The Land the Sea Gave Back

When Parashurama had finished his killing, he held a great sacrifice and gave away everything he had won, which was the whole earth. He gave it to the brahmins, with the sage Kashyapa at their head.

When it was done, Kashyapa came to him.

"The earth is ours now," he said gently. "You have given it to us. You cannot stay on it."

So the greatest warrior in the world found that he had nowhere to stand.

He went south, and west, to the mountains that run along the coast of India, the Sahyadri, the Western Ghats. He climbed to the top of them. Below him the forests went down to the shore, and beyond the shore was the ocean, as far as he could see.

He called to the sea god.

"Varuna," he said. "Give me some land of my own."

He took his axe, the axe that had killed so many kings, and he threw it, as far as he could, out over the water.

Where it fell, the sea stopped. The waters drew back from the mountains to the place where the axe had come down, and the land came up out of the sea, wet and shining. A long green strip, between the mountains and the waves, ran all the way from Gokarna in the north to Kanyakumari at the tip of India.

That land is Kerala. People still call it Parashurama Kshetra, Parashurama's land.

But a land needs people. Parashurama went to the north and brought brahmin families down to settle it, and he gave them sixty-four villages, thirty-two in Kerala and thirty-two further up the coast in the Tulu country.

The land was not empty when they came. Serpents lived in it, the nagas, who had been there before the sea went back. The brahmins were frightened of them, and they ran away, home to the north.

"This place is full of snakes," they said. "We will not live here."

So Parashurama fetched others. This time, so that they could never go home again, he changed the way they wore their hair and their clothes, and gave them customs found nowhere else. Then they stayed. Kerala's tradition adds that he also made peace with the serpents, and that this is why so many old houses in Kerala keep a grove for the snakes.

He founded a hundred and eight temples, to Shiva, to the goddess and to Shasta, and gave the land its rites. Then he went back to his mountain to do penance, and left the new country to its people.

The Brahmanda Purana tells it another way. The land was there before, and the sea took it.

When the river Ganga came down from heaven to the earth, her flood ran on across India to the western sea, and the sea rose, and the coast was drowned. Among the places lost under the water was the holy town of Gokarna, with its great temple.

The hermits who had lived near the temple escaped the flood and climbed to Mount Mahendra, where Parashurama lived.

"Gokarna is under the sea," they told him. "Help us."

He went with them to the shore and called on Varuna, the god of the waters. Varuna did not come.

Parashurama stood still on the sand and meditated. His weapons came into his hands of their own accord. At that, Varuna was afraid, and came at once, and stood before him.

"Give back the land you have swallowed," said Parashurama.

"I will," said Varuna.

Parashurama sent his weapons back into the sky. Then, instead of an axe, he picked up a winnowing basket, a shurpa, the flat basket used for sifting grain, and threw it out over the sea. The water drew back to where the basket fell, and the drowned land came up again, with Gokarna on it.

That land is called Shurparaka, after the basket.

The Mahabharata has yet another version, in a line or two: Kashyapa asks Parashurama to leave the earth, and he makes land for himself by shooting an arrow into the sea.