The story of Parashuram starts with his ancestors—he is a descendent of Pururavas, who is also ancestor of the Kuru clan that is central to the epic story of the Mahabharata. Different Puranas trace his ancestry differently, but we go with Vishnu Purana which says that one of the grand descendants of Pururavas,
The birth of Parasurama: Kusamba wanted a son who could be an Indra. He underwent a huge penance and multiple sacrifices for the same.
Naturally then the prevailing Indra was rattled. He decided to be born as Kusamba’s son. And he was thus born as Gadhi, of the Kusa or Kausika race. Gadhi gave birth to a daughter called Satyavati who drew the attention of Richika, who is a part of the Bhrigu clan (we saw the Bhrigus make an appearance first in Narasimha and then the Vamana avatar). He asked to get married to her.
Gadhi does not want to give his daughter to an old Brahman and so he sets him a challenge, seemingly impossible to fulfil, as a pre-condition to the alliance. “Get me a 1000 fleet horses, all white with one black ear,” he commands. But this is no ordinary Brahman, Richika asks the god of wind, Varuna to help him and brings Gadhi the horses he wanted.
Richika and Satyavati are married but have no son. So Richika keen to have an heir, decided to take matters in his own hands. He makes a paste with rice, barley, pulse, butter and milk that would yield him a son. But Satyavati asked Richika to also make one for her mother. He did that, made two separate piles and specifically asked his wife to not mix up the two. However, the mother put forth a strange request—“let me have your portion of the paste she said because then my son would have Brahminical qualities and your son (as it was meant to be mine) will have Kshatriya-like traits.” A Kshatriya can earn world renown unlike a Brahman and as a mother she told Satyavati, this would make her son more glorious than hers.
Satyavati agreed but when Richika came back home and was distraught. The portion meant for her would have given her a son well versed in the scriptures and one who was wise. But now Satyavati would get a warrior and her mother the son meant for her.
Satyavati begged for forgiveness and asked her husband to reverse the effects of the switch. If that were not possible then she said that let the grandson be a brave and invincible warrior and the son, a wise sage. Richika agreed and so Parasurama’s birth was pushed back by a generation. Satyavati gave birth to Jamadagni, who went on to marry Renuka and their son was Parasurama—the sixth avatar of Vishnu.
The story of Parasurama: Renuka was a princess while Jamadagni was a hermit. The Vishnu Purana does not go into too much detail about him but the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Bhagvat, Padma and Agni Puranas do.
Renuka and Jamadagni had 4 sons, Parasurama was the fifth. Renuka was known for her chastity and devotion to her husband. Every morning as was her practice she went to bathe in the river and one such morning, as she walked there, she saw a young prince and his wife sporting in the waters (in poetry and dance, this scene has been described variously as her seeing fish making love, or gandharvas engaged in the act of sex and so on). When she got back, her husband knew what she had done and was furious (she is believed to have had the power to carry water from the river in an unbaked clay pot but that morning the pot cracked open).
He asked his sons, one by one, to kill their mother. All refused except Parasuram. With his axe he beheaded his mother and only then is the sage’s anger satiated. He offers Parasurama a reward and the son asked for his mother back.
The story goes on: There was a king called Karttavirya, protected by Dattatreya, with a 1000 arms and a golden chariot that took him everywhere. Once he came to the hermitage of Jamadagni where Renuka served him as per the duties of the time. But the king was arrogant and instead of acknowledging the hospitality of the sage and his wife stole the calf of his favourite cow and tore down the tall trees of the ashram. When Parasurama came back and found out the full story, it drove him into a rage and he set out to battle the king and kill him.
The king died but Karttavirya’s sons attacked the ashram when Parasurama was missing and killed the sage. When Parasurama found out, he set out on a mass carnage and only when he had cleaned the earth of all Kshatriyas, was the avatara’s work done.
Story collected by: Arundhuti Dasgupta
Source: Hindu Mythology, Wilkins, W. J.
Image details: Wikimedia Commons
