PARASURAMA,DALITS AND THE ART OF AXING

It Was a Fight Between Two Political Ideologies

The myth of Parasurama as the founder of Kerala is very well known.But rarely have Keralites traveled to the contradictions of the myth,proving that Malayalis have not taken him that seriously.

He is the son of Jamadagni and Renuka, in the popular myth.When Renuka was eight years old, her father's Guru,Agasthya, advised him to marry her off,when she attains the desirable age, to Jamadagni, son of sage Ruchika and Sathyavathi,meaning,the sages of yore did marry.
Jamadagni and Renuka were staying in the Ramsrang hills near Savadatti,in Belgaum,Karnataka.She used to help him in daily rituals,after bathing in the Malaprabha river. She fetched water from there using a pot made of fine grains of sand,or unbaked clay,tying a snake as rope,or rather,held together by her devotion to her husband.The literal meaning of the name Renuka,is,fine grains of sand.She had five childrean:Vasu,Viswavasu,Brihudhanyu,Brithyakanya, and Ramabhadra.Ramabhadra was Parasurama,getting the nick name from the axe,he wielded.

Parasurama idol,Udupi

One day,while Renuka was collecting water,she saw gandharvas(manes) making love in the waters,felt butterflies in her stomach,and was enamored by one gandharva.She lost her purity,dissolving the pot,in the river water,in the process.When Jamadagni asked his sons,one by one,to kill their mother,only Parasurama obeyed,hacking her with his axe,and his request to restore life to his mother and brothers granted.The boon to both Renuka and Parsurama was exotic:they won't experience the memory of death.
Jamadagni was later killed by the Haihaya King Karthavirya Arjuna,wanting the divine cow,Kamadhenu,which Jamadagni owned,for himself.The king was axed by Parasurama,and he enacted a genocide of the King's race for the next 21 generations.Renuka immolated herself in the pyre of her husband.That custom of Sati was abolished centuries later,by the efforts of a Bengali,Rajaram Mohan Roy.
Renuka,who survived death,is known by different names,in different places as Mathangi,Renuka,Yellamma or Maariyamma.She is  Maariyamma,or Yellamma in South India and she becomes the Dalit,Yellamma,as pointed out by Wendy Doniger,in her book,The Hindus:An Alternative History.When Renuka was about to be hacked,she embraced a dalit woman,Yellamma,who stood between death and Renuka,and both  became victims to Parasurama.When Jamadagni restored their lives,the head of Renuka went to Yellamma and that of Yellamma to Renuka,transposing Brahmins and dalits,at will.Brahmin head for Maariyamma(Renuka) and dalit head for Yellamma.Goat and Chicken were sacrificed for Yellaamma,only Buffaloes for Maariyamma.Dalits were raised to these 'high pedestals',by the Bhakthi movement.

Thomas Mann

The story of the transposed heads reoccurs in India now and then.The heads of a sage and a prostitute get transposed in the Sanskrit play,Bhagavadajjukam by Somadatta,which we staged as youngsters in a University drama festival.It is a story of the conflict between mind and body,which happened to Renuka-a sage is termed His Holiness,whereas Renuka becomes,Her Horniness!The Nobel winning German novelist,Thomas Mann adapted the Indian myth to write his novella,The Transposed Heads,in which he tells the story of two male friends,the intellectual Shridaman and the earthy Nanda beheading themselves,their heads then transposed,and Shridaman's wife,the confused Sita,falling in love with both.It was Mann's strong reaction to the assumption that there is a dichotomy between spirit and life,and mind and the body.He found the need to reshuffle the present scale of values and meanings by constantly juxtaposing with older ones.
In the Dasavathara myth of evolution of human beings from the water species,Parasurama appears 6th,Srirama 7th and Srikrishna the 8th.Mysteriously,mocking at people who create legends,Parasurama meets both Srirama and Krishna in the later Puranas, Ramayana and Mahabaratha.

Renuka Temple and Parshuram Lake,Sirmour,Himachal Pradesh

The first chapter of Ramayana,Balakanda(Sargas 74-76),which I studied in school,describes the meeting of two incarnations,Parasurama and Srirama,after the wedding of Sita and Rama.Though they were two incarnations,maybe unaware of it,they fall into a conflict in the first meeting itself.When Rama and his brother Lakshmana were returning from Mithila with Guru,Sage Vasishta,they were blocked and Parasurama challenged Srirama to destroy his thapo bala,the power he amassed through penance, by stringing another bow.Parasurama challenged:Rama,I heard that you broke the bow of Siva in the palace of King Janaka,during Sita's marriage.I am going to test your prowess.I will give a Vaishnava bow to you.Show me that you can string it.
Srirama strung the bow and sent the arrow,piercing the prowess of Parasurama and sending him to Mahendragiri for another round of penance.
This story in the North Indian Valmiki Ramayana,gets another version,in South Indian Kamba Ramayana,written by the widow's son,thereby an out caste,the Tamilian,Kambar.Kambar says,Parasurama took it as an affront,stringing his Guru,Siva's bow,by Srirama.He forcibly made an encounter and asked Rama to string the Vaishnava bow.When Rama asked for the target,Parasurama said,he can destroy the whole world sending the arrow,but for the time being,he should aim at his Thapobala.When Rama did,Parasurama surrendered those instruments of destruction to Rama,thereby fulfilling the mission of his incarnation.So,the mission was only partially success before the advent of Rama.

