Gautama's penance and the Godavari

On the hill of Brahmagiri, where the Godavari begins, the sage Gautama lived with Ahalya through a drought so long that the other sages sheltered with him because his penance alone brought rain. Their gratitude soured. A cow was sent into his grain, he flicked it away with a handful of grass, and it fell dead; the killing of a cow, however innocent, is a stain that only the Ganga can wash. Gautama stood in penance for thousands of years and Shiva came down to the hill and told the river to flow there. She came, and is the Godavari, and the sage bathed and was clean. Shiva remained as the jyotirlinga of Trimbak, a hollow in the rock with three small faces that the temple reads as the creator, the preserver and the destroyer in one. The Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao rebuilt the shrine, and the Nassak diamond that once adorned it was taken by the British in the third Maratha war.