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The wedding lamps had burned low, and the season for the road had come. Vishvamitra took his leave of the two kings and turned north on his own path, while Dasharatha gathered his sons and their new brides and set his face toward Ayodhya. Ahead of him on that road, inside a wall of dust and sudden dark, waited the oldest enemy the warrior clans had ever known: an axe resting on one shoulder, and a rage still banked in his chest, the rage that had swept the earth clean of Kshatriyas twenty-one times over. Here begins the hour in which Rama’s hidden nature showed itself for the first time before every god and every sage who could be gathered to watch.
Farewell, the dowry, and the wedding party turns home
When the night was over, the great sage Vishvamitra asked leave of both kings, Janaka and Dasharatha, and went straight north, toward the mountain of the Himalayas. The moment Vishvamitra was gone, glorious Dasharatha too begged the leave of Janaka, lord of the Videhas and king of Mithila, and started at once for his own capital.
On that occasion Janaka, lord of the Videha country, gave his daughters a rich dowry. The king of Mithila gave away many hundreds of thousands of cows, and as many fine woolen blankets, silken cloths past counting, and tens of millions of lengths of cotton; elephants, horses, chariots, and foot soldiers; a hundred maids of heavenly beauty, richly adorned, to serve as companions to his daughters; the finest menservants and maidservants; and a great weight of silver, gold, pearls, and coral. With his whole heart glad, he made this fine gift for his daughters, took his formal leave of Dasharatha, and returned to his own city of Mithila.
A key to reading this (the dowry numbers): these figures are the wealth-arithmetic of old poetry, and they are not meant to be weighed on a scale. Tens of millions of cotton cloths means a number beyond counting; many hundreds of thousands of cows means an ocean of cattle. In the world Valmiki wrote for, a king’s strength was measured by the size of his herds, the reach of his horse and elephant divisions, and the open hand he showed in giving. That is why these totals are piled so high.
He set at the head of the march all the sages who had come with him as far as Mithila, and with his army and his household around him, Dasharatha, lord of Ayodhya, moved off toward home with his high-souled sons. He had gone only a little way with the company of sages and his four Raghu princes when dreadful birds began to scream on every side of him, and at the same moment the wild deer of that country crossed his road, all of them, passing from his left.
Dasharatha, a lion among kings, read these signs and turned with respect to Vasishtha. On one hand these grim birds are crying out, he said, which is the mark of some heavy evil on its way. On the other hand the deer are crossing my path from the left, which is a good sign. What is this thing that sets my heart trembling? My mind has lost its ease. Vasishtha, the great seer, heard the question and answered him in a gentle voice. Hear what these signs foretell, he said. The birds screaming in the air tell you that a fearful danger has drawn near and now stands close. But the deer put that danger to rest, so set this worry down.
The gist: the wedding party turns home for Ayodhya with the full dowry, and on the road the birds’ ill omen and the deer’s good omen rise together, as though a danger were coming that would also, somehow, pass.
The storm, the darkness, and the coming of Parashurama
They were still speaking of it on the road when a violent wind came up. It shook the whole earth and pulled down the great trees by their roots. The sun went out behind a wall of darkness, and no one could find the four directions any longer. A gray dust like ash settled over everything, and Dasharatha’s army stood as though it had fainted where it stood. Only Vasishtha and the other sages, and the king with his four sons, kept their senses in that hour. Every other soul on that ground went slack and stunned.
Through that heavy dark, the dust-covered army and their king made out the shape of a terrible ascetic. It was Parashurama, the son of Jamadagni, born in the line of Bhrigu, the man who had unmade the warrior clans. His matted hair was coiled into a crown at the top of his head. He was as unassailable as Mount Kailasa and as hard to bear as the fire that burns the world at the end of an age, and he seemed to blaze with the heat of his own energy, so that common men could not hold their eyes on him. An axe rode on his right shoulder and a bow on his left, and in his hand he carried a fierce arrow that shone like forked lightning. He looked like Shiva himself, the destroyer of the demon Tripura.
A sub-tale: in the line of the sage Bhrigu came Richika, and Richika’s son was Jamadagni, and Jamadagni’s son was named Rama, who came to be called Parashurama because he carried the parashu, the battle-axe. Arjuna of the Haihaya house, better known as Sahasrabahu, the thousand-armed, had killed his father Jamadagni. To answer that killing, Parashurama tore the Kshatriyas from the earth twenty-one times over, a story that later tradition tells at still greater length. Because he belongs to Bhrigu’s line he is called Bhargava, and because he is the son of Jamadagni he is called Jamadagnya.
