With time Sanjana grew from a sweet adorable child to a young radiantly beautiful lady. Vishvakarma thought that Sanjana has grown as a complete woman and is now ready for marriage. Lord Vishvakarma thought of Surya to be his son in law and so approached Surya for the same. The Sun God was happy to see Lord Vishvakarma at his abode and welcomed him with all his respect. After hearing from Lord Vishvakarma about the reason for his visit, Surya agrees to marry Sanjana. Later, in the presence of all Gods from the heaven the marriage of Sanjana with Surya the Sun God gets solemnized.
Both couples initially were happy to be tied together for life but soon enough Sanjana’s mind was filled with thoughts of unrest and ceaseless worries as the radiance and the ever glowing aura of Surya would make her complexion dark each day and gradually drain her energy. She no longer desired to be the wife of The Sun God and felt a grave disinterest to stay in the abode of The Sun God. Her dark complexion now mirrored the energies of the dusk. Even the Gods conferred her with the name ‘Sandhya’ meaning Twilight, evening or dusk.
Finally, one day when she could no longer bear the pain of her ever darkening complexion, she decides to leave the abode of The Sun God and thus prepares a stratagem for her escape. Later when Surya not at home, Sanjana creates a clone of herself and calls her ‘Chhaya’ meaning shadow and then ensconces Chhaya in her place and instructs her, never to leave Surya’s presence under any circumstances and to always serve Surya with complete servitude and fulfil all his needs till the time she returns. Sanjana than without leaving any trace about her evil work and without being seen returns to her father’s abode to find some ever wanting repose. After returning home, Surya fails to notice any difference about his wife and takes Chhaya as his wife Sanjana. Surya, being a loving husband instigates marital relations with Chhaya thinking her being Sanjana. Days go by and slowly Sanjana starts to feel a deep void in her life, she now yearns for a glimpse of Surya whereas Chhaya living the life of her creator Sanjana has fallen in love with Surya and is happy to live the life as the wife of The Sun God, loving him and serving him with all her heart.
Suddenly than one day Chhaya conceives and gives birth to a son- Shani. Like his mother, Shani is born of dark complexion with similar physiognomy. When Lord Vishvakarma comes to know about the birth of Shani he gets very upset and confronts his daughter and asks her to tell the truth. Sanjana realizing her mistake confesses and concedes about her folly and how she escaped Surya’s abode leaving her clone Chhaya inducted in her place. Angered Lord Vishvakarma, immediately asks his daughter to return to her husband’s abode which indeed is her rightful place.
Sanjana leaves her father’s abode and returns to Surya’s abode. Fortunate enough on her return, Sanjana only finds Chhaya in the house but seeing her Sanjana goes into a frenzy of rage for having violated her given instructions and in that heated moments of uncontrollable hysteric anger, Sanjana destroys her clone Chhaya’s physical body and reducing Chhaya to become her shadow. Sanjana then retakes her position as the wife of The Sun God. Surya once again fails to notice the exchange of wives and Sanjana was relieved about the same. As time went by, Sanjana was again happy being the wife of The Sun God as now the glazing aura of Surya did not mind her for losing the fair complexion of her skin. But in this time Sanjana never accepted Shani as her son and would always consider him as an impediment between her and Surya. Naturally, Shani having being left wanting of motherly love grew depressed, low in confidence, upsetting, fraught and directionless. Then one day Sanjana conceives and later gives birth to twin son and daughter. Yama the son and Yami or Yamuna the daughter. Sanjana would always try to keep Shani away from Surya and make her children Yama and Yamuna spend time with their father.
With time all 3 children grew young and so one day Surya decides to confer the children with the right responsibilities. The 3 children were happy and were ready to accept responsibilities from their father, but just moments before Surya’s announcement Sanjana tries to besmirch Shani about his incapabilities and depressing nature and request Surya to divide the responsibilities only between Yama and Yamuna. Surya unwillingly capitulates to Sanjana request and so ignoring his elder son, divides the responsibilities between Yama and Yamuna. Yama is given the responsibility of sustaining truth in humanity and is entitled as ‘Dharmaraj’ or ‘The King of Dharma’. As per popular belief, Yamaraj is generally called the ‘God of Death’ who appears at the moment of death to take the soul either to Swarga or Naraka (heaven or hell respectively) depending upon the deeds done by that person in his or her lifetime. Thus such explanation of Yamaraj always brings sad and fearful connotations of death and judgement, which on entirety is nothing but a false notion that people tend to believe. As per different Hindu scriptures, during the moments of death or the last instance of a person, Dharmaraj would appear to take away the soul to its rightful afterlife abode. The soul after leaving the physical body is presented with its life karma by Dharmaraj ie the good and bad deeds of the soul in its mortal life and accordingly the likewise resulting afterlife as per karma.
