Story of Parshuram on his birthday & Akshya Tritiya festival

The festival of Akshya Tritiya in the year 2022 falls on May 3, 2022. The festival is the indication of summer and drinking a lot of water in the form of Sarbat.

In addition this day is the birthday of Parshuram. According to Mahabharata, Parashurama was born to Sage Jamadagni and his Kshatriya wife, Renuka. Sage Jamadagni owned a celestial cow called Surabhi. Surabhi was the daughter of another cow Kamdhenu. Like the mother cow Kamdhenu, the daughter Surabhi would also give whatever the owner desires.

When a king named Kartavirya Arjun (not to be confused with Arjun, one of Pandavas) knew about Surabhi, he wanted to own the cow. The king went to the hut of Jamadagni and asked him to hand over the cow to him. The sage refuses the king. Later, when the sage Jamadagni and Parshuram were not at their hut, the king stole the cow. When Parashurama learns about the king stealing his cow, he was very angry.

He took his axe in his hand, and went to the King’s palace to challenges the king to battle. They fought for a long time and Parshurama defeated and killed the king. When the king was killed, other Kshatriyas of the kingdom challenged Parshurama. With the help of his axe, he killed all the challengers. Because of this war, Parshuram decided to eradicate Kshatriyas and started fighting all of them.

In other versions of stories, there is one in which after Parashurama returned to his hut with Surabhi cow and told his sage father about the battles he fought and how he killed the king to bring the cow back, the sage father was not happy. Instead of congratulating Parashurama the father told that a Brahmin should have never killed a king. He asked Parshuram to go on a pilgrimage to wash all the sins. Parashurama went on a pilgrimage and when he returned back to his home, she was shocked to find out that the deceased king’s son had actually killed his father. That shocking news was a wakeup call for Parashurama. He picked up hi ask and went on killing all the warriors that cam on his path.

Parasurama legends are notable for their discussion of violence, retaliations, impulse of Krodha (Anger), the result of krodha, and repentance.

Tags:

Leave a Reply