Vishnu and his Avatars / Vamana Avatar

The first human form that Vishnu takes in his cycle of avatars is a deceptively simple and, at first glance, rather disappointing one. He comes as a little dwarf! Many fanciful interpretations of the avatar cycle being an embryonic theory of evolution have been bandied about. In this view, the Vamana or dwarf is evolutionarily correct, the first humans were indeed dwarfs as compared to our present stature.

core story as narrated in various Puranas is simple. It is a highly expanded version of a single sentence in the Rig-Veda that,"Vishnu strode over this universe: in three places he planted his step". By the time the Puranas got hold of that, it had become a great narrative. This avatar takes place in the Treta-yuga or second age of the Universe. The king of the Daityas or Asuras, one Mahabali (literally, greatly strong) had become powerful with the force of his austerities and he was showing up the gods in a very poor light indeed. They even had to vacate heaven for him, as they could not stand up against his might or his force of personality. It was very humiliating, but in terms of virtuousness they had to admit the Daitya had a better right to rule over heaven than themselves, who had habits and behaviors that were slippery and more than a bit reprehensible.

In this, Mahabali was very different from his notorious ancestors. He belonged to a family that was capable of causing trouble only on a cosmic scale and twice before Vishnu had to incarnate as an avatar to stop his ancestors from overrunning the universe. He was the grandson of the great Devotee of Vishnu, Prahalada. To rescue Prahalada and the gods from his persecuting father, Hiranyakashipu, the Narasimha avatar came in to being. And Hiranakashipu's brother was the even more terrible Hiranyaksha, who had to be taken out by the Varaha avatar. So all in all, Mahabali had a very respectable pedigree when it came to universe conquering. However he was different in that even the gods had to accept his overwhelming virtues.

Nevertheless, they complained to their nominal mother, Aditi, the wife of the great rishi Kashyapa. Aditi's fervent pleas convinced Vishnu to do something and remedy this situation, especially as Mahabali was beginning to show signs of being corrupted by power. He agreed to be born to Aditi and Kashyapa as a dwarfish son, so as to disguise the potential threat he was. By now Mahabali was having delusions of grandeur and he also thought that he was greater than the creator. For he was holding a great festival-sacrifice, and he announced that he would satisfy the desires of all who turned up. Vishnu appeared as this extremely charming little Brahmin boy. His speech and intellect captivated the poor unsuspecting Daitya, who wished to reward the little man for his formidable display of learning. He rashly and proudly promised to grant any wish of the visitor.

By now his guru, the wily and suspicious Shukracharya, had worked out that this Brahmin was none other than Vishnu and he was here to play mischief with the glory of the Daityas. He urged Mahabali not to go on with this fatal generosity, as Vishnu was sure to ask for something that would destroy them. Mahabali however, would not budge from his pledged word. Such exemplary fidelity to truth was going to destroy his race, and his guru was angry that he was putting his personal reputation above his duty to his people. This refusal to listen to good advice is indicative in the Hindu Worldview of a wilful desire for self-destruction. In any case, the dwarf was only asking for as much land as could be covered by three paces of his feet. It was almost insulting that he was asking for so little when the riches of the great Mahabali were at his disposal. However the dwarf answered that he who could not be satisfied with three paces of land would never have satisfaction in anything, with no end to his desires.

Mahabali promised him his three paces, whereupon the dwarf suddenly assumed a cosmic galaxy spanning size and covered the universe in two paces. The third pace was thus a debt upon Mahabali and he asked Vishnu to place it upon his head, as that is the most valuable possession he owned, Vishnu having already achieved dominion of all else. In some versions of the myth, Vishnu uses his three paces and covers the triple worlds. Mahabali is thus deposed from his position as ruler of the universe and Vishnu, like all good leaders of such revolutions, exiles the former ruler to the nether regions, called Patala. There is a sneaking sense of regret at such scurvy treatment towards a ruler who had done no wrong and kept his word to boot. Vishnu is supposed to have given him the eternal dominion of Patala as some sort of compensation for being cheated in such a fashion.

