The Other Rāma

Matricide and Genocide in the Mythology of Paraśurāma

Brian Collins

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781438480381, 9781438480398
• eBook ISBN: 9781438480404
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism

A systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Para?ur?ma ("R?ma with the Axe"), an avatára of Vi??u with a much darker reputation.

The Other R?ma presents a systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Para?ur?ma ("R?ma with the Axe"), an avatára of Vi??u best known for decapitating his own mother and annihilating twenty-one generations of the Katriya warrior caste in an extermination campaign frequently referred to as "genocide" by modern scholars. Compared to R?ma and Ka, the other human forms of Vi??u, Para?ur?ma has a much darker reputation, with few temples devoted to him and scant worshippers. He has also attracted far less scholarly attention. But dozens of important castes and clans across the subcontinent claim Para?ur?ma as the originator of their bloodline, and his mother, Reuk?, is worshipped in the form of a severed head throughout South India.

Using the tools of comparative mythology and psychoanalysis, Brian Collins identifies three major motifs in the mythology of Para?ur?ma: his hybrid status as a Brahmin warrior, his act of matricide, and his bloody one-man war to cleanse the earth of Katriyas. Collins considers a wide variety of representations of the myth, from its origins in the Mah?bh?rata to contemporary debates online. He also examines Para?ur?ma alongside the Wandering Jew of European legend and Psycho's matricidal serial killer Norman Bates. He examines why mythmakers once elevated this transgressive and antisocial figure to the level of an avat?ra and why he still holds such fascination for a world that continues to grapple with mass killings and violence against women.

1

The Brahmin Warrior

Paraśurāma in Extremis

[The] general is not thought about with passion but with a comfortable superficiality. The exception, on the other hand, thinks the general with intense passion.

—Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition

About things that are untrue and composed of the five elements, the scripture says, “Not this, not that.”

—Avadhūta Gītā 1.25

Universal, Particular, Singular: Paraśurāma’s Fractured Identity

The two epigraphs that introduce this chapter represent two distinct hermeneutical principles, one external to Indian thought and one central to it, both of which are needed to understand Paraśurāma’s identity, so ordinary in its strangeness. Kierkegaard’s observation that the exception “thinks the general with intense passion” helps us to understand the utility of stories like Paraśurāma’s for constructing, not exceptional spaces, but general principles. The quotation from the Avadhūta Gītā, a text attributed to Dattātreya, Paraśurāma’s legendary guru and fellow exemplar of divine hybridity, illustrates the nondualistic principle of discrimination, successively determining all of the things that a thing is not in order to finally arrive at the truth of what it is: neti, neti (“not this, not that”). We will need both Kierkegaard and Dattātreya as we move between the three levels of Paraśurāma’s split identity: the universal, the particular, and the singular. In order to connect Paraśurāma to the distinctive aspects of the various worldviews to which he belongs we will be following a model in which, as Žižek has it, “Universal stands for ontology, Particular for sexuality, and Singular for subjectivity” (2017, 1).

On the universal-ontological level, the figure of Paraśurāma embodies a whole list of oppositions. He is an avatāra and a cirañjīvin (a “long-lived one”), a Vaiṣṇava deity and a Śaiva devotee, a Brahmin and a warrior, a sage and an epic hero.1 To simplify things, my fellow Paraśurāma enthusiast Nicolas Dejenne opts to exclusively use the term hero to refer to him.2 Yes, Paraśurāma is anomalous. But let us not make too much of this. In Hindu myth, anomalies are ubiquitous. Śiva is a god of contradictions, as Doniger (1973) has demonstrated with an unassailable thoroughness. But so is Viṣṇu. And this is especially true in the myths of his avatāras, the paradigmatic examples of which are the Brahmin dwarf Vamana, who contains the transcendent overlord of the cosmos in his diminutive frame, and the man-lion Narasiṃha (that God of the Fine Print, that Devil in the Details) a custom-made hybrid created to slip through all the loopholes in the invincibility boons granted to the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu (see Soifer 1991 and Dębicka-Borek 2015).3

I would even argue that terms such as paradox and contradiction have been somewhat overused in the study of Indian religion to emphasize the presence of complexity. Taken in the sense of vastly different qualities common to the same object, I could describe myself as a paradox: sometimes awake, but also frequently asleep; sometimes happy, other times bitterly disappointed; known to fly through the air in a jet but also sometimes to ride along under the ground in a subway train. What we really mean when we talk about paradoxes in mythology (and what I will mean when I use the term throughout this book) is that a mythological figure is presented in such a way as to hold in tension two contrasting ideas for the purposes of thinking through those ideas in a culturally specific way.

