Vishvamitra is at the center of many
classical legends of Hinduism.
Originally King Kaushika in ancient
India, he is said to have renounced his kingdom in order
to acquire spiritual powers. This involved several tests
and prolonged meditations, during which he was often tempted
by the celestial nymphs, apsaras – one of whom succeeded
and begat a daughter, Shakuntala (who would grow up to
become the heroine of an epic in her own right, and bear
the son Bharat, after whom the land would be named). The
king is said to have succeeded in becoming a brahmarishi
– a sage of the highest order – and earning
the title Vishvamitra (literally, a friend of everyone,
in Sanskrit). Retaining his royal temperament, he would
display unusual anger as well as compassion – on
one occasion compelling another legendary king, Rajah
Harishchandra, to give up kingdom, while on another occasion
creating an entire new heaven to lodge someone who had
been denied entry into Paradise. He was the mentor of
the young Rama, the seventh incarnation of the god Vishnu,
and received Gayatri, one of the most sacred mantras of
the Vedas.
Iqbal adapted the mantra into an
Urdu poem, ‘The Sun’, as early as 1902, and
included it in The Call of the
Marching Bell (1924). In Javid
Nama (1932), Vishvamitra himself appears meditating
in a cave on the Moon (caves have been a conventional
preference for initiation rites, and hence the cave of
Vishvamitra serves as the starting point for Iqbal’s
celestial journey).
Special
thanks to Iqbal Academy Pakistan