In fact Kerala's Onam festival is based upon just this aspect of the myth. Once a year, Mahabali comes back to see how his former subjects are faring, and they put on a gorgeous spectacle to reassure him and not cause him any unhappiness that his people are suffering! In this rather naïve outlook is clearly represented the fact that public opinion felt Mahabali had been done a dirty trick. That however, is the nature of Vishnu who is the Trickster God of mythology par excellence. One very unusual version of the myth says that Vishnu felt remorse at this treatment of a pretty decent king and asked him to choose between a place in heaven and hell. The only catch was that his companions in heaven would be five fools, while in hell he could have five intelligent and wise sinners. Mahabali chooses the latter feeling that hell is the company of stupid people. Vishnu was enchanted by this perception and granted him the dominion of Patala. So strongly is the injustice done to Mahabali felt that it is also written that he will ascend to the position of the leader of the gods, Indra, in due course after the present incumbent's term is over.

In this myth there is also a curious aspect of the Avatar cycle which is passed over, and that is the fact that some avatars are double avatars. The Vamana form is what the avatar is known as, but when he transcends it and grows, he becomes Trivikrama, the Triple Victor of the three worlds. In a sense therefore, it's the most complete avatar, there is nothing greater than this. This is Vishnu's greatest form, in no other avatar, not even as Krishna, did he ever manifest such glory. It also is an allegory on the latent potentiality in every living thing as well as a warning never to underestimate anything because of its appearance. The insignificant looking dwarf, a butt of ridicule and fun, turns out to be the World Overthrower. It Illustrates an old Sanskrit saying, Yatha Pinde, Tatha Brahmande. Which means, "As with a man, so with the Universe". It is the same thing as the old mystical definition of man as a Microcosmos, which mirrors and is in essence the same as the external Macrocosmos. Or - As within, so with out; As above, so below and so on and so forth. We are all, in potential, the Universal Man.

However, this lesson seems to be slightly more than the average mind could easily take within and the Trivikrama form has only been used to illustrate the walls of temples, never worshipped. A sympathy with such a transcendental form would have caused a social revolution, and it was quietly put aside in favor of the more manageable Rama and Krishna or the placid Sleeping Vishnu.

Vishnu and his Avatars / Parashurama Avatar

Of all the avatars of Vishnu, none is stranger than that of Rama-with-the-axe. His real name was Jamadagnya, but this favored weapon was the battle-axe or Parashu, and it was combined with his pet name Rama, to give him the appellation by which we know him. As to why he was called Rama, when his name was Jamadagnya, there is no indication. It is merely one of the typical incongruities surrounding his entire life.

To begin with, this sixth avatar of Vishnu was a brahmin and should never have been a warrior, let alone the epitome of battle fury that he became. His wild and passionate nature is matched in all epic literature only by Cuchullihain of the Irish myths. Officially his mission - all avatars have a mission - is to clear the earth of the Kshatriya or warrior caste, which was making a nuisance of itself on Earth. This is a very feeble attempt to disguise plain and simple prejudice on his part as a divine plan. For the man was totally immune to reason. It was not enough that he killed off the Kshatriyas who murdered his father. He went after the entire community and wiped them out. Then he wiped out the sons who had survived and he did this for twenty-one generations. This is usually behavior of asuras, rakshahsas and danavas, not of divine personages. It was beyond all justice, all norms of sanity even. It is also perhaps the reason why there are hardly any temples in his name. He was never a popular avatar, not now, and not in the past.

He seemed to have a massive chip on his shoulder and a pugnacious attitude that was capable of instantly flaring up into an annihilating battle fury. My own take on his peculiar psyche is that he was an oddball and had the misfortune to have it pointed out to him early and regularly. For his birth was the result of an accident. His grandmother, Satyavati, mixed up a magic potion, that she and her sonless mother were to take, so that they could have the eternally desired for sons. As a result the warrior prince became a brahmin monk in attitude and she was going to have a killer and warrior for a son. Her husband was a sage however, and he modified the consequences of the mix-up long enough so that it would be the grandson and not the son who would be the warrior. That grandson was Parashurama.

