How Parashurama Won Shiva's Weapons

Sanjaya, telling the whole of it afterwards to a blind king in a hall at Hastinapura, came to the morning when the Kaurava army had Karna for its commander and no driver good enough to stand in front of him.

Duryodhana had spent that morning arguing with Shalya, the ruler of the Madras, a crowned king with an army of his own, asking him to take up the reins of another man's chariot. He had already told him one long story to get him to agree, the story of the three cities of the Asuras and the shaft that burned them, and he had ended it with the point he wanted made.

"As the illustrious Brahman, the Creator of the worlds, the Grandsire, acted as the driver of Rudra, so do thou restrain the steeds of the high-souled son of Radha like the Grandsire restraining those of Rudra. There is not the slightest doubt, O tiger among kings, that thou art superior to Krishna, to Karna, and to Phalguna. In battle, Karna is like Rudra, and thou art like Brahman in policy. United, ye two, therefore, are competent to vanquish my foes that are even like the Asuras."

Then, because Shalya had still not said yes, he said it plainly.

"Upon thee depend Karna, ourselves, our kingdom, and our victory in battle. Hold the reins, therefore, of the excellent steeds."

And then, since one story had not been enough, he began another.

"There is another story which I will narrate. Listen once more to it. A virtuous brahmana had recited it in the presence of my father. Hearing these delightful words fraught with the reasons and purposes of acts, do, O Shalya, what thou mayst settle, without entertaining any scruples."

It is worth noticing what he chose. The first tale had been about a driver. This one was about the man who taught Karna everything he knew, and about the price that man had paid for it, and Duryodhana told it to a king he was trying to hire.

"In the race of the Bhrigus," said Duryodhana, "was Jamadagni of severe ascetic penances. He had a son endued with energy and every virtue, who became celebrated by the name of Rama."

The Bhrigus are the oldest and the most dangerous of the brahmana lines in the epic, a family whose anger is spoken of as a thing with a temperature. Jamadagni was the head of that house in his generation, and his son Rama is the one the world came to call Parashurama, Rama of the axe, the brahmana who fought like a kshatriya and made a legend out of the contradiction. The site tells that story elsewhere: the father's terrible command, the mother restored, the thousand-armed king who stole the calf, the twenty-one clearings of the earth. None of that has happened yet in this tale. This is the story of where the arms came from.

"Practising the austerest penances, of cheerful soul, bound to observances and vows, and keeping his senses under control, he gratified the god Bhava for obtaining weapons."

Every clause in that sentence is a discipline, and the last clause is the purpose. He was not seeking release, or knowledge, or the sight of the god for its own sake. He wanted astras, the celestial weapons that answer to mantras rather than to strength, and he went about getting them the way a brahmana gets anything, by penance, and he addressed himself to Bhava, which is one of the names of Mahadeva, the god who wears the ashes and carries the trident and gives what nobody else can give.

He did not go to Indra, who trades. He went to the god who burns.

And for a long time nothing happened at all, which is how such requests are usually answered, and Rama went on with the penances, cheerful, as the account is careful to say, and kept his senses in hand, and waited.

"In consequence of his devotion and tranquillity of heart, Mahadeva became gratified with him."

Not in consequence of the severity alone. The account puts two things together, the devotion and the tranquillity, and the second is the rarer of them in a Bhargava. Men had emaciated themselves to skeletons for less and got nothing. What moved the god was that this one had kept a quiet heart while doing it.

"Sankara, understanding the desire cherished in his heart, showed himself unto Rama."

Rama had not asked out loud. That is the point of the line. The god read the wish where it was kept and came and stood in front of him without waiting to be petitioned, and then said something that was half a gift and half a warning.

"O Rama, I am gratified with thee. Blessed be thou, thy desire is known to me. Make thy soul pure. Thou wilt then have all that thou desirest. I will give thee all weapons when thou wilt become pure. Those weapons, O son of Bhrigu, burn a person that is incompetent and that is not deserving of them."

Read the last sentence again, because it is the whole doctrine of the astras in a single clause and the epic never afterwards contradicts it. The weapons are not tools that a bad man may pick up and misuse. They are fire, and they discriminate. Given to a man who cannot hold them, they do not fail him or serve his enemies; they consume him. Every later catastrophe with a celestial weapon in this epic is a footnote to that warning, and so, in the end, is the fate of the man Rama would one day teach.

So the answer to the request was not no, and it was not yet. It was a condition, and the condition was not skill, and it was not birth, and it was not years of service. It was purity, which is the one qualification a man cannot demonstrate to anybody, including himself.