When they saw the ascetic burning like fire, all the Brahmin seers led by Vasishtha, men whose lives were given to prayer and to the fire offering, drew together in one place and spoke low among themselves. Filled with anger over his father’s murder, they wondered, has he come to root out the warrior clans a second time? It did not seem to be his purpose to destroy them again, for he had cut them down once already, and with that his rage had cooled and the grief of his father’s death had been laid to rest. Speaking so, the sages took up water in their hands to offer him the guest’s welcome, and they greeted the fearsome Bhargava with soft words, calling out to him, Rama, O Rama.
Parashurama took the honor the sages offered him, and then the glorious son of Jamadagni, still burning with that terrible aspect, turned and began to speak to Rama, the eldest son of Dasharatha.
The gist: in a storm and darkness that felt like the end of the world, Parashurama of Bhrigu’s line appears with his axe and his bow. The sages hurry to soothe him with the rites of welcome, and he passes over all of it to speak straight to Rama.
Parashurama’s challenge, and Dasharatha’s plea
O Rama, son of Dasharatha, O hero, Parashurama began, the world speaks of your strength as a marvel, and I have heard the whole story, in all its detail, of how you broke the bow of Shiva. To snap that bow as you did is a wonder past what other men can even imagine. It was hearing of it that brought me here, and I have come carrying a second great bow. This is the fierce and mighty bow of Jamadagni, my father. Set an arrow to it, draw it to its full length, and let me see your strength. And when I have watched you bend even this bow, I will grant you a single combat, one man against one, that will only add to the honor of your name.
A key to reading this (single combat and a Kshatriya’s duty): a single combat, a dvandva-yuddha, is a challenge to fight one against one. The code of a Kshatriya holds that when such a challenge is offered by a warrior in a righteous cause, the honorable answer is to accept it. This is why Rama, a little further on, takes it up while placing the duty of a Kshatriya above all else.
The challenge fell hard on Dasharatha. His face darkened, and he pressed his palms together and spoke. You put down your anger against the warrior clans long ago, he said, and you have been calm ever since. You are a Brahmin and a great ascetic, and it falls to you to grant my young sons their safety. You were born in the line of the Bhargavas, a line honored for its study of the Vedas and its sacred vows. You gave your word to Indra of the thousand eyes and set your weapons aside. In your love of dharma you handed the whole earth to Kashyapa and withdrew to the forest to make your home on Mount Mahendra. Great sage, have you come here now to see me wholly destroyed? If even Rama alone should die by your hand, not one of us will go on living.
Dasharatha went on pleading, but the glorious son of Jamadagni let the old king’s words pass as if he had not heard them, and he kept his eyes and his speech fixed on Rama alone.
The gist: Parashurama dares Rama to set an arrow to Vishnu’s bow and show his strength. Dasharatha begs for the lives of his young sons, and Parashurama turns a deaf ear to him and speaks only to Rama.
The tale of two bows: Shiva and Vishnu
These two bows, said Parashurama, both of them noble and divine and worshipped through all the worlds, both firm and full of power, were shaped by the hand of Vishvakarma, the maker of the gods. One of them is the bow you broke the other day, O prince of Kakutstha’s house. That one the gods gave to Tryambaka, to Shiva, when he burned to go against the demon Tripura, and with it Shiva brought Tripura down, O best of men. The second bow, the one no enemy can withstand, the foremost of the gods gave to Vishnu. What you see here in my hand is that very bow of Vishnu, the bow that levels the strongholds of enemies, O Rama. It stands equal in strength to that bow of Rudra which has already yielded and broken before your might, as the story I am about to tell will make plain.
There was a time, back when Shiva had just destroyed Tripura, when all the gods went to Brahma, the maker of all creation, and put a question to him. They wanted to learn which of the two was the greater, Shiva or Vishnu, and where each was strong and where each was weak. Brahma read what was in their minds, and being the first among the lovers of truth, he planted a seed of quarrel between the two gods. Out of that strain a terrible fight broke open between Shiva and Vishnu, a fight that made the hair stand on end, each of them set on beating the other. In the thick of it, Shiva’s bow, for all its fearful power, was left slack and dead by the mere war-cry of Vishnu, and the three-eyed Mahadeva himself was struck still where he stood. Then the gods came with their crowds of rishis and their charanas, and begged the two of them to grow calm, and only then did the two great gods come to peace with each other.
