A King Who Renounced Everything Mid-Reign
Rishabha (Rishabhadeva) appears in the Bhagavata Purana's Fifth Skandha as a king of extraordinary spiritual stature, described as an avatar of Vishnu in the Hindu textual tradition, and is simultaneously revered as the first Tirthankara in Jainism, one of the clearest points of shared reverence between the two traditions despite their distinct theological frameworks.
As king, Rishabha ruled with exceptional wisdom and justice, and the Bhagavata Purana describes him as having a hundred sons, teaching them himself before eventually renouncing his throne, wealth, and family entirely to become a wandering ascetic, adopting the most severe forms of tapasya and eventually the Jain-associated practice of digambara (sky-clad, unclothed) renunciation, wandering without possessions or fixed home for the remainder of his life.
Before this renunciation, Rishabha divides his kingdom among his sons, and his eldest son, Bharata, inherits the central and most significant portion of the realm.
The King Whose Rule Gave the Land Its Name
Bharata, according to the Vishnu Purana and other Puranic accounts, rules his inherited kingdom so effectively and with such distinction that the entire landmass over which he holds authority comes to be known after him: Bharatavarsha, the land of Bharata - the name from which the modern country's own official Hindi name, Bharat, directly descends.
This etymological claim exists alongside other traditions - a separate, distinct Bharata appears in the Mahabharata as an ancestor of the Kuru-Pandava line, and some texts connect the name to that lineage instead or in addition - meaning Bharatavarsha's naming has more than one attributed origin across the wider Puranic corpus, with the Rishabha-Bharata connection representing one significant strand rather than a single, universally agreed etymology.
Regardless of which specific naming tradition a given text follows, Bharatavarsha as a geographic and cultural concept, referring to the Indian subcontinent as a coherent unit bound by shared dharma and tradition, is a durable and central idea across Puranic geography, appearing repeatedly as the specific region where dharmic teaching and karma are understood to operate with particular significance compared to other described lands.
The King Who Also Walked Away, and Became a Deer
Bharata's own later life follows a pattern echoing his father's: after ruling with distinction, he too eventually renounces his kingdom to pursue spiritual practice, retiring to a forest ashram - where, in a well-known cautionary episode, he becomes deeply attached to a orphaned deer fawn he rescues and raises, an attachment so consuming that at the moment of his own death, his mind is fixed on the deer's fate rather than on spiritual liberation.
As a direct consequence of dying with this attachment uppermost in his mind, Bharata is reborn as a deer himself in his next life, before eventually being reborn again as a human, this time as a boy who deliberately behaves as though mad or intellectually disabled (giving rise to his later name Jada Bharata) specifically to avoid forming any further worldly attachments, an episode this series covers as its own dedicated story.
The Rishabha-Bharata narrative arc, taken as a whole across a father who renounced everything and a son who nearly failed to due to a single lingering attachment before ultimately succeeding in a later birth, functions within the Bhagavata Purana as an extended teaching on detachment - a cautionary tale sitting directly beneath the celebratory fact that this same Bharata's earlier, successful reign is what gave the land its enduring name.
Common Questions From Devotees
Is Rishabha's son Bharata the same Bharata connected to the Mahabharata?+
No - they are distinct figures across different Puranic traditions. A separate Bharata appears as an ancestor of the Kuru-Pandava line in the Mahabharata, and some texts attribute Bharatavarsha's naming to that lineage instead.
Why is Rishabha significant in Jainism as well as Hinduism?+
Rishabha (Rishabhadeva) is revered in Jainism as the first Tirthankara, the founding spiritual teacher of that tradition, while Hindu texts like the Bhagavata Purana describe him as an avatar of Vishnu - one of the clearest points of shared reverence between the two traditions.
What happened to Bharata because of his attachment to the deer?+
Because his mind was fixed on the deer at the moment of death, he was reborn as a deer himself in his next life, before eventually being reborn again as a human known as Jada Bharata.
About the author
Anjali Mehta · Editor, M.A. Religious Studies
Anjali is the managing editor for Vandnaa and oversees the festival and vrat coverage. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies and reviews every published article for accuracy, accessibility, and tradition-fidelity.
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