With this characterization in mind, I argue that Paraśurāma is anomalous and paradoxical in a way that demonstrates some important aspects of an Indian worldview that can be applied in a larger context. The contradictions he embodies are not natural oppositions (although mythmakers do tend to map natural oppositions such as earth and water onto the myth’s existing oppositions) but rather culturally determined ones. On the ontological level, the Paraśurāma myth is a site in which different abstractions and their relationships are used to create a picture of the world that resonates with Vedic thought. The fissure in Paraśurāma’s nature replicates the ontological “break” in the world that corresponds to what Jan Heesterman refers to as the “broken world” of Vedic sacrifice (1993, 44).

The particular-sexual level of the myth, in which Paraśurāma is a representation of the conflicts that come along with being born into a family, is best illustrated in the stories of Paraśurāma’s conception (which I will later refer to as “primal scenes”) in the Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata. In the version of the story that Akṛtavrana relates to the epic’s protagonist Yudhiṣṭhira at Mount Mahendra, he explains his guru Paraśurāma’s mixed-class identity as a case of two women being unable to distinguish between Ficus religiosa and Ficus racemose (in their defense, both are types of fig trees):

When the wedding [of Satyavatī, the Kṣatriya daughter of King Gādhi, and the Bhārgava Brahmin Ṛcīkxa] was done, Your Majesty, the oldest of the Bhṛgus [Bhṛgu, the progenitor of the line and the great-grandfather of Ṛcīka] came because he wanted to see the bride. When he saw his son [that is, his great-grandson Ṛcīka], he was happy. The pair honored the sitting guru, who was revered by the gods, with folded hands and remained prostrate. Being happy, Lord Bhṛgu said to his daughter-in-law [Satyavatī], “Choose a wish, good woman, and I will give you what you want.” She asked the guru for a son and he granted the favor to her and to her [unnamed] mother, also a Kṣatriya. Bhṛgu said, “In your fertile season, you and your mother must go to bathe for the son-ritual and each embrace a tree, she the aśvattha and you the uḍumbara.” But in embracing, Your Majesty, they did it backwards. When the glorious Bhṛgu came there on another day, he detected the reversal. He told his daughter-in-law Satyavatī, “Your son will be a Brahmin who acts like a Kṣatriya. Your mother’s son will be a Kṣatriya with the nature of a Brahmin.” Then she begged her father-in-law again and again, “Don’t let my son be this way, let it be my grandson instead!” He said, “So be it,” and she was comforted. (MBh 3.115.19–26)

Later in the epic, Yudhiṣṭhira hears the story of Paraśurāma’s conception again, this time from his own fallen guru Bhīṣma, who is lying on his deathbed of arrows (compassion for the unfortunate circumstances of the storyteller and Yudhiṣṭhira’s legendary circumspection conspire to keep him from pointing out the differences):4

Then the Bhārgava [Ṛcīka] was pleased, son of Kuntī, joy of the Kurus. Then he cooked a caru (rice pudding) in order to obtain a son for himself and also for Gādhi. Then Ṛcīka the Bhārgava called his wife and said, “You are to use this caru, and that one is for your mother. To her a shining son will be born, a bull of the Kṣatriyas. He will be invincible in the world of kings, killing the bulls of the Kṣatriyas. But this caru, good lady, will procure for you a calm, austere son who will have inner peace and be the best of the twice-born.” After saying this to his wife, the wise Ṛcīka, joy of the Bhṛgus, went to the forest to generate tapas [inner heat derived from asceticism].