It is obvious that his parents would be keeping a wary eye out on each of their offspring - anxiously waiting for the signs that would proclaim the misfit, the lover of weapons instead of holy texts. The first four sons they had were normal and studious brahmin boys. His father Jamadagni, another irascible temperament, and his mother Renuka, may have relaxed a bit prematurely. For the fifth was definitely the dreaded warrior. It is impossible to convey the sheer moral horror brahmin parents would endure when their son turned out to be a warrior in temperament, though there was nothing wrong with his ability to learn. To kill and fight is unthinkable for them and here was this young hellion who loved nothing else. It was also a breaking of the boundaries of the caste-profession another peculiar horror for the Indian mind. He was supposed to pore over texts, not work out with weapons. There is no doubt that the young boy was far from being the favorite of his parents, though he seems to have thereby developed a fierce need to win his father's approval at any cost. One can only guess at the deep unhappiness of a boy, conscious that he has within him a vast - not a talent or aptitude - but a positive genius for war but that is not what is the approved skill of his family. Add to this the fact that he was the bottom of the pecking order, with four older brothers, and we can understand where he got this relentless anger from.

He went off to the Himalayas to practice austerities and win the favor of the great god Shiva. This he did easily, as his formidable will power made him a natural for tapasya. When the god appeared however, his innate genius would not be denied and he asked for supreme mastery over all weapons as his boon rather than any desire for wealth or learning. His favorite weapon was the battle-axe and Shiva taught him how to use it so that he was invincible. He also became the greatest archer of his day.

On his return to his father's ashram, he found out that stirring times had come to the placid life of the hermitage. His mother had sinned in the eyes of his father who had pretty austere standards and he was vainly exhorting his older sons to kill her! Renuka was a pativrata, a woman inviolable in her chastity and faithfulness to her husband and a possessor of magical powers as a consequence. She did not even need a pot to bring water from the river, she just used to shape the flowing water into a pot form and carry it home. That unfortunate day however, she had seen the prince of Mrittikavati, Chitraratha, making whoopee with his wives in the river. This was a very typical ancient practice to lend some variety to the pleasures of the conjugal bed. The sight made her feel a bit envious as well as sorry for herself that such pleasures were not for her. Instantly her power of chastity deserted her and she could no longer form the water into a pot. Jamadagni, being a sage knew what had happened and he was in one of his typical rages when Parashurama returned.

The other sons felt that the old man was overreacting and anyway, there was no way they were ever going to harm their mother let alone kill her. Not so Parashurama, who swung his axe once, and had a decapitated mother. This act of Parashurama has never been seriously examined by Hindu commentators. At best they put up a piffling defense that he was being obedient to his father, and obedience was an obsession with the old Hindus, perpetually afraid that children would turn out to be impertinent. That it is so obviously an outburst of temper aimed at getting a bit of his own back, a retaliation for the feeling of neglect and being viewed with suspicion, if not active dislike, is so obvious that nobody ever says it out loud. There is just this peculiar reluctance to look at Parashurama, his myths are hurriedly given a cursory once over and then you move with relief to the safer territory of Rama and Krishna. For dangerous truths about the nature of interfamily relationships would come out if you explored the story of Parashurama too closely, it is a disturbing denial of the comforting myth of the perfect and cozy comfort zone the family is desperately hoped to be. This is Hindu India's greatest contribution to the psychological truth of hatred within families and of course it is completely at a subconscious level.