Dasavatara/Albert Museum,London

In both the stories,Saivism is pitted against Vaishnavism,giving,the latter a victory over the other.The issue here is,all incarnations are said to be that of Vishnu.Then why one incarnation,Parasurama,pleading for Siva?A case of an over sight by the interpolations by the politicians of those times.The political ideologies then,were,Saivism and Vaishnavism.
The meeting of Rama and Parasurama, is related to the Pandavas by King Lomapada, during their Vanavasa,in Mahabaratha.Here,the story is entirely different.
When Rama became famous as an upright King,Parasurama went and met him.He gave Rama the bow with which he decapitated the Kshatriyas,and demanded that he string it.When Rama took aim,Parasurama asked him to take the bow close to his ear and aim.Then,Rama burst out,and Parasurama saw the whole universe manifested in front of him.Rama sent the arrow,the universe was filled with darkness,there was lightning followed by thunder and then a deluge.Stars fell down extinguished. Realizing Rama  an incarnation,Parasurama bowed before him,and went back to Mahendragiri.Knowing his miserable plight of losing all power,Manu advised him to have a dip in the Vadhoosara river,in the particular spot,Deeptoda,where his ancestor ,Bhrigu once had a dip.A dip in the divine river guaranteed regaining lost lust re.
Parasurama met the other incarnation Krishna twice.
The first time was when,Krishna and his brother Balarama  climbed the Mount Gomanta.Parasurama who was there,asked Krishna to slain the Karvaira King,Srigala Vasudeva,inhabiting the valley under the Mount.Parasurama met Krishna a second time ,while he was en route to the  Kaurava durbar,as a messenger of the Pandavas.Krishna climbed down from his chariot,seeing the earlier incarnation,in conversation with fellow sages.Parasurama advised Krishna to show the Kauravas the real picture.Later we see Parasurama,in the durbar,at the time of the entry of Dharmaputra.We see Parasurama in the durbar,again,when Krishna communicates his mission to Dhritarashtra.When Kauravas sought solace in silence,Parasurama stands up and retells the story of King Dambotsava,who learned a lesson because of inflated ego and arrogance.He was always in search of enemies,and sages advised him to meet Naranarayanas.Dambotsava went and challenged them in their asrama at,Badarika.Though they spurned the challenge,Dambotsava rained them with arrows,and they,in turn,covered the entire sky with arrows.Dambotsava shed his ego and apologised to the sages.

The Malayalam word,Damb,denoting arrogance has its etymology in Dambotsava.Dambotsava literally means,celebration of arrogance.
In Mahabharatha,there is a conflict between Parasurama and Bhishma;Parasurama can be seen in Yama's durbar too.
There are 22 Parasurama temples in India,and he is considered the builder of seven temples in the Gokarn belt from where he flung his axe to the sea to reclaim the lost state of Kerala.The seven temples are,Udupi,Kukke Subramanya,Kumbasi,Koteswara,Sankaranarayana,Kollur and Gokarn.It is unfortunate that he has only one temple in the state he is said to have founded-Thiruvallam in Thiruvananthapuram.About Kerala and Parasurama,later.
Two bows have been mentioned here:Siva's bow was Pinaka/Thrayambaka,which he wielded on his hand, un stringed because,his rival,Vishnu could break it at the incantation of a mantra.Siva gave the bow to Vasishta,and he gifted it to King Janaka.Vishnu's bow was Sarnga.Both the bows were designed by Viswakarma,a proletarian,who would have been the first to string the bow,much before Rama.But he had not participated in the Swayamvara,because only Kshatriyas were invited. 
The war between Saivism and Vaishnavism is also visible in Parasurama's establishment of 64 villages.Among those villages,no one is there in Southern Kerala,Venad.Since the fore fathers of Nambudiris were saivites,their women were banned from going beyond Kannetti,hence no Parasurama village in the South.The Potti Brahmins,Vishnavites from Tulunad,were free,though Nambudiri's never considered them to be Brahmins.
In the final analysis,Parasurama should be considered the sage who laid foundation for the ART OF AXING.Scholars think the epic,Ramayana is older than Mahabaratha because Rama appears in Mahabaratha,in the Ramopakhyana,in Aranya parva,told to Yudhishtira.The dating becomes very tricky because the older Parasurama appears every where.If  the politics of the epics is read judiciously,it becomes easy.We see a destructive Parasurama in Ramayana,whereas he is sane,giving ethical advise,in Mahabaratha.Saivism  being older than Vaishnavism,Ramayana has to be older than Mahabaratha.Destruction precedes creation.

Reference:Encyclopedic Dictionary of Puranas,Vol 1/Swami Parameswarananda.

See my Post,THE EGG AND THE TEXT:THE TRAVAILS OF WENDY DORNIGER