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Avat!ra or Ciraj"vin? Para!ur"ma and His Problems

Brian Collins
Para!ur"ma, the Mah!bh!rata hero best known for decapitating his mother and exterminating
twenty-one generations of K#atriyas in a campaign of var$icide, is possessed of a list of
seemingly opposing attributes. He is at once an avat!ra and a ciraj"vin (long-lived one), a
Vai#$ava deity and a %aiva devotee, a Br"hma$a and a K#atriya, a Vedic sage and a Tantric hero.
His story, with its themes of matricide, violations of var#!$ramadharma, extreme violence, and
exile, presents problems for sectarian communities who would assimilate him into their theo-
cosmology, even if they find it necessary to list Para!ur"ma as an avat!ra to establish their
lineage or facilitate the spread of their influence. In this essay, I will explore the ways in which
the problem of Para!ur"mas divinity is addressed by three groups: the medieval P"car"trins,
the Gau&iya Vai#$avas of sixteenth century Bengal, and the Citp"vans of the eighteenth century
Mar"'h" S"mr"jya.
In his famous and controversial essay Hamlet and His Problems, T. S. Eliot judges
Shakespeares Hamlet a failure mired in dramatically inexpressible emotion. In the same way
most scholars view the Mah!bh!rata, Eliot insists on seeing Hamlet as a stratification [that]
represents the efforts of a series of men, each making what he could out of the work of his
predecessors and argues that Shakespeares play is superimposed upon much cruder material
which persists even in the final form.
1
In attempting to take the original story at the core of
Hamlet, in which a protagonist seeks revenge on an usurper king and feigns madness to allay
suspicion until he can get close enough to carry out an assassination, and turn it into what is
ultimately a play dealing with the effect of a mothers guilt upon her son,
2
Shakespeare
displaces the central revenge motive and renders large parts of the action incomprehensible. As a
2
result, there is nothing in the play to account adequately for the melancholy Danes paralytic
existential despair except for the problems of redacting and editing that inhere in the text of the
play itself.
Like Hamlet, Para!ur"ma is faced with a slain father (Jamadagni) and a sinful mother
(Re$uk"). And like Hamlet, Para!ur"ma is also clearly subject to an inexpressible emotion in
excess of the facts as they appear, and in that way his problems do resemble those of Hamlet,
both the man and the play. And just as the intractable elements of the Hamlet story Shakespeare
adapted are ultimately, in Eliots view, unable to bear the weighty themes he places on them, so
the story of Para!ur"ma as we have it contains violent actions so wildly out of proportion to their
purported causes (chopping off Re$uk"s head for looking at another man, killing twenty-one
generations of K#atriyas to avenge one death) that they seem to distort the narrative, which
rapidly moves from time measured in moments to time measured in generations. And as the
ambivalent reception of Para!ur"ma into the Vai#$ava theo-cosmology attests, the readers of the
epic have as hard a time making sense of his motives as Eliot does with Hamlets.
In the Mah!bh!rata, Para!ur"ma is not portrayed as an avat!ra of Vi#$u in any of the
narrations of his exploits in 3.115-117, 12.48-49, or 14.29-30. Although Choudhary has made an
argument based on his appearance in two separate avat!ra lists in the Naran"ya section that
Para!ur"ma is an avat!ra very early on,
3
the question remains as to why this fact never made it
into his story in the epic. Para!ur"mas appearance in R!m!ya#a 1.73.6 may be an early indicator
that Vai#$avas had begun to deify the Br"hma$a-warrior, though the text places him in an
inferior position to R"ma D"!arathi. In the R!m!ya#a, Para!ur"ma challenges R"ma and finds
himself outmatched. Para!ur"mas defeat forces him to recognize R"mas superiority as well as
3
his identity as Vi#$u. But it is in his post-epic career that the issue of Para!ur"mas divinity
comes to the fore.
The P"car"tra sect of Vai#$avas hold V"sudeva as the highest form of God, part of a
pure creation that precedes the creation of matter. And to resolve the question about whether
the Supreme Godhead is with or without gunas, or qualities, they ascribe to him six gu#as that
are different from the three gu#as of created things (light, passion, and dark inertia). The six
gu#as of V"sudeva are knowledge, lordship, power, strength, virility, and splendor. And
emanating from V"sudeva, who embodies these six qualities, are the first three beings to come
into existence, the vy%has. The vy%has emanate one from the other as a flame goes from candle
to candle, and each of the three embodies two of V"sudevas six gu#as. Building on extant
stories about the genealogy of K(#$a (already identified as V"sudeva in the Mah!bh!rata), the
P"car"trins identify each of the three vy%has with a member of K(#$as family (his older brother
Sa)kar#a$a, his son Pradyumna, and his grandson Aniruddha) and give each a creative and a
moral function. The vy%ha we will be concerned with here is Sa)kar#a$a, because he is the
vy%ha of whom the P"car"tra tradition lists Para!ur"ma as a manifestation.