A sub-tale: the charanas are held to be singer-gods who travel the sky, chanting the deeds and the praises of the gods. Old poetry brings them back again and again as witnesses to the great wars of gods and demons. Here they arrive together with the company of rishis to ask for peace between Shiva and Vishnu.
When they saw the celebrated bow of Shiva left useless by the power of Vishnu, the gods and the gathered rishis judged Vishnu to be the greater of the two. That verdict enraged the glorious Rudra, and he gave his bow, together with its arrows, into the hands of the royal sage Devarata, who was born in the line of the Videha kings. And Vishnu, on his side, O Rama, gave over his own fine bow, the one that can conquer any enemy’s city, as a trust into the keeping of Richika, a son of Bhrigu’s line.
A key to reading this (where the two bows went): Shiva’s bow passed into the royal house of Videha, into the hands of the sage-king Devarata. That is the same bow Rama broke at Mithila, in the events of the last chapter. Vishnu’s bow passed into the line of Bhrigu, and it is the one now in Parashurama’s hand. So the two threads, the two bows, come together at last in a single moment, on this one road.
The radiant Richika passed the divine trust to his son, my own high-souled father Jamadagni, who was too gentle to pay back any wrong and had no use for such a weapon. It was because he had set aside his arms and lived on the strength his austerities had won him that Arjuna took him for an ordinary man. This Arjuna, better known as Sahasrabahu for his thousand arms, killed my father. When I heard of that most cruel and undeserved death, my rage rose, and as the Kshatriyas were born again I tore them from the earth, twenty-one times over.
When the whole earth was mine, O Rama, I gave it away to the great-souled Kashyapa, a man of holy deeds, as the fee for a sacrifice I performed to wash away the great bath of blood I had made. Having given it, I made my home on Mount Mahendra. All this while the strength of my austerities was on me, and when the news reached me that the bow had been broken, I came here in haste from that far mountain. Now, O Rama, set the duty of a Kshatriya above every other thing and take into your hand this fine bow of Vishnu, which came down to me from my grandfather through my father. Fit to it the arrow that razes an enemy’s city, and if you have the strength for it, O prince of Kakutstha, then, and only then, I will grant you your single combat.
The gist: Parashurama lays out the history of the two bows, Shiva’s and Vishnu’s, shows how Vishnu’s bow came down through the line of Bhrigu into his own hand, and challenges Rama to string it, set an arrow to it, and meet him in a duel.
Rama takes up the bow, and Parashurama’s energy is drawn away
The son of Jamadagni finished, and Rama, the son of Dasharatha, who until then had held his tongue out of respect for his own father, now answered him. Bhargava, he said, I have heard of the deed you did. You did it to clear the debt you owed your father, by avenging his death, and in that we find nothing to blame, O holy Brahmin. Yet you look at me as though I were a man drained of courage, powerless, even while I hold fast to a Kshatriya’s duty and keep a guard on my tongue before a Brahmin such as you. So look now, today, at my strength, and see what I can do.
With that, and with anger rising in him, Rama seized the fine bow and the arrow out of Bhargava’s hand, and in the same motion he drew away the divine energy of Parashurama himself.
A sub-tale: a verse of the Padma Purana, carried in the tradition and set down as a note to Valmiki’s own text here, tells the moment a shade more fully. Rama, it says, took up the bow of Vishnu in play, and yet with courtesy, and with the bow he took back into himself the divine power that had lived in Parashurama until that hour. This is why, in the lines that follow, Parashurama finds his own luster gone out of him, and knows Rama for Vishnu himself. Valmiki’s own verses a little further on bear the same thing out.
Rama strung the bow, laid the arrow along the string, and, his anger still on him, spoke to the son of Jamadagni. You are a Brahmin, he said, and beyond that you are worthy of my reverence for your kinship with Vishvamitra, who is your father’s maternal uncle. For that reason, O Rama, I cannot send this life-taking arrow into you. But there are two things I can do, and one of them I will. I can take from you this free movement of yours through all three worlds, which your austerities have won; or I can put an end to your title to those matchless worlds that your austerities have earned. That is what is in my mind. For this divine arrow of Vishnu, which can conquer an enemy’s city and grind down the strength and the pride of any foe, flies with a speed nothing can match, and it never falls to no purpose, and it never comes back until it has pierced its mark.