When Parashurama acted so promptly, Jamadagni was shocked back into his senses. By the norms of the time, the blame for this action would be all his, a father's command is paramount. His father asked him to receive a boon for this murderous promptitude. The canny young man chose eternal life, invincibility in battle (which he already had because of Shiva) and that his mother would be restored to life in her original purity. A head however was needed. This amazing person, according to a very popular myth in Andhra Pradesh, stalked down to the river and cut off the head of the first woman he saw. This happened to be a shudra, the lowest of low castes, which shows that his animosity to his mother was not quite over. Even the shadow of a shudra was regarded as polluting and to have to bear the head of one,. there is a touch of a refined and inspired sense of malice in this choice. However he was now the favorite, he had to be. His mother had been brought back to life and restored to the good graces of her husband and that is the only thing that really mattered for women at that time. Parashurama's triumph was even more complete because his hasty father had just cursed his brothers to become imbeciles.
Thus ended the first important passage of the life of Parashurama. He had finally gained his parents' approval, when a disaster struck the happy family. The King of the Haiyahayas, Kartivirarjuna, coveted a sacrificial calf belonging to Jamadagni. When the sage expressed his disinclination to part with it, he just carried the calf away. He thought he had to deal with the usual intellectual Brahman, but this was the action that called his death to him. Kartivirarjuna was a thousand armed king who had once humbled the great Ravana, but had now become somewhat of a demon himself. Parashurama assaulted his palace, massacred everybody within, and cut off all the arms of the king before sweeping off his head.

As to whether this was not overkill, for the sake of a calf, he had no time for such subtleties. He was appallingly direct and devastatingly simple in his solutions to all problems, an early version of the queen of hearts in the Alice Stories. Everything was "Off with his head". So limited was his comprehension and so sure was he that he had right and justice on his side, that he never seems to have consciously contemplated retaliation on the part of the king's sons. He actually left his father alone while he went to cut firewood and obviously the king's sons slaughtered the poor old sage. This absence of the axe man is curious and very significant. Perhaps he got the approval he wanted, but subconsciously he still had some resentment against his father. Nothing else will explain this breathtaking confidence at leaving the old man alone and unprotected. It was an act of immense stupidity, the consequences of which could have been foretold by any fool, and Parashurama was no fool.

He launched his famous Kshatriya-cleansing campaign, an action that is so gratuitously violent that it could only be indicative of deep seated and eternally smoldering caste animosity, which a too-imaginative brahmin writer inserted into his life-story as some sort of vicarious revenge against a despised caste. He filled up seven lakes with the blood of his foes, as always he had no sense of limits. Then he repented!

He gave back the kingdoms to the princes and retired to do penance for his actions. He was told that he would have to make land grants to brahmins as part of this purification, but there was not a piece of earth that he had not soaked with blood. His greatest feat came next, in an attempt to provide land that was untainted. He reclaimed land from the ocean, to the extent that was covered by the hurling of his Parashu. That is the modern state of Kerala in India and its Sanskrit name is still Parushurama-shetra, the land of Parashurama. Geologically, too there is some truth to this myth, Kerela being one of the last land areas in India to surface from the ocean.

Even though the axe-bearer is acknowledged as the creator of Kerala, there is only one or at best two temples to him in his own country! Parashurama is like the Vedas, nominally respected and actually neglected. Once he had gifted away the new land, and expiated himself of his sins, he wanted to gift the brahmans settled there his supreme gift - knowledge of the martial arts. They were properly horrified whereupon he angrily sought out their children born out of marriages with non-brahman women, (the present day Nair community) and he taught them the world's oldest martial art, Kalaripayyattu. As is inevitable by now, not a single Kalari school in Kerala has him as the presiding deity, they are all goddess shrines, though he is given the credit for introducing the art, if not inventing it. There is a curious double-process of acknowledgement and respect along with denial and rejection that always dogs Parashurama.

Parashurama had unique powers of locomotion and could cover many hundreds of miles in a few minutes, always preceded by dust-clouds and storm winds. As a metaphor for his personality, nothing could be more apt. His being immortal led to many curious adventures in times that were not really his own. He was an aspect of godhead that had outlived its own natural span and created trouble in changed times. He met the next avatar of Vishnu, Rama, and acknowledged him as his superior in a trail of strength that involved stringing Vishnu's bow. Scholars are of the opinion that this story was interpolated into the Ramayana, when Rama was changing from a great hero to an aspect of god in the popular mind. If the great Parashurama acknowledged him as god then the metamorphosis was complete. Parashurama was obviously once a popular god, but the forces of social conservationism were never quite at ease until more acceptable aspects of divinity subsumed this chaotic element.

