The Three Cities

Three brothers, three cities

After Tāraka was killed, his three sons — Tārakākṣa, Kamalākṣa and Vidyunmālī — went into the forest and performed austerities so severe that Brahmā had to appear. They asked for immortality. Brahmā refused: nothing that is born can escape death. So they asked for something cleverer.

Give us three cities, they said, that fly wherever we wish. Let them come into a single line only once in a thousand years. And let us die only if someone destroys all three at that moment, with a single arrow. Brahmā granted it.

The great architect of the asuras, Maya, built the cities: one of gold in heaven, one of silver in the sky, and one of iron on the earth. They were vast and beautiful, full of palaces, gardens and lakes, and they moved through the worlds like clouds.

The cities turn dark

For a long time the Tripura asuras ruled well and were devoted. But power slowly corrupted them. They began to raid the worlds, attack the gods and torment the sages, and then retreat into their flying cities where no one could follow.

The gods tried everything and failed. At last they went to Śiva. He agreed to destroy the three cities — but, he said, I will need a chariot and weapons equal to the task.

A chariot made of the universe

So the gods built him a chariot out of creation itself. The earth became its body. The sun and moon became its wheels. The four Vedas became its horses, and Brahmā himself took the reins as charioteer. Mount Meru became the bow, and the serpent Vāsuki its string. Viṣṇu became the arrow, with Agni as its blazing tip.

Śiva mounted the chariot. The whole universe groaned under his weight, and the Vedas-horses sank to their knees until Brahmā steadied them. Then Śiva raised the bow, fitted the arrow, and waited.

The moment

He waited for a thousand years, bow drawn. At last, for one instant, the city of gold, the city of silver and the city of iron slid into a single line.

Śiva released the arrow. The three cities burst into flame together and fell burning into the western ocean. In that one moment, what could not be destroyed was destroyed.

The devotee spared

It is said that Maya, the architect, had remained a devotee of Śiva through everything — and Śiva spared him. Maya went on to build the great assembly hall of the Pāṇḍavas in the Mahābhārata.

Tripurāntaka

So Śiva is Tripurāntaka, the Destroyer of the Three Cities, and Tripurāri, the Enemy of Tripura. The victory is celebrated on the full moon of Kārttika, Tripurī Pūrṇimā — and in Kāśī on that night the ghāṭs are lit with countless lamps for Dev Dīpāvalī, the gods' own festival of lights.

Many teachers read the three cities as the three bonds that hold the soul — āṇava (the sense of a small, separate self), karma and māyā — which grace burns away in a single moment.