as she had been, and the two worshipped Rama and took up their tapas together again. The Vishnu Purana (4.4) too says briefly that Rama removed Ahalya’s guilt merely by looking at her.

When they reach Mithila, King Janaka welcomes Vishvamitra together with his priest Shatananda (sarga 50). Shatananda is Gautama’s eldest son; he asks Vishvamitra whether Rama has seen his mother and whether his father has taken her back, and on hearing it thanks Rama (sarga 51). The Vishnu Purana (4.19) and the Bhagavata (9.21.34) also make Shatananda the son of Gautama and Ahalya; the Bhagavata calls Ahalya a daughter of Mudgala, and Wilson’s Vishnu Purana names her father Bahvashva.

The Gautami Ganga and Trimbakeshwar

According to the Shiva Purana (Kotirudra Samhita, chapters 24-27), Gautama and Ahalya did tapas on Brahmagiri. In a drought of a hundred years Varuna gave Gautama a pit of water that never ran dry, so grain grew there and the sages settled. After a quarrel over water, Ganesha, at the request of some sages, came into the field as a feeble cow; when Gautama drove it off with blades of grass it died, and the sages called him guilty of killing a cow and drove him out.

To atone, Gautama worshipped Shiva to bring the Ganga. Shiva declared him sinless; the Ganga agreed to stay only if Shiva stayed too, and Shiva remained there as Tryambaka. The Ganga came out of Brahmagiri and was called the Gautami (Godavari), and Gautama made the Kushavarta below it. The temple there today is the Trimbakeshwar Jyotirlinga in the Nashik district.

Where the sources differ

• Did Ahalya become a stone: in the Valmiki Ramayana she does not; she lives on air, unseen, doing penance, and is cleansed by welcoming Rama. According to Wikipedia, her turning to stone and being freed by the touch of Rama’s feet belongs to later texts, such as the Skanda Purana, and to popular retellings.
• The Mahabharata tells it differently: in the Shanti Parva (Mokshadharma Parva) Bhishma tells the story of Chirakarin. There Gautama (Medhatithi Gautama) in anger orders his son Chirakarin to kill his mother and goes off to the forest; Chirakarin keeps pondering, and Gautama, coming back, himself admits that Ahalya was not at fault in Indra’s deceit, and is glad his son delayed.
• One name, several persons: the texts do not make clear whether Gotama Rahugana (book 1 of the Rigveda) and Vamadeva Gautama (book 4) are the same as Ahalya’s husband. The Nyaya Sutra is ascribed by tradition to Akshapada Gautama and the Gautama Dharmasutra to a Gautama; according to Wikipedia, scholars are unsure of their dates and authors and take ‘Gautama’ as a common or family name. Gautama Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) is a different person.

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