He appears in the Mahabharahta too and seems to have set aside his eternal disdain for Kshatriyas for a while. For he trains Gangeya, the later Bhisma, and makes him an invincible warrior. This he learns to his own cost, because he goes up against his former pupil and has the mortification of not being able to best him, and even being in some danger of defeat before the gods intervene and stop this planet threatening combat. (He has a similar tiff with Ganesha too, and is credited with knocking off one of the tusks of that god, but the issue remained inconclusive in that instance also). His fighting Bhisma was actually something pretty remarkable, for he was fighting on behalf of a Kshatriya princess who felt she had some claim to becoming Bhisma's wife. Bhisma was like Parashurama, a lifelong celibate, and he flatly refused to imitate his guru's obedience. The important part of this story is that Parashurama could actually unbend enough to become a mentor to a hated Kshatriya and champion the cause of a girl from the same caste. The many long years he had lived had obviously softened him somewhat.

This defeat at the hands of Bhishma seems to have soured him once more, for he again refused to teach anybody but brahmins. Karna, one of the great heroes of the Mahabharatha, was of too low a Kshatriya caste to be taken notice of by Kshatriya martial arts masters. So he lied to the axe-man that he was an unfortunate brahman boy cursed with a talent for fighting and unable to get anybody to take him seriously. This lie must have gone to the soul of Parashurama, for he had been there. He immediately set about making the boy into a great warrior. Unfortunately for him, Karna had too much of his caste fortitude. Once, while his irascible guru was sleeping with his head on the boy's lap, a flesh-eating ant attacked Karna's thigh. His hands were not free as they were cradling the guru's head and rather than disturb the guru, he bore the pain. On waking up and seeing the blood, his guru instantly understood that the boy was a true Kshatriya, for only they could bear pain on behalf of others. Instead of admiring the boy for this fortitude and self-sacrifice, the angry avatar cursed him that he would lose his knowledge at the supreme crisis of his life and fall ignominiously in battle as a consequence. This was the authentic Parashurama note being sounded once again, relentless, furious and implacable in anger.

It has been theorized that the axe-man was perhaps a forest god who was gradually absorbed into Hinduism and given the status of an avatar of Vishnu. I doubt it. Forest gods are never so ferocious and perpetually in a bad mood. This is the Raudra Rasa incarnate, pure anger, the wrath of god in no uncertain terms. It has also been theorized that the story is an unconscious understanding of the process of evolution. The dwarfish human is succeeded by the brutal and hasty type before it is superceded by the more refined and elegant modern man. That is reasoning backwards and forcibly applying a theory to explain away what is uncomfortable to modern sensibilities. In any case, traditional Hindu theories of evolution speak of the devolution of man and his ages, not of his evolution, so Parashurama should be a modern, not an ancient type of god.

Whatever be the reasons, real and imagined, behind this fascinating aspect of the concept to avatars, there is no doubt that Parashurama is a real puzzle. It is perhaps in recognition of this perplexity that the ancient commentators called him both Khanda-parashu, he-who-strikes-with-an-axe as well as Nyaksha - the inferior (avatar). This incarnation is definitely a bit too strong for the average stomach and hence the respectful neglect he is held in.

Vishnu and his Avatars / Shri Rama Avatar

Rama is the hero of the epic named after his exploits, the Ramayana. It is one of the most popular stories ever told in the world because there are over 35 versions of it available. All the major language groups of India have a version of his life and even Indonesia, Thailand and Java - Sumatra have their own versions. As may be expected, therefore, Rama is not any one personality but a composite of many authors' beliefs as to what a hero ought to be like. Like Proteus, God of a Thousand Faces, Rama is whatever you choose to make him.