"Thus addressed by that god of gods, that deity bearing the trident, the son of Jamadagni, bending his head unto that puissant high-souled one, said, 'O god of gods, it behoveth thee to give those weapons unto me that am always devoted to thy service, when, indeed, thou wilt regard me fit for holding them.'"

That is the answer of a man who has understood exactly what was said to him. He does not argue that he is already pure. He does not ask how long it will take, or what test he must pass, or what the marks of fitness are. He puts the judgment entirely into the hands of the one who is to give, and asks only that when the giver considers him fit, the giving should happen.

A whole temperament is visible in that sentence, and it is not the temperament the world remembers about Parashurama. The axe and the twenty-one campaigns are still in front of him. Here he is a young ascetic with his head bent, agreeing to be assessed.

Then Duryodhana went on, and the account of what followed is one long line of nouns.

"With penances then, and restraining his senses, and observances of vows, and worship and offerings and with sacrifices and Homa performed with mantras, Rama adored Sarva for many long years."

Seven disciplines named in a row, and then the phrase that swallows them all, for many long years. Nobody counts them. There is no episode in that stretch of time, no visitor, no temptation, no test, nothing that a storyteller could make a scene out of. There is a man in a forest feeding a fire and saying the words correctly, morning after morning, for a period the text does not bother to measure, on the strength of a promise that named no date.

That is the part of the story that Duryodhana, who wanted a favour before noon, chose to include.

"At last Mahadeva, pleased with the high-souled son of Bhrigu's race, described him, in the presence of his divine spouse, as possessed of many virtues."

The first sign that the years had counted for something did not reach Rama at all. It happened somewhere else entirely, in a domestic moment among the gods, when Mahadeva turned to Uma and mentioned a man.

"This Rama, of firm vows is ever devoted to me."

That is all. One sentence of praise, said to his wife about somebody who was not there to hear it.

"Gratified with him, the Lord Sankara thus repeatedly proclaimed his virtues in the presence of gods and the Rishis, O slayer of foes."

Then it widened. What had been said once in private got said again in company, and again, until the assembly of the gods and the great rishis knew the name of the ascetic in the forest and knew what the three-eyed god thought of him. A reputation was being built for a man who was not participating in it, who had not been told, and who was still getting up before dawn to lay the fire.

There is a quiet piece of instruction buried in the order of events here, and it is easy to read past. Rama's fitness was established before he was ever asked to do anything. The god declared him worthy in the hearing of heaven while he was still weaponless, still unproven, still doing nothing but the vows. The tests that follow do not create the verdict. They publish it.

And the account, having praised him in the assembly of the gods, turns without pause to the other side of the universe, where the enemies of heaven were doing well.

"Meanwhile, the Daityas became very mighty."

"Blinded by pride and folly, they afflicted the denizens of heaven."

The Daityas are the older children of the same fathers as the gods, and their quarrel with heaven is the oldest quarrel there is. This time they were winning. The account gives them the two failings it always gives them, pride and folly, and then gives them the victory anyway, which is the epic's usual honesty about how these things go.

"The gods then, uniting together, and firmly resolved to slay them, strove earnestly for the destruction of those foes. They, however, failed to vanquish them."

United, resolved, earnest, and beaten. Three qualities that ought to have been enough, and were not.

So they went where they always go.

"The gods then, repairing to Maheswara, the Lord of Uma, began to gratify him with devotion, saying, 'Slay our foes.'"

They asked the god to do it himself. That is what they had come for and that is what they said, and it was a reasonable request, since he had done exactly that for them before against the three cities, which was the story Duryodhana had just finished telling.

"That god, having promised the destruction of their foes unto the celestials, summoned Rama the descendant of Bhrigu."

He promised the gods their victory. Then he sent for a man.

"O descendant of Bhrigu, slay all the assembled foes of the gods, from desire of doing good unto all the worlds as also for my satisfaction."

After the long silence, the summons had come, and it was not what the ascetic had been waiting for. He had asked for weapons and had been told to become pure. Now he was being told to go to war, and nothing had been said about the weapons at all.

Rama said the obvious thing, and he said it to the face of the god who had promised him an arsenal.

"What strength have I, O chief of the gods, destitute as I am of weapons, to slay in battle the assembled Danavas that are accomplished in weapons and invincible in fight?"

It is not a refusal. It is an inventory. He is a brahmana with vows and mantras and nothing in his hands, and he is being sent against an enemy that has just defeated the massed gods, an enemy the account itself calls accomplished in weapons and invincible in fight. He points this out. Any soldier would.

"Maheswara said, 'Go thou at my command. Thou shalt slay those foes. Having vanquished all those enemies, thou shalt acquire numerous merits.'"