On the other hand, Yami or Yamuna is given the prominence of a holy river, responsible for cleansing the sins and guilts of any wrongdoing and give salvation and purification to those who bath in her or ingest her waters. Yama and Yamuna happily receive their responsibility with consent and leaves, but Shani with all his expectations is left stranded. Shani being alone and lonely throughout his life, being deprived of motherly love and affection, being unable to interact with his father and being unable to have any sibling relationship or express ascendancy over Yama and Yamuna and now having being conspicuously forbidden of any responsibilities a feeling of humiliation and disgust creeps into his heart. Unable to bear the ever-growing discrimination against him by his mother, Shani’s dull and distasteful nature takes a turn making him enraged and filled with hatred to the level of deep intense repugnance for her mother. Shani’s disturbed, intoxicating & delirium mind state could no longer hold in and so his anger bursts out and looking for her mother, Shani kicks Sanjana in her womb to mark the insult she is of being called a mother and the womb that had birthed him. Shocked and angered by Shani’s act, Sanjana curses Shani to lose the very leg that had kicked her. Immediately Shani loses his leg and lies on the ground helpless and incapacitated. The whole scene takes place in the presence of Surya, and although he could understand the unchivalrous act of his son, from being destitute of love and affection throughout life, Surya could not understand the cursing of Sanjana, as to how come a mother curses her son. Startled by the action of Sanjana, Surya confronts her and demands her to tell the truth.
An afraid Sanjana confesses to her wickedness and recounts everything to Surya, from being unhappy with her darkening complexion to the creation of Chhaya and escaping from Surya’s abode to her father’s place and then the birth of Shani before her return to Surya’s abode and finally reducing Chhaya to a mere shadow of her, every misdeed she did she accepts before Surya. But with every recount of her doing Surya anger grows to an uncontrollable measure. Seeing her husband glow with anger and being castigated for all her misconducts and immoral behaviour towards Shani, and again unable to bear Surya’s brightest radiance, Sanjana leaves her husband once again. Only this time she cannot even return to her father’s abode. Having no other recourse Sanjana moves to the Himalayas where she hides in a forest, taking the form of a mare as a disguise, so not to found again.
Meanwhile, Surya feeling ashamed and guilty for his negligence and irresponsibility towards Shani decides to show contrition and rightfully accepts Shani as his elder son and appoints and enthrone him as the planet of governing all Karma & Dharma of earthly beings (Humans and Rakshasas) as per horoscope. Also, Surya revives Shani of his lost leg, even though keeping the ethics of Sanjana’s curse, Shani could never fully recover and would always walk with a hirple.
Thus as per Shani’s life unpleasantness which he had to suffer right since birth due to Sanjana’s ill-treatment, in many places women are not allowed to enter the worshipping place of Lord Shanidev considering he never received any motherly love and care in his entire life and hated his mother due to her rudeness and partial behaviour, so any woman offering obeisance to Lord Shanidev may go against her well being. Also as per astrology, if Shani appears in the horoscope of someone in any block or house than that person will experience characteristics like being lazy, depressed, lacking purpose, detrimental, suffering insults etc. To overcome such harmful, pessimistic behaviours and thoughts one will have to show resilience, endurance and patience in daily life. Thus even though considered as inauspicious and a bad omen to have Shani in your horoscope, he makes one work his idiosyncrasies in their life like being sombre and diligent to overcome the other ill traits as mentioned previously. Also, as per astrology, if by any chance Shani and Surya appear together in the same house of someone’s horoscope than that someone may have to experience a constant two-way pressure of indecisiveness as Surya glows radiantly whereas Shani remains sombre and low-spirited with his limitations.
