Katha · Adi Shankaracharya
The vow at the river.
शंकर और मगरमच्छ
How a boy in Kaladi was caught by a crocodile, and how his mother let him go.
The story · about a 4-minute read
As the tradition tells it.
Kaladi is a village on the bank of the Purna river, the river now called the Periyar, in Kerala. Shankara grew up there with his mother, Aryamba. His father, Shivaguru, had died when Shankara was still small, so the boy was all she had.
Even as a child Shankara wanted to become a sannyasi, to leave home and give his life to the search for truth. Each time he asked, Aryamba said no. A widow with one son could not bear to lose him to the road.
One morning, as the tradition tells it, Shankara went down to bathe in the river and a crocodile caught him by the foot. As it dragged him into deeper water he called out to his mother on the bank. If he must die, he said, let him die a sannyasi. Would she give her permission now?
Aryamba, seeing her son in the water, said yes.
Shankara took the vow there in the river, a renunciation made in the face of death. The crocodile let go, and he came out of the water a sannyasi.
Before he left Kaladi he made his mother a promise: wherever he was, he would come back to her at the end of her life. Years later he kept that promise. He returned to Kaladi when Aryamba was dying and performed her last rites himself, though a sannyasi is not expected to do so.
From the river he walked north to find his teacher, Govindapada, in a cave on the bank of the Narmada.
What the story keeps
Two things worth remembering.
He left with her blessing
Shankara did not walk out on his mother. He waited until she agreed, even if she agreed in fear.
He kept his word
The greatest teacher of his age went back to a small village to keep a promise to his mother.
मातृदेवो भव।
mātṛ-devo bhava |
माता को देवता के समान मानो।
“Let your mother be as a god to you.”
Taittiriya Upanishad 1.11.2
Where this comes from
Retold by IBF from the traditional accounts of Shankara's life, the Shankara-vijaya texts. This is the story as tradition tells it; dates and details differ between versions. The closing line is from the Taittiriya Upanishad (1.11.2), printed in the original Sanskrit.