Today, Rama is regarded as one of the major Avatars of Vishnu, second in importance only to the Krishna Avatar and even that is disputed. Originally however, he was a great Culture-Hero of the Aryan people, something implicit in the fact that even the Jains have a Ramayana, wherein he is absolutely non-violent as befits a Jain and the entire killing is done by Laxmana! In this version, which has proved to be controversial in the intolerant 20th century, he and Sita form a pair of Primodorial twins, siblings as well as spouses. This was a staple theme of ancient mythology, and not really so objectionable as it may seem, but the rest of India has too much emotional investment in Rama and his moral perfection to let such an alternative version breathe easy. In any case only very few scholars and determined controversialists are aware of this. It is included here merely to point out that Rama has always been interpreted, even used, according to the needs of the times. The ongoing controversy over his birthplace and the advent of a new, muscular and belligerent Rama in popular art is yet another example.

The Ur-text is the Valmiki Ramayana in Sanskrit and it is still the best account of Rama too. Valmiki is frank about his motives in writing the story. He wanted to convey an ideal of human perfection, a hero who is fearless, invincible, intelligent and compassionate, quick to forgive and slow to anger, but never compromising on what is right. Such a paragon he found in Rama. He was the son of Dasharatha, king of the Ikshavakus, a solar dynasty and born after many years of childlessness. Since his mother Kaushalya was the chief queen, he automatically became crown prince. That did not prevent him from deeply loving his half brothers, the twins Laxmana and Shatrughana, born to queen Sumitra, and Bharatha, born to his father's favorite queen, Kaikeyi. He had an especially powerful emotional bond with Laxmana and was responsible for keeping his irascible and dangerous wrath in check. All the young men proved to be great warriors, but Rama was always pre-eminent. The family guru, Vashistha, one of the most important rishis in mythical India, instructed him in statecraft which his keen intellect found easy to assimilate.

When he was sixteen, the great Vishwamitra came calling. The sage had been trying to perform some fire sacrifices for a long time, but vicious demons were perpetually putting out the fires with aerial attacks. They knew better than to come too close, as Vishwamitra was the undisputed master of weapons and he had something even better - a fiery temper that used to launch into earth shaking curses. Not willing to waste the power of his austerities on cursing such scum, he comes to ask for Rama and Laxmana to defend his sacrifice. The two boys are eager to go, as Vishwamitra was an unusually inspiring sort of personality. He teaches them the celestial weapons and makes them invincible. They massacre the demon hordes and send their chief Maricha flying a few leagues away with the impact of a blunt arrow. So great was the shock that he was defeated, that Maricha turns over a new leaf and begins a life of meditation!

It is a curious nature of Indian myth that the Hero's Journey aspect of any Hero always occupies only the first third of this life. Once he has completed that, he is essentially unchanging in his perfection. The hero does not grow in stature or personality after the first third of the narrative. Events no longer impact him, he transforms events but himself remains untouched and unchanged rather like a catalyst. This catalytic nature of the hero in Indian myth is a unique peculiarity in the structure of mythology, and represents the fundamental divergence between Indian myth and the rest of the world. Even Buddha's life, an archetypal Hero's Journey if there ever was one, follows this pattern. Where Rama is concerned, he goes forth from obscurity as just another royal prince, to becoming a genuine hero under the Mentor that is Vishwamitra. He then comes under the influence of the female energy of the Universe, Sita, daughter of Janka, king of Mithila. The wily Vishwamitra brings the young men to Mithila precisely to bring about this end. Rama and Sita fall in love at first sight, but there is a contest - old heroic chestnut - to be won first to marry her. This is a bow of Shiva, which is proving to be unliftable. Rama not only raises it, he breaks the divine bow while stringing it. He has now moved into authentic Great Hero status.
This results in a fight with the older avatar of Vishnu, Parashurama. (For details please look at Parashurama in our Gods section) Again, the heroic stature grows and his pre-eminent position amongst men is thus confirmed. He has been trotting out one miraculous feat of valor after another and there is no dispute in India that he is indeed Purushottama, "Best amongst men." However, that title is not an acknowledgement of his invincible fighting prowess and intellect alone. He does something even more dazzling in the social context of the time. So deeply does he love Sita that he swears never to have another wife. He never had sex with any other woman either. In the polygamous royal society of the time this was unthinkable heroism and formidable self-control. Thus arose the famous formulation, "Ekam patni vrata, Purushottama" or "He who is sworn to one wife alone is the best amongst men." Rama set a standard of monogamous fidelity that India has instinctively revered, even if not always followed. In all the unthinking criticism of him, let this be remembered. Almost all other heroes in all other cultures have failed miserably in this aspect of marital relationships.

