Aug 18, 2007

Chapter 34: Sahasrarjun

Vishnu is again worried because man is inculcating asura habits. When Bali (an asura) came to attack Maanav loka, instead of asura taking up maanav's characters, maanav took up asura characters. Man is hating man because of excessive desire.

Once upon a time, although Vishnu loves Lakshmi a lot, he gets very angry with her and curses her to be born in man-land which she eventually does. But after being separated from her, He misses her and He too takes birth in Earth and gets married to her. They have a son called Kritavirya who has a son called Kartivirya. Kartivirya does penance for which he gets a boon from Vishnu Himself to have the power of 1000 arms to protect the world. Kartivirya aka Sahasrarjun, who got his name after doing strenuous tapas to obtain 1000 shoulders (sahasrabaahu) from Vishnu himself, becomes haughty after he gets the power and hence misbehaves with all. He misuses his power to become a tyrant instead of a protector. So Lakshmi and Vishnu are sad that their own grandson became haughty.

One fine day, he feels like going hunting. He dismisses his pundit because latter said not to hunt because of wrong ‘kaala’ (time). Sahasrarjun objects and he is adamant even though Pundit uses Sahasrarjun’s wife to forbid Sahasrarjun to go. Sahasrarjun is of the opinion that Pundits are trying to rule the world and overthrow the kings.

He goes to hunt. Is stopped by an ashram kid Kalash, who doesn’t allow King to enter into Jamadagni’s ashram. So Sahasrarjun beats him. Jamadagni too refuses Sahasrarjun’s entrance to hunt the animal in his ashram, by making all his disciples to sleep at the entrance. His wife, Renuka, too sleeps.

This ‘sleeping beauty’ mesmerizes Sahasrarjun. He stares at her, who happens to be previously the daughter of a king too (queen-eligibility). He retreats. Jamadagni, stressed, meets Saptharishis (7 Rishis) who are like Board members of Rishi community. They agree, after a meeting, that Sahasrarjun’s behavior to Sanyasis is becoming rude. So, a messenger is sent to Sahasrarjun’s palace to invite him to their place, which Sahasrarjun refuses. But after advises from his wife and member of council that if he disrespects the ‘Board’, which is respected by ‘praja’ (citizenry) then he will be disrespected by people too and so he accepts grudgingly.

 When he is told by the Board to apologise to Jamadagni for misbehaving with J’s disciple, Sahasrarjun disagrees and instead starts troubling J by robbing his cows, putting fire to his ashram, etc.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Don't write rubbish things, no relation to the original story of King Sahasrarjun.
for more info check this http://www.sskna.org/newsite/folklores.php

Regards,
Kamal Deep C

Harsha S Rao said...

Kamal - please see Foreword. I cannot be claimed as the author of he story written in this post. I was just penning down what I saw in Vishnupuran serial on TV while it was being aired. I do appreciate you providing the link to the folklore though!

Mahi said...

It might be the fictional story part created by the writer of Vishnupuran's TV serial. Request you to correlate it with origincal Vishnupuran writings of genuine sahitya academic writer.