Rishi Nidagha

Nidagha is the pupil of Ribhu in a teaching story from the Vishnu Purana. The Purana says Ribhu was a son of Brahma and Nidagha was a son of Pulastya. It gives Nidagha's home as Viranagara, a large city on the banks of the river Devika [Vishnu Purana 2.15]. The same pair meet again in the Ribhu Gita, the sixth part of the Shiva Rahasya Purana, where Ribhu teaches Nidagha on the slopes of Mount Kedara.

The Nidagha gotra on this site gives the pravara Bhargava, Chyavana and Nidagha. That line does not match the Vishnu Purana, which makes Nidagha a son of Pulastya and so a member of Brahma's mind-born line, not the Bhrigu line. No text I found explains the difference. It may be that the gotra founder is another Nidagha, or that the gotra was named after the pupil and given a pravara in a later practice. The Matsya Purana (199.17) lists a Nidagha among the pravara sages, and the Vayu Purana (21.35) lists a Nidagha among the mind-born sons of Brahma in the fifteenth kalpa, but neither entry could be read in full. The word nidagha also means the heat of summer.

1. Taught by Ribhu: Ribhu taught his pupil Nidagha all he knew and expected him to be settled in the teaching that all is one [Vishnu Purana 2.15].
2. The meal: After a thousand divine years Ribhu came to Nidagha's door at the end of a sacrifice, without being known. He asked for sweetened rice and cakes. When Nidagha asked where he lived and where he was going, Ribhu said the self is everywhere like the sky, so these questions have no meaning. He said the sweetness of food is in the mind. Then he named himself: "I am Ribhu, your preceptor" [Vishnu Purana 2.15].
3. The king and the elephant: After another thousand years Ribhu found Nidagha thin and gathering fuel outside a town, keeping away from the crowd as a king's procession passed. Ribhu asked who was the king and who the elephant. Nidagha said the king was above and the elephant below. Ribhu asked what "above" and "below" meant. Nidagha jumped on him and said, "I am above, like the king, and you are below, like the elephant." Ribhu asked which of them was "I". Nidagha then knew his teacher and fell at his feet [Vishnu Purana 2.16].
4. Liberation: The Purana says that after this teaching Nidagha saw all beings as himself and reached final liberation [Vishnu Purana 2.16].
5. The Ribhu Gita: In the Shiva Rahasya, Ribhu teaches Nidagha for about two thousand verses on the self and Brahman on the slopes of Mount Kedara. Ramana Maharshi encouraged the study of this text.

• Viranagara, on the bank of the Devika river
• The edge of a town where a king's procession passes
• The slopes of Mount Kedara, in the Ribhu Gita