By now he is the standard hero, the catalyst factor, and his aging father decides to crown him as king. It is a very popular decision, even amongst the queens. Kaikeyi's initial jubilation at the news is soon poisoned by a spiteful servant, and she resurrects old promises made by Dasharatha and demands the throne for her son and banishment into forest exile for Rama. This aspect has been well discussed in our article in the epics section, evil sex as the hidden villain of the Ramayana. Rama puts his father out of his misery by agreeing. Contrary to the popular perception of a diabetically sweet Rama, who just lives to obey insane commands from a senile father, he knows that injustice is being done. In a furious outburst in the forest, he calls his father a sex obsessed fool, for he chooses his young wife over his worthy son. However, a king's word is not a light thing and it cannot be shown to be disregarded. All order would unravel if people felt that a king's word was a trifle that could be adjusted according to convenient circumstances. Rama leaves for the larger social good, not because, as generations of timorous parents have told skeptical children, he was obedient. If obedience was the only reason, he was a fool and Rama was anything but that.
He refuses his brother Bharatha's urgent entreaties to ascend the throne once their father dies of grief. Bharatha rules as regent while Rama is in the forest. It is very instructive however that when he returns, the wise Rama sends Hanuman ahead to ascertain if fourteen years on the throne have corrupted Bharatha, and he is disposed to hang onto the crown. This note of caution is amazing, flying as it does in the face of the popular perception that the two brothers were bonded together in a state of gooey sentimentality, rather like living in a tub of melted chocolate. Rama's intelligence was only too aware of what can happen to people in changed circumstances, and it is one of the more mature passages in the Ramayana.

The Shoorpanaka episode, is the first cloud on the idyllic forest life. Sita insists on coming along, overruling Rama's objections, and even going to the extent of saying that her father had married her to a woman by mistake when he tried to insist upon his point of view. This should put paid to any lingering doubt that she was a doormat. The forest life is one long uninterrupted romantic episode and there is nothing like it in all literature. Since the Hero in Indian culture is expected to be an expert in love too, Valmiki obliged. Rama's love for Sita is the real thing, strong and fierce and touching. It is not a conventional romantic interaction that so bedevils Sanskrit literature. Other heroes sigh and sob and declaim romantically but Rama alone meant it and to this one woman alone. It is a constant source of wonder, even now.

After the kidnapping of Sita, Rama makes an alliance with Sugriva, the younger brother of the monkey king of Kishkinda, Vali. Rama promises to kill Vali and have Sugriva crowned king, so that the royal forces could help in the search for Sita. This episode has remained a controversial one, and there are many people who feel that it was a great lapse of Rama's part to have so struck Vali down, who was after all not a bad king. It was undoubtedly a regrettable action, but there was nothing in the nature of a moral or ethical lapse in it. Vali tried repeatedly to murder his younger brother over a genuine mistake, and he also forcibly dragged Ruma, wife of Sugriva, in to his harem. His pride in his virtues and accomplishments had turned rancid and he thought he was beyond any code. Rama struck him down from hiding with his arrow, not in the back as many seem to think, and it was perfectly justified. For in the days of his virtue, Vali had been granted the boon that anybody who walked into his sight would instantly lose half their strength, which would be transferred to Vali. He was therefore invincible, even for the gods. There was no other way to kill him. Had Rama gone mano-a-mano against him in the stupidity that is sometimes called bravery, he would have died a foolish death.It is one of the first principles of Myth that a hero may sometimes act like a villain but never like a fool.

