Sandipani Ashram, Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh India

This small complex of buildings set in a garden has a legendary history. The faithful believes that this is where the seer Sandipani taught Lord Krishna, his brother Balram, and their friend Sudama. The place where the ashram, or hermitage, of Sandipani once stood is now a temple dedicated to the great teacher. He sits on an elevated platform facing the images of his three seated pupils. The central image is believed to be the only seated image of Krishna in the World.

The head priest who officiates in this complex is Rupam Vyas, the 202nd direct descendant of Guru Sandipani The priest assures visitors that Lord Krishna was a genius: he memorised the four Vedas in four days, and the other sixty essential books of instruction in just sixty more days. Facing the temple to Guru Sandipani is an old temple enshrining a shivling.

Sandipani Ashram, the ashram of Guru Sandipani, is the place where Lord Krishna and Sudama from the Epic Mahabharata completed their education. This ashram in Ujjain has an interesting stone with numerals 1 to 100 engraved on it. The main tourist attractions of the ashram are ‘Ankapata’, the area near the ashram; ‘Gomti Kunda’ referred as the source of water supply to the ashram in the olden days; and an image of ‘Nandi’, belonging to the Shunga period.

The Sandipani ashram was the first halt on our temple tour of Ujjain, and we entered the grounds expecting a short 10 minute halt, warned by our driver cum guide not to waste too much time, and ended up spending close to an hour wandering around the ashram. The reason was an inmate of the ashram, an engineer by profession and a Veda scholar by choice, a descendant of Guru Sandipani – the preceptor of Lord Krishna. Much of what he told us might have been mythology and unsupported facts, but his stories brought alive the image of Krishna as a young boy, choosing the person most suited to be his Guru, arriving at the ashram, persuading the guru to accept him as his disciple, bringing the holy waters of the Ganges to the ashram as an added incentive for the Guru to accept him as  a student, washing his writing tablets by the river, performing the duties as a diligent disciple as an example to the others, making friendship with one of the poorest students of the ashram, a friendship he maintained to the last, and finally, departing after granting his guru the greatest Guru Dakshina of all time – the return of his long lost son! Truly, the much heard and oft-repeated stories of Krishna never sounded better!