Names, Places, Events, Things: Ruminations and Essays on Hindu Mythology

Recently, I was studying about the Third War of Panipat (1761) for some reason, in which the Maratha forces led by Sadashiv Bhau - Balaji Bajirao 'Nanasahab' Peshwa's cousin brother - and the Rohilla Afghan forces of Ahmed Shah Abdali fought a decisive battle to the worse of Marathas. This battle is considered to be one of the largest fought in the 18th century, and also perhaps had the largest number of casualties in a single (half) day of the battle - leading to a loss of almost 100,000 human lives. Personally, the battle has a lot of historical interest to me, as the course of Maratha history as well as the history of my country took a different turn on that fateful day. Among various reasons that historians attribute to the loss of Maratha side in this war - a much smaller force compared to the enemy and yet not following the Guerrilla tactics but meeting the enemy head-on, slow-moving camps carrying not only soldiers but also civilians, lack of a proper strategy thr...

Show me how to Live! भार्गवेन हता माता एका जायाश्च पाण्डवाः | परदाररतः कृष्णो न देवं चरितं चरेत् || Translation: "Bhargava (Parashuram) killed his own mother; (All five) paandavas had but one wife (Draupadi); Krishna indulged with others' wives; do not perform the deeds of the gods" If one of the purposes of mythology is so that people take lessons from the lives of others and  learn how to live their own lives, some of the oldest civilizations surely do not provide a direct  ready reckoner for such modeling. Take the Greeks and the Romans, for example. Zeus / Jupiter is always wooing ladies from different species - women, nymphs, goddesses. His wife Hera is always fuming mad with jealousy. Hades is always conspiring to overthrow his brother's throne. The Olympians appear to be a petty, squabbling, self-centred lot. The demigods and the so-called heros are no exceptions either. Heracles is a cold, cunning and calculating figure. More so is Odysseus. Ach...

Now this is one of the most famous legands that I have been hearing since childhood, due to my close association with the land of Konkan in general and the town of Chiplun in particular -- and also with the Kokanastha Brahmins - the Kulkarnis, Deshpandes, Patils, Inamdars, Gokhales, Phadkes, Rastes, Patwardhans, Aptes and so on ... the list is endless. The Peshwas (prime ministers) of the late Maratha empire are the most famous group of Chitpavan Brahmins in the history. This post is about how the famous warrior saint Parashurama - Rama with an axe - Vishnu's 6th Avatar, ordered the Ocean to recede and thus created the entire stretch of what is known as Konkan and Malabar. Prelude - Jamadagni and Kartavirya Arjuna ---------------------------------------------------------------------- It all started when long time ago a Haihaya Kshatriya king Kartavirya Arjuna - nothing to do with the Arjuna of Mahabharata - (also called Sahasrarjuna - purportedly with a thousand ar...

3. Parashurama (Axe-wielding Rama) – Parashurama (Bhargavarama – also called Rama – not to be confused with Rama of Ayodhya and the hero of Epic Ramayana) is considered to be the Sixth Maha-avatar of Vishnu. The ten Avatars being (given Garuda Purana): Matysa, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, Buddha and Kalki . Parashurama is the only Chiranjeevi Avatar of the above. He still lives on earth, even today unlike the other Avatars who, once done with their work on Earth, go back to Vaikunth (Vishnu’s Heaven). He is also the first Sovereign Emperor known to man. He received an axe after undertaking a terrible penance to please Shiva, from whom he learned the methods of warfare and other skills. Parashurama appears many times in Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranas. He is famous for killing Haihaya-Kshatriyas on the earth 21 times for their arrogance. The most famous Kshatriya he slew was Kartavirya Arjuna – also called Sahasrarjuna (possessor of a thousa...