The gist: Rama takes the bow and arrow from Parashurama’s hand and draws off his divine energy as well, then strings the bow and sets the arrow. Because Parashurama is a Brahmin and a kinsman of Vishvamitra, Rama will not take his life. He offers instead to strip away either his free movement through the worlds or the heavenly worlds his austerities have earned.
The gods assemble, and Parashurama knows Rama for Vishnu
To see Rama standing with the great weapon of Vishnu in his grip, the gods came, all of them, from every quarter of the sky, with Brahma at their head and the crowds of rishis with them, riding down in their aerial cars. Gandharvas and apsaras, siddhas and charanas and kinnaras, and yakshas and rakshasas and nagas as well, all of them gathered to watch that great and wonderful thing.
In that moment, with Rama holding the great bow, all the worlds went as still as stone, each creature wondering what terrible thing would come of this show of his strength. And Parashurama, the son of Jamadagni, emptied now of his energy, could only stare at Rama in wonder. Robbed of his own light and dazzled by the brilliance of the man before him, the son of Jamadagni spoke to lotus-eyed Rama, and his voice came low and quiet.
He said: long ago, when I gave the kingdom of the earth to Kashyapa, Kashyapa told me that I must no longer live within his domain. From that day, keeping the command of my teacher, I have never stayed on the earth by night, O prince of Kakutstha, for I gave Kashyapa my word, and that is a thing well known. So it would not be right, O heroic joy of the Raghus, to destroy my power to move through the three worlds. Let me go instead, at the speed of thought, to Mahendra, the greatest of mountains. The worlds I have won, O Rama, I won them by my austerities, worlds without equal. Take those away with your fine arrow, and let no time be lost in it.
From the fact that you have lifted this bow, and strung it, and drawn it, this bow that no one else could so much as string, I know you for none other than the undying Vishnu, the lord of the gods, the slayer of the demon Madhu. May all be well with you, O scorcher of your enemies. See how these hosts of gods have gathered and stand watching you, whose deeds have no equal and who has no rival in battle. That you have turned me back like this, O prince of Kakutstha, you who are the lord of all three worlds, is no shame to me at all, for the one who has bested me is himself the master of the three worlds.
A sub-tale: Madhu was a demon whom Vishnu once killed, and for that killing Vishnu carries the name Madhusudana, the slayer of Madhu. When Parashurama uses that name for Rama, it is his way of saying that he has seen the truth: this young prince is Vishnu himself. That recognition is one of the first plain disclosures, anywhere in Valmiki’s Balakanda, of who Rama really is.
He spoke once more. O Rama of noble vows, he said, let your matchless arrow fly now. The instant it leaves the string, I will go to Mahendra, the greatest of the mountains.
Parashurama was still speaking when the glorious son of Dasharatha, Rama in his majesty, let the great arrow go. The son of Jamadagni watched the worlds he had earned for the life to come, worlds bought with his austerities, fall to ruin under Rama’s shaft, and at once he set out for Mahendra, the best of mountains. With that, every direction and every corner between them was washed clean of darkness. The gods and their crowds of rishis lifted their voices in praise of Rama, who stood there with the bow raised in his hand. And Parashurama, held now in high honor by Rama, walked once around him from left to right and went back to his own home on Mount Mahendra.
The gist: with the gods and rishis for witnesses, Rama looses the arrow and takes from Parashurama the worlds his austerities had earned. Parashurama, knowing Rama now for Vishnu himself and counting his defeat no disgrace, returns to Mount Mahendra.
The entry into Ayodhya, and Bharata and Shatrughna leave for Kekaya
Once Parashurama was gone, Rama, his mind wholly at rest again, gave the bow in his hand into the keeping of Varuna, the god of the waters, whose strength has no measure, to hold in trust. Then he bowed to the sages led by Vasishtha, and he saw his father still shaken, for Dasharatha had hardly seemed to take in that Parashurama was beaten and gone. Father, said Rama, the son of Jamadagni has left us. Let the army of four divisions, safe under your hand, march now toward Ayodhya. At his son’s words King Dasharatha gathered Rama, the best of Raghu’s line, into his arms and, in his love, breathed in the scent of his head. To hear that Parashurama had truly gone filled the king with such gladness that it seemed to him, on that day, that both his son and he himself had been born a second time.
A key to reading this (the four-limbed army): an army of four limbs is made of four parts, the elephants, the chariots, the horsemen, and the foot soldiers. This same four-part force, the chaturanga, later gave its shape and its name to the four kinds of pieces on a chessboard.
