Heera Shankh

The Sacred Story of Heera-Ujawala

According to ancient scriptures, long back an old poor lady named Heera-Ujawala used to stay in a village in North East India, where earlier the River Ganges used to flow. She was an ardent devotee of Lord Vishnu and Goddess Laxmi.

Once there was an epidemic that spread in the village and the villagers were dying. Her two sons and their wives too came in the grip of that epidemic and caught the disease.

Since she was an ardent devotee and was doing very severe penance to please Lord Vishnu and Goddess Laxmi, Lord Vishnu appeared and promised her that very soon the village would be free from all epidemic and all affected village inmates would soon be blessed with good health.

But to bring prosperity, she was advised to worship Dakshinavarty Laxmi Shankh as Goddess Laxmi can be pleased easily with the worship of Dakshinavarty Shankh.

With the blessing of Lord Vishnu very soon the village was free from diseases. Heeraujawala continued her penance to please Goddess Laxmi.

While she was performing the penance, it is said that very heavy rains started and the water from the ocean started overflowing. One strong wave of ocean unlit the 'Agni Jwala' (the fire which was lit to undertake the yajna) and destroyed the complete place and took away all 'Ahutis' and donations like fruits, utensils etc. along with the wave itself to the ocean.

This made the Heera-Ujawala very sad and in the rage of anger she cursed that the place should immediately be relieved of ocean and become plain.

That place had a number of water species, especially there was a high concentration of Dakshinavarti Shankhs and suddenly when the water receded, these species remained there and could not go back to the ocean.

Since the species was endangered, Lord Varuna, the God of ocean, pleaded Goddess Laxmi to save the species. Goddess immediately appeared where the Heera-Ujawala was performing the penance and requested her to take the curse back.

Heera-Ujwala told Laxmi that now her Shankh had become stone, so how could she continue her penance.

Goddess promised the lady that henceforth all the worshippers of Dakshinavarti Shankhs would be blessed with immense fortune, but they would now be available in very less number since most of them had changed into stone Shankhs.

She further gave a boon that all the stone Shankhs would be glittering with gems and precious stones. All the Shankhs which had turned into stones were named as Heera Shankhs.