The P"car"trins are prolific when it came to producing texts, and the ocean of
P"car"tra literature contains, unsurprisingly, quite a few inconsistencies and contradictions
when it comes to explaining the vy%has, avat!ras, and vibhavas. The Vi$vaksena Sa&hit! lists
Para!ur"ma as a secondary avat!ra, described by Schrader as a soul in bondage with a natural
body which, however, is possessed (!vi'(a) or pervaded, for some particular function, by the
power ($akti) of Vi#$u.
4
The same text has all the avat!ras emanating from Aniruddha, but the
earlier Padma Tantra maintains that Para!ur"ma is a manifestation of Sa)kar#a$a while, in a
4
strange kind of cosmic anachronism, assigning Balar"ma to Pradyumna and K(#$a to
Aniruddha.
5

The Sanatkum!ra-Sa&hit! gives a list of eleven avat!ras or vibhavas that include, in
order, Var"ha, N(si)ha, Matsya, K*rma, T"rk#a (Garu&a), V"mana, Hayagr+va, Kapila,
J"madagnya R"ma, Kakutstha (R"ma), and K(#$a. Describing the exploits of Para!ur"ma the text
states that Sa)kar#a$a goes down to earth as Jamadagnis son at the same time that powerful
demons are born on the earth as K#atriyas. Then Para!ur"ma takes up his axe to kill Haihaya
(K"rtav+rya) and destroys all the demonic K#atriyas before going away into the south. The text
makes no mention at all of the matricide, and though it does mention an axe as Para!ur"mas
weapon of choice, it knows him by his patronymic J"madagnya or Jamadagnisuta.
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The Sanatkum!ra-Sa&hit! depicts Para!ur"ma using his axe (not the bow he uses in the
Mah!bh!rata) to kill the demons, and he carries out the slaughter not because of his knowledge
that they have been born on the earth as K#atriyas, but out of a desire to destroy the Haihaya
prince K"rtav+rya. The text does not say that Para!ur"ma even knows the K#atriyas he is
slaughtering are actually demons. Using parallel sati saptam" constructions, the text only says
that Sa)kar#a$a came down to earth as Jamadagnis son at the same time that the demons were
being born on the earth as K#atriyas. Consistent with the nature of the secondary avat!ra,
Para!ur"ma is a mortal warrior whose earthly actions (carrying out his revenge) are invested with
cosmic significance when he is pervaded by the vy%ha of Sa)kar#a$a.
But what is most innovative about the P"car"trins conception of Para!ur"ma is the way
the tradition imbues him and Sa)kar#ana with so many distinctly %aiva characteristics. The
Vi$vaksena Sa&hit! makes a clear identification of Sa)kar#a$a with %iva as the one who by
means of the power of his gu#a takes away all this, while Pradyumna and Aniruddha use their
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gu#as to create and support, respectively.
7
Even the P"car"tra Sa)hit"s conception of
Sa)kar#a$as creative function is remarkably %aiva, echoing themes of poison, blackness and
chaos found in the stories of the %ivas role in the churning of the Ocean of Milk and the birth of
K"l+ from the poison he holds in his throat. Schrader writes,
With Sa)kar#a$a, Non-pure Creation becomes dimly manifest in an embryonic
condition, as a chaotic mass without internal distinctions. This is expressed in the
Sa)hit"s by the grotesque but often repeated statement that Sa)kar#a$a carries
the whole universe like a tilak!laka (dark spot under the skin), which
apparently signifies that the world he carries is still so to speak under the surface,
existing only in a germinal condition, as a minute part, as it were, of his body.
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Possibly following the earliest association in the Kar#a Parvan of the Mah!bh!rata,
P"car"trins imbue Para!ur"ma with the qualities of a %aiva figure while absorbing him into a
Vai#$ava framework. They deify him, but only partially, and his violent behavior, as well as his
mixed-var#a nature, can be ascribed to his emanation from the chaotic %aiva vy%ha Sa)kar#a$a.
The lengthy Para!ur"ma story in the P"car"tra Vi'#udharmottara Pur!#a (c. 600-1000
CE), described by Gail as a Vai#$ava encyclopedia which was put together in a rather short
time, while amply using the older scientific and narrative literature,
9
is the first major pur"$ic
account of the myth to appear after the redaction of the Mah!bh!rata and it presents a different
picture from those in the epic and in the Sanatkum!ra-Sa&hit!. To insulate Para!ur"ma and his
slaughter of the K#atriyas against charges of impropriety, the P"car"tra mythmakers have twice
removed his story from the realm of human Dharmafirst by changing his victims from humans
to demons and then by making Para!ur"ma an incarnation of Vi#$u carrying out the orders of
%iva. He is also no longer just a mixed-up Br"hma$a-K#atriya hybrid or a manifestation of
Sa)kar#a$a, but a full-fledged avat!ra. And his enemies are no longