Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati

Author(s): Kalyani Mallik
Publisher: Poona Oriental Book House Poona

Page 29

queens Adunā and Paduna with the help of Gopichandra himself, put several tests to the queen mother. She was made to walk on fire and on a bridge of hairs. She was drowned in water and given poison to swallow. By uttering the name of her Guru, queen Maynämati passed all ordeals and convinced him of the great powers of Yoga. To cut a long story short, Rājā Gopichandra renounced his throne and accepted Hadipãas his guru. As a Yogi, Gopichandra suffered untold misery. The heart-rending tale of his renunciation became a popular theme, and ballad-singers still earn their living by singing' Gopichandrer Gun' (songs of Gopichandra) in certain parts of Bengal. Gopichandra is known in a legend of Sind as Pir Patão.
Hãḍipa, the performer of miracles, could order the cocoanuts to come down to him, and when he had devoured the kernel and drunk the water, could order the outer skins to return to the trees! The dead revived if he kicked them. Mother Earth brought a chair for him to rest and the son of Yama, the god of death, held an umbrella over him, if he went in the sun. The sun and the moon were his ear-rings, in other words, he was the perfect Yogi who had the control over Prana and Apana or the vital airs. If Haḍipā was such a great Yogi, what made him clean the streets of Gopïchandra's capital? Legends show that he had coveted Mahadevi the wife of Śiva) who in the disguise of a beautiful woman was testing the characters of the Yogis. It was by her curse that the Yogi worked as a Hadi or menial in the state of the beautiful Queen Maynāmati and her son Gopichandra.
In the same ballad, we find that Gorakhnath was flying through mid-air by his yogic powers in search of a perfectly innocent child, to whom he could bequeath his gift of Mahajñāna or supreme knowledge by which one can be free from fear of death and on finding Maynamati, initiated her. Sree Gorakhnath had obtained this knowledge from his guru Matsyendranath, who in turn had obtained it from Lord Siva. While Śiva was expounding the theory to his consort Gauri on the sea-shore, Gauri had fallen asleep and Matsyendranath in the form of a fish in the sea overheard Śiva. When discovered by Śiva he was initiated and named 'Matsyendranath' i. e., the king of fishes. But at the same time he was cursed by Śiva's consort that he would