At the same time, King Gādhi, out touring the pilgrimage sites, arrived with his wife at Ṛcīka’s hermitage. Then, Your Majesty, Satyavatī took the two carus in hand. She had not misunderstood her husband’s words, but she was excited in her mind. Then, son of Kuntī, the mother gave her own caru to her daughter and ingested her daughter’s caru. Satyavatī bore the embryo of the Kṣatriya-destroyer with the blazing form and the terrifying countenance. Then, Tiger Among Kings, Ṛcīka saw that through his yogic concentration and said to his fair-complexioned wife, “You were deceived, my lady, when your mother mixed up the carus. A powerful son will be born to you who will perform cruel deeds, and your brother will be born as a renouncer absorbed in Brahmin-ness. I put all the Brahmin-ness in [the caru] through the power of my tapas.”

When her husband had said this, the noble Satyavatī, trembling, placed her head on his feet and said, “My Lord, great sage, do not let the final word be that ‘You will obtain a son who is a mixed-up Brahmin.’ ” Ṛcīka said, “This is not the outcome I intended for you, my lady. Your mother and the caru will be the cause of your son’s violent deeds.”5 Satyavatī said, “O sage, you can produce worlds at will. What about me? I want a son who is peaceful and righteous, O Best of Priests.” Ṛcīka replied, “My lady, I have never told a lie, even when it would be inconsequential. How could I do so having kindled a fire to make a caru?” “Please let our grandson be this way [instead],” continued Satyavatī, “I want a son who is peaceful and righteous, Best of Priests.”

“There is no difference to me between a son and a grandson, fair woman,” replied Ṛcīka, “so it will be as you have said, my lady.”

[Vāsudeva said] “Thus Satyavatī gave birth to her son, the Bhārgava Jamadagni, who was calm, peaceful and absorbed in austerities. And Gādhi, Joy of the Kuśikas, received Viśvāmitra, equal to a Brahmin sage and embodying the totality of Brahmin-ness itself. Ṛcīka’s son Jamadagni fathered the great hero [Paraśurāma], who was knowledgeable of all the sciences and was a master of the science of archery and who like a blazing fire destroyed all the Kṣatriyas.” (12.49.8–22)

The image from the first story of Satyavatī and her mother embracing the two trees is an evocative one with at least two possible sources. One possibility is that this is drawn from the embrace of the uḍumbara post central to the audambarī rite that forms part of the agniṣṭoma (Gerrety 2016). Another possibility is that this scene alludes to a fruit- and flower-picking pastime popular in depictions of young women in eastern India around the second century BCE that subsequently became part of the myth of the Buddha’s birth. When it was depicted in nativity scenes at Buddhist monasteries and temples, the image was introduced into widespread use in art and poetry as the śālabhañjikā, or “woman-and-tree motif,” in which a woman clings like a vine to the trunk of a tree to promote pregnancy (Roy 1979, 3–5). It is also possible that it is a reference to one of the many indigenous fertility rites involving trees like those attested among the Coorgs, Bhīls, and others (see Frese and Grey 2005, 9339).

But trees symbolize more than fertility. Because they provide wood to make the implements and fuel for the sacred fire, trees are essential for sacrifice, the central institution of ancient Indian religion. However, as with people, only certain kinds of trees are eligible to participate in sacrifice. In the late Vedic imagination, trees, like people and gods, belongs to one of the four varṇas. The uḍumbara tree Satyavatī was meant to embrace is associated with nourishment, abundance, and the creator god Prajāpati (Gerrety 2016, 166). The aśvattha tree that Satyavatī mistakenly embraces belongs to the Kṣatriya class, which explains why Bhṛgu had ordered her mother to embrace it to give birth to a mighty warrior. The Kṣatriya-like attributes of the aśvattha tree include the hardness of its wood and its mythic identification with the thunderbolt weapon of Indra (Smith 1994, 224). Atharva Veda 3.6 compares the aśvattha to a raging bull that subjugates nearby trees and calls upon it to destroy the sacrificer’s enemies: “[The] vessel made of pipal [aśvattha] is said to p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Preface: The Other Rāma
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Brahmin Warrior: Paraśurāma in Extremis
• Chapter 2 Matricide I: The Broken Pot
• Chapter 3 Matricide II: The Severed Head
• Chapter 4 Varṇicide I: The Extermination of the Kṣatriyas and Its Aftermath
• Chapter 5 Varṇicide II: Blood and Soil in Malabar and Maharashtra
• Conclusion: Introducing Paraśurāma
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Back Cover