Once upon a time, a king named Suraj Sen went out hunting. Outpacing his entourage, he rode through a forest within a gorge and up onto the sun-hammered top of an enormous rock, which thrust 100 metres above the plain.

The hard ride had made the king very thirsty. He spotted a hermit sitting on a rock, and asked him for water. The sage Gwalipa struck a rock and a cool, clear spring gushed out! The king first quenched his thirst, and then bathed in the small pool that had collected below the miraculous fountain. To his great joy, he emerged cured of a long-standing skin disease! Out of gratitude, the king asked the sage how he could repay him. The sage told him to enlarge the spring and build a tank to impound the curative waters. The sage also asked the king to build a wall on the hill to protect the other sages from wild animals, which often disturbed their rituals. The king later built a palace inside the fort, which was named "Gwalior" after the sage, and eventually the city that grew around the fort took the same name.