That is the whole of the answer. No arms are issued. No boon is granted first. No explanation is offered of how an unarmed ascetic is to accomplish what heaven in arms could not. He is given a command and a promise and sent out, and the order of those two things is the test.

"Hearing these words and accepting them all, Rama, causing propitiatory rites to be performed for his success, proceeded against the Danavas."

He accepted them all. Then he did the one thing left to a man in his position, which was to have the rites performed properly, and went.

And he announced himself when he arrived, to enemies who were endued with might and possessed with folly and pride.

"Ye Daityas that are fierce in battle, give me battle. I have been sent by the God of gods to vanquish you."

"Thus addressed by the descendant of Bhrigu, the Daityas began to fight. The delighter of the Bhargavas, however, slaying the Daityas in battle, with strokes whose touch resembled that of Indra's thunder, came back to Mahadeva."

The battle gets one sentence. What the sentence contains is a man with no weapons killing them with strokes that felt like the thunderbolt, which is to say with his hands and his penances, and then turning round and walking back to the god who had sent him.

"Jamadagni's son, that foremost of brahmanas, returned with many wounds on his person inflicted by the Danavas."

He had won and he was cut to pieces. The enemy had been accomplished in weapons, exactly as he had said, and every one of those weapons had found him, because he had gone in with nothing to keep them off. He walked back into the presence of the god carrying the whole record of the fight on his skin.

"Touched, however, by Sthanu, his wounds were immediately healed."

One touch. The god did not send for herbs or utter a charm. He put a hand on the man, and the injuries were gone, and what had been an ordeal an hour earlier was over and could not be shown to anybody.

"Gratified also with that feat of his, the illustrious god gave diverse kinds of boons unto the high-souled son of Bhrigu. With satisfaction in his heart, the trident-wielding God of gods said, 'The pain thou hast suffered in consequence of the fall of weapons upon thy body evidences the super-human feat that thou hast achieved, O delighter of the Bhrigus. As desired by thee, accept from me these celestial weapons.'"

The god names his reason, and the reason is the pain. Not the number of Daityas killed. Not the victory, which the gods had wanted and got. The proof that the thing done was superhuman is that it cost him his body to do it, and a man who will go unarmed into that because he was told to is a man who will not be burned by what he is now being handed.

"Having obtained all the celestial weapons and the boons that had been desired by him, Rama bowed unto Siva with his head. Obtaining the leave also of the gods that great ascetic went away."

He bowed, he took his leave of the assembly, and he walked out of heaven with the arsenal, and the account does not say a word about what he felt. Years of vows, one battle fought without arms, a healed body, and then the plain sentence: he went away.

"This is the old story that the rishi had recited," said Duryodhana.

Then he came to the reason he had told it.

"The descendant of Bhrigu gave the whole science of weapons unto the high-souled Karna, O tiger among kings, with delighted heart."

That is the join between the two halves of the tale. What Rama had bought with years of penance and one unarmed war, he handed on entire to a young man who came to him as a pupil, and the phrase used of the handing over is with delighted heart.

Out of that Duryodhana built his argument, on a battlefield, about the man he was asking Shalya to drive.

"If Karna had any fault, O lord of Earth, the delighter of Bhrigu's race would never have given him his celestial weapons."

It is a real argument, and it rests on the warning Mahadeva had given in the forest. Those weapons burn a person who is incompetent and undeserving. The Bhargava had been made to wait years on that exact condition, and knew it better than anybody. If he judged Karna fit to receive them, then a god's standard had been applied to Karna and Karna had met it.

Having got that far, Duryodhana went further than he needed to.

"I do not think that Karna could have been born in the Suta order. I think him to be the son of a god, born in the kshatriya order. I think that he was abandoned in infancy in order that the race in which he was born might be ascertained by his features and feats. By no means, O Shalya, could this Karna have been born in the Suta order. With his natural earring and natural coat of mail, this mighty car-warrior of long arms, resembling Surya himself, could not be borne by a common woman even as a she-deer can never bear a tiger. His arms are massive, each resembling the trunk of a prince of elephants. Behold his chest that is so broad and capable of resisting every foe. Karna, otherwise called Vaikartana, O king, cannot be an ordinary person. Endued with great valour, this disciple of Rama, O king of kings, is a high-souled personage."

He had guessed the truth. The son of a god, born of no common woman, set adrift as an infant so that his birth might be read later off his own body: every clause was correct, and Kunti and Krishna had each already said so to Karna's face, and Duryodhana knew none of that. He had arrived at his friend's parentage by looking at his shoulders, and he offered it to Shalya as a compliment, and stood waiting to hear whether the king of the Madras would take the reins.