4. MYTHOLOGY: WHO IS GODDESS YAMUNA?

“Yamuna is a river of delights—many in India see it as a liquid form of love” (Haberman 2006, 16)

As the Daughter of Surya Dev and the twin-sister to Yama Dev:

Yamuna or Yami was the daughter of the Sun God, Vivasat or Surya and the Samjna (“consciousness”). Their union produced twins: Yama, the Lord of Death and Yami, Goddess Yamuna. In the early scriptures, the Rig Veda, the Lord of Death, Yama Dev, is also portrayed as the “King of Righteousness.” Seven rishis (sages) led by Rishi Jayamuni came together at a place we now know as Saptarishi Kund. They prayed and performed intense “tapasya”, so that one day Goddess Yamuna would be pleased with them and leave her home in the heavens to be on Earth for the benefit of mankind (45). Their wishes were fulfilled when Goddess Yamuna appeared as a small girl in Yamunotri (Agranikrishnadasa 2017).

It is believed that Goddess Yamuna desired her devotees who would visit her at the source in Yamunotri, a cold glacial location, to be comfortable. Therefore, she requests her father, the Sun God, to make this location “more attractive and pleasant” (Haberman 2006, 46). In another resource, it was at Rishi Jayamuni’s appeal to make the location more comfortable with hot water that Goddess Yamuna made the request to her father (Agranikrishnadasa 2017). The Surya Dev (Sun God) could not deny her wishes and gifted his beloved daughter a single ray of sun. This ray of run touches Mount Kalinda at Divya shila (literally meaning “Divine Stone”), a rock face from wherein boiling hot water is released from within the earth. This hot water gets mixed with the glacial water and forms the river Yamuna as we know it (Haberman 2006).

According to the Puranas, Goddess Yamuna then requested her twinbrother, Yama Dev, the God of Death, to grant life to her devotees who visit her, worship her, and take a dip in her waters (Haberman 2006, 46). Blessings from Goddess Yamuna would save a worshipper from the tortures and punishment from Yama Dev. In effect, Yamuna “bargains with her brother Death for her devotee’s life” (Haberman 2006, 60). According to the twelfth century Agni Puranas and in the local imagery and posters at Yamunotri, the personified Goddess Yamuna of dark complexion sits on a turtle and holds a “kalash” (pot) in one of her four hands.

As God Krishna’s Lover:

Goddess Yamuna is celebrated for her origin or metaphorically speaking, her childhood form, at Yamunotri. Per some anecdotes, Braj is Yamuna’s marital home as compared to Yamunotri which is her parental home. The concentration of temples dedicated to Goddess Yamuna herself is significantly higher in the Braj region of Northern India. As River Yamuna, also called the ‘River of Love’ travels through the Himalayan mountains and the plains of Northern India, she is imagined (in Yamuna theology and Vallabhacharya’s Yamunashtakam) to be on a passionate journey to meet her lover, Krishna, in Braj. This love between Krishna and Yamuna is depicted in local Braj poetry through many interpretations of Yamuna’s eagerness to meet Krishna and Krishna’s irresistible attraction towards Yamuna. “… the sounds of the babbling stream are her love songs as she moves excitedly toward Braj” (117). Krishna is the most charismatic, a human manifestation of the Vishnu Narayana, God of the entire Universe himself. In Hariray’s commentary on Yamunashtakam, Yamuna is described as the “liquid form of love (rasa) from the very heart of Vishnu Narayana” (117) and the union of Krishna and Yamuna is, therefore, nothing less than sublime.

Goddess Yamuna is remembered as the primary lover of God Krishna (among his many other cowherd lovers in Braj) and their love is worshipped as the most divine form of love there is. Some believe that Krishna married Yamuna as he left for Dwarka while others believe he never married her. (References to Krishna’s journey from one place to next originate from the Hindu scripture Shrimad Bhagavat Gita.) Drinking Yamuna’s water is supposed to increase the love for God in the hearts of devotees as well as protect them from physical sickness and suffering (ironical in the present-day conditions) (Haberman 2006).

The Creation story in Hinduism describes the presence of a single point, “Bindu” at the very beginning. It was lonely and therefore desired a partner. So, it divided itself into two: a male and a female. The entire world as we know is but an interaction of the two. Yamuna and Krishna are these “female and male dimensions of the same divinity” (111).

The presence of the River Yamuna is recurring in many other stories related to God Krishna. In one story, Krishna killed the cruel king Kansa after which he took a bath in river Yamuna and rested at the Vishram Ghat in Mathura. In another story, as a young woman, Yamuna rushed from the mountains to meet her lover Krishna in Braj and she finally found him on the Vishram Ghat. A third story involves Krishna killing the horse demon Keshi at the Keshi Ghat along Yamuna in Vrindaban after which he swam with his cowherd friends in the waters of the river. In yet another story, Krishna saved Yamuna from the multiheaded snake Kaliya whose presence made her waters poisonous and his friends sick (Haberman 2006).

As the Mother of the Universe:

Haberman illustrates the way the divine motherly power of Goddess Yamuna or Yamuna Devi could be understood well: “the Devi creates the world, she is the world, and she enlivens the world with creative power” (110). Goddess Yamuna is worshipped as the nurturing ‘Mother’ Yamuna by all her Hindu devotees who recognize her water to be life-giving and life-enhancing. The idea of acknowledging Yamuna as a mother is not as geographically bound as the mythological connotations associated with her. She is a mother all along her journey, starting from the glaciers of Yamunotri in the North to Prayagraj in the South where she merges with her sister river Ganges. In the Braj region, however, the sentiment associated with Yamuna being a devotee’s mother is as strong and equivalent to their own biological human mother. This emotion extends to a belief that the Goddess Yamuna knows what her children need even without having to explicitly ask for it. A continuous devotion is all that is needed.