The Axe and the Mother

The sage Jamadagni lived in a hermitage in the forest with his wife Renuka and their five sons. The eldest was Rumanvat, then Sushena, then Vasu, then Vishvavasu, and the youngest was Rama, who would one day be called Parashurama, Rama of the axe.

Renuka was a king's daughter, and a good wife, and the household ran as a sage's household should.

One day she went down to the river to bathe. On the water she saw Chitraratha, the king of the gandharvas, the singers of heaven. He was playing in the river with his wives, garlanded with lotuses, beautiful and careless, and Renuka stood on the bank and watched him for a long time.

She went home late. She came in wet and confused, and her husband looked up from his fire and saw it all in her face. He knew what she had felt, and he burned with anger.

"Shame on you," he said.

Just then his eldest son came in from the forest.

"Kill your mother," Jamadagni told him.

Rumanvat stood there. He could not raise his hand, and he could not say a word.

"Then be cursed," said his father. And Rumanvat's mind went out of him, and he became like an animal, without reason.

Sushena came in, and Jamadagni said the same to him, and Sushena stood dumb and was cursed. So were Vasu and Vishvavasu, one after the other. Four sons stood in the hut, struck senseless, and their mother stood among them.

Last of all, Rama came in.

"Kill your mother," Jamadagni said, "sinful as she is. And do not grieve for it."

Rama took up his axe, and with one stroke he struck off her head.

Then the anger went out of the sage, as suddenly as it had come. He looked at his youngest son.

"You have done a hard thing, my son, at my word," he said. "I am pleased with you. Ask me for anything you want, as many things as you want."

Rama asked.

"Let my mother live," he said. "Let her not remember that I killed her. Let her not be touched by any sin for it. Let my brothers have their minds back. Let me be unbeaten in battle. And let me live long."

"So be it," said Jamadagni.

Renuka stood up, alive, and did not know that anything had happened. The four brothers came back to themselves. And the family went on as before, as if nothing had happened, because for everyone but Rama and his father, nothing had.

The Bhagavata Purana tells the story more briefly, and makes Renuka's fault smaller and Parashurama's deed larger.

In this telling Renuka goes to the Ganges to fetch water. On the river she sees Chitraratha with the apsaras of heaven, and she is drawn to him, only a little, only in her mind; but she watches for so long that she forgets the time, and the hour for her husband's fire offering passes.

She realises it and hurries home, afraid of what he will say. She puts the water pot down in front of him and stands there with her hands folded.

Jamadagni knows at once what was in her mind.

"Kill this woman," he tells his sons. They will not.

So he turns to the youngest.

"Kill your mother," he says, "and kill your brothers, who would not obey me."

Parashurama knows his father's power, the power of a lifetime of austerity and meditation. He does not hesitate. He kills his mother and all his brothers.

The sage is pleased with him, and tells him to ask for any blessing.

"Let them all live again," says Parashurama, "and let them not remember being killed by me."

Jamadagni grants it. His wife and sons sit up, alive and happy, as if they had woken from a sound sleep.

The Bhagavata pauses to explain why the son could do it. He was not cruel, it says. He did what he did because he knew his father, and knew that a sage with such power over life could give life back. He killed them trusting that he could ask for them again, and he was right.

After this, the Bhagavata moves straight on to the darker story that follows: the sons of a king, and Jamadagni's death.