Prajapati Daksh
Father of Sati,Son of Lord Brahma and a staunch devotee of Lord Vishnu,but is arrogant and disrespectful towards Lord Shiva.His strong hatred and disrespect towards Shiva leads to Sati giving up her life,and hence Mahadev lets loose Veerbhadra who cuts Daksh's head off.However on the intervention of other Gods,Shiva resurrects life into Daksh,and gives him the head of a goat,after which Daksh becomes a devotee of Shiva. He was played by Surendra Pal
Appearance[]
Daksh is depicted like a proper brahman priest wearing a janeu. He wears dhoti and also carries an uparna(upavarna) along with ornaments made out of tulsi beads.He is also depicted as being pretty fat.
Personality[]
Prajapati Daksh is a quite strict person. He wants his subjects and everyone to follow the rules he made. He is also shown to be very arrogant and full of pride. He has a great ego and will do anything possible for maintaining it. Later on, due to this flaw, Veerbhadra cuts his human head but shortly afterwards Shiva replaces it with a goat's head after the invention of all of Gods. Then, all his sins are washed, hence becoming a devotee of Lord Shiva also.
History[]
Prajapati Daksh is one of Lord Bramha's Manas Putra. He was angered and began disliking Lord Shiva, when the latter had cut off Lord Bramha's fifth head. He later married Prasuti, daughter of Svayambhuva Manu, and had many daughters, who married many devas and other rishis.
Prajapati Daksh's youngest daughter, Sati was Goddess Adi Shakti's incarnation. She was very dear to him. But when he found out that she was in love with Shiva, he tried his best to keep her away from him. He once imprisioned her in the Daksh rekha also.
Two of his daughters Revati and Rohini were married to Chandrama (the Moon Lord). But, Chandrama favored Rohini over Revati which eventually made her sad. When Daksh found out about it, he cursed Chandrama. Then Mahadev revived Chandrama from this curse of his by placing him on his head.
In order to keep Sati away from Shiva, Prajapati Daksh arranged her marriage with Satbish, a very ugly looking man. To make Satbish handsome, he was advised by Lord Bramha to look for a sculptor named Jatta (who was in fact Lord Shiva himself). Jatta made a handsome sculpture of Satbish, thus making him handsome. But, then Daksh asked Jatta to make him another sculpture, that of Shiva as a dwarpal, which was made by Jatta. But soon, Satbish understood that Sati was only meant to marry Shiva and thus refused to marry her.
Feeling insulted, he arranged for Sati's swayamvar. At the swayamvar, Sati chose Shiva by putting the garland around the neck of his statue. Even though Daksh refused the marriage, Lord Vishnu and Lord Bramha forced him to accept it. He was greatly upset by the fact of his daughter marrying Shiva.
Daksha had always hated Shiva. He did not leave a single chance to insult him. One day Daksha organized a grand yajna to which all the gods were invited, with the exception of Sati and Shiva. Wanting to visit her parents, relatives and childhood friends, Sati sought to rationalize this omission. She reasoned within herself that her parents had neglected to make a formal invitation to them only because, as family, such formality was unnecessary; certainly, she needed no invitation to visit her own mother and would go anyway. Shiva sought to dissuade her, but she was resolved upon going; he then provided her with an escort,Nandi and bid her provoke no incident.
At the yajna, her father, Daksh, received her quite coldly. He also insulted her and Shiva to a great extent. Unable to bear it, she self-immolated herself with her yogic powers.
There were no bounds to Lord Shiva's grief and anger when he found out about his wife's death. Shiva then dance the Taandava, the dance of destruction and death. After the Tandava dance, hegrabbed a lock of his matted hair and dashed it to the ground next to him. From the two pieces rose the ferocious Veerabhadra and the terrible Bhadrakali. Upon Shiva's command, Veerbhadra came to the earth and killed Daksha by cutting his head off.
Prajapati Daksh with goat head
After much pleading from all gods, Shiva, the all-merciful One, restored Daksha's life, with the head of a goat. In his humility and repentance for his graceless and sinful acts, he even left his palace along with his wife Prasuti and began to live in Kashi, hence becoming one of Lord Shiva's most devoted attendants.
Once, King Himavan along with his daughter, Parvati, came to visit Daksh and Prasuti. All this time, Daksh felt that his daughter Sati was around him, as Parvati was in fact the incarnation of Sati.