At a point during the Pandavas’ tirtha yatra (four Pandavas sans Arjuna, and Draupadi), the storytelling role is briefly taken from sage Lomasha and passed to Akritavarna. Akritavarna tells the Pandavas the story of sage Parshurama, who once exterminated all the kshatriyas on earth.
Parshurama’s grandmother, Satyavati, was a king’s daughter, but married to the sage Richika. Her father-in-law had prophesied that she would have a son who would be a brahmana but live the life of a kshatriya. But Satyavati, unaware of the complications that would arise from such an eventuality, tries to defer it to the next generation. She asks that her grandson be like this, not her son. The wish is granted.
Satyavati’s son, Jamdagni, also marries a King’s daughter: King Prasenjit’s daughter Renuka. Parshurama is the fifth son of Jamdagni and Renuka. Here we see how, to make the prophecy somehow ‘possible’, Parshurama’s mother and grandmother are both ‘have to’ come from kshatriya families. His mother, we get to know, is not exactly very happy with her sage husband.
Once, Renuka gets sexually aroused looking at a King named Chitraratha sporting in a water body with his wives. One presumes that her arousal is not only because of Chitraratha’s appearance, but also the apparent hedonism that the royal life must have seemed to her to allow. Renuka is cultivating as fantasy something that would have been her very life had Jamdagni not asked for her hand in marriage. It is, thus, difficult to imagine Renuka as having any guilt about her desire.
Jamdagni gets to know, of course. Nothing less than Renuka’s death will appease him now. But he is vindictive, and really wants to hurt Renuka more than death, it seems. So he asks their sons to kill her for him. The first four sons are unable to perform this matricide, but Parshurama doesn’t flinch in slicing off his mother’s head with an axe.
Jamdagni, tells Parshurama that he can ask for any boons in return. Parshurama asks for a long life without sin and invincibility in battle (strange for a brahmin to ask for, though that’s the point). But before these, he asks that his mother live, and that he forget about the slaying. All of Parshurama’s wishes are granted.
Whether the revived Renuka is able to live on as Jamdagni’s wife, or not, is detail not provided. But let us take pause at the moment Parshurama lifted his axe with the intention to slice off her mother’s head. Did he really know that after the act was committed, his father would be happy enough to grant him boons, and that he would get the chance to revive his mother? Even if he did, did he really know that his father would grant him an unlimited number of boons? And if there was to be only one boon, would Parshurama have asked for invincibility in battle or the revival of his mother? These are all questions to ponder.
Tanuj Solanki
Twitter@tanujsolanki
The writer is reading the unabridged Mahabharata