The king sent the army forward and soon came to his beautiful capital. He made his royal entry into the city, which was hung with flags and banners and loud with the fanfare of trumpeters. Its great avenues had been sprinkled with water and scattered with heaps of flowers, and they were a delight to see. The whole city had filled with people whose faces shone at the return of their king, and who carried auspicious things in their hands, and the streets were thick with the crowds. The townsfolk and the Brahmins who lived in the capital came far out to meet him, and, with his glorious sons behind him, the majestic and greatly renowned king passed into his beloved palace, which rose tall and white as the Himalaya.
Honored by his own people with every good thing his heart could wish, the king took his joy at home. Kausalya and Sumitra, and slender Kaikeyi, and whatever other queens there were, all gave themselves to the welcome of the brides. The queens then led the greatly blessed Sita, and the illustrious Urmila, and the two daughters of Kushadhwaja, Mandavi and Shrutakirti, into the inner apartments of the palace. At once they had the young wives offer worship in the god-houses within the women’s quarters and without, and the brides, blessed with the priests’ good words and having poured their oblations into the fire in the rite that marks a bride’s entry into her new home, shone in their robes of silk. Then, having bowed to all who deserved their reverence, the princesses settled into a happy life with their husbands, each in her own quiet apartments.
Married now in due form, trained in the use of many weapons, and rich in wealth, the princes, those jewels among men, lived among their friends and kinsfolk, giving themselves to the service of their father. Some days passed, and then one morning Dasharatha, the delight of the Raghus, spoke to Bharata, the son of Kaikeyi. My son, he said, this prince, the son of the king of Kekaya, your brave uncle Yudhajit, has come here to take you to his father’s capital, and he is waiting on you now. When Bharata, Kaikeyi’s son, heard this, he made ready at once to go, and Shatrughna with him. He took his leave of his father Dasharatha, and of Rama, who did great things without ever seeming to strain for them, and of his three mothers, Kausalya and Sumitra and Kaikeyi, and then the brave Bharata, a jewel among men, set out with Shatrughna for the country of Kekaya. Yudhajit, overjoyed to have the two of them in his charge, reached his own city and entered it with all the proper rites, and his father was well pleased.
A key to reading this (Yudhajit and Kekaya): Yudhajit is a son of the king of Kekaya, who is Kaikeyi’s father, which makes him Bharata’s maternal uncle. Kekaya was a country in the far northwest. This journey of Bharata and Shatrughna to their mother’s family matters a great deal for the story to come in the Ayodhyakanda, because when the moment of Rama’s crowning arrives, Bharata will be far away and not in Ayodhya at all.
With Bharata and Shatrughna gone, the mighty Rama and Lakshmana served their father, who was like a god to them, in whatever the hour called for. Setting his father’s word above all else, Rama saw to every matter that touched the people of the city, work that was dear to them and good for them at once. With perfect command of himself, Rama did for his three mothers all that was theirs to have done, and from time to time he gave his care to the weighty affairs of his elders and teachers. So it was that King Dasharatha, the Brahmins, the traders, and every last one of the people of the realm of Ayodhya took pleasure in the temper and the conduct of Rama. Rama, whose valor was true and never failed, stood above all his brothers in the fame he won, and, like the self-born Brahma among all created things, he was the finest of them in every virtue.
Rama, high of mind and with his heart at rest in his wife, and himself set fast in her heart, lived in happiness with her through many months. Sita was dear to Rama as the life’s companion his father had given him, and with her many virtues and her beauty his love for her only grew and grew. Her husband too, by his own virtues and the grace of his form, won a place in her heart that was twice as sure. Sita, the daughter of Janaka, the princess of Mithila, whose bodily beauty matched the goddesses’ own and who seemed the very shape of beauty made flesh, could read with her mind, down to the smallest thing, even what lay hidden in the deepest part of Rama’s heart. Joined in marriage to that best and most beloved of princesses, Rama, the son of a royal sage, was full of joy and shone with it, as the all-pervading Vishnu, lord of the gods, shines beside Shri, the goddess of fortune.
The gist: Rama gives the bow of Vishnu into Varuna’s keeping, and the party comes home to Ayodhya. The brides take their place in the inner apartments, Bharata and Shatrughna leave for their mother’s family in Kekaya, and the fame of Rama, and his love for Sita, go on growing. Here the Balakanda comes to its close.
Source: Srimad Valmiki Ramayana, Balakanda, Cantos 74-77 (Gita Press, Gorakhpur).
Basis: Valmiki Ramayana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)