There is another aspect to this Vali killing that people in India do not realize, used as they are to regarding childish and fantastic descriptions of battle as the real thing. In that context Rama's killing of Vali is the best and most heroic thing he ever did. This is my proposition. There is no moral, ethical, spirituality-inducing or virtue-developing way to kill. The only question is whether it is right to kill or not, and the usual answer to that is no. Some circumstances justify it however, but the act of killing itself can never be sanitized. Killing therefore is like excretion, a necessary evil to be got over with as efficiently and quietly as possible, and not explored for its ethical potential. Once the decision to kill Vali was taken - the moral imperative overruled for the sake of the ethical imperative - it does not matter how it is done, except that it was done quickly and well. Rama's choice of ambush therefore is a truly heroic choice, a refusal to flinch away from unpleasant reality and larger obligations because of some specious notion of valor. If India had fought its fights as Rama did Vali, the history of the country would have been a lot healthier.

That Rama was not a coward or a lazy fighter is proved when he lets Ravana off later, when the demon king was weaponless. This episode is much admired by the unthinking as the real, generous Rama, unwilling to fight a foe who is disarmed. Actually, Rama had a deeper agenda here. If he killed Ravana at that stage, enough powerful demons would be left to recover and regroup at some later stage. His mission was to forever remove the Rakshasha plague from the universe. He let Ravana off, and the slaughter of demons continued until Ravana was the only one left! The surviving Rakshashas were not of the same vicious propensities as their brethren and the Rakshasha menace was finally crushed. Individual demons continued their bad ways till the times of the Mahabharahta, but Rakshasha society would never again have the numbers to become a nuisance to the world at large. It was a stroke of political genius, not that of a pious softy, and it has gone totally unremarked till now.

The trial by fire episode, in which a suddenly grouchy Rama casts aspersions on the chastity of Sita during her captivity, makes for painful reading. However, if we accept the fundamental truth that nobody can be psychologically inconsistent, we can understand his point of view. We may not agree with it, but it is valid. Like Caesar's wife, Ikshavaku queens too had to be seen to be above suspicion. It was the social imperative he was worried about, the same reason why he accepted his father's insane promise - the people had certain expectations from their ruler and that could not be set aside. In one case his action wins him admiration, in the other it generates condemnation, - but he was operating from the same set of premises in both circumstances. In Valmiki, the fire vindicates Sita and that is the end of it. Rama returns to Ayodhaya and rules in what is nostalgically remembered as the Perfect Age, Rama Rajya - the Rule of Rama.

The Uttara Kanda with its banishment of a pregnant Sita is not the work of Valmiki. Even worse was the subversion of India's national hero to caste agendas by later interpolators. There is a repulsive episode involving the killing of a shudra named Shambuka, for the 'sin' of learning the Vedas and practicing austerities. Rama was used in every age to serve the needs of the time and this nasty little tale was foisted upon him by an India in deep intellectual and spiritual decline. Rama, who was the friend of boatmen and tribals, who actually ate and slept with them, would not have done such a vile action, but some people felt that his prestige was a useful stalking horse for their casteist agendas.

These apparent blemishes have only served to illuminate the bright spots of Rama even further. He is without doubt the Pre-eminent Hero of the nation, Best Amongst Men. It is interesting to note that in the Valmiki version, he is fundamentally a Great Hero, he is not aware of his avatar status. No matter how many times it is pointed out to him he never acts like god on earth. The later regional variations make him out to be a fully aware Avatar. The most important of these texts is the Ramacharitmanas of Tulsidasa, which has literally displaced the Valmiki version as the story of Rama in the Hindi speaking areas of India. Kalidasa wrote a Rama story too, the Raghuvamasham. Strangest of all Rama stories in Sanskrit is a long palindrome of a poem by an unknown author. When read forward it tells the story of Rama. When read backwards it recounts the Mahabharatha! There is a Sanskrit spiritual version of the Ramayana popular in Kerala, called the Ramaneeyam, which eliminates all but the spiritual aspects of the story of Rama. Many English versions have been written this century. The hold of Rama over India's imagination is not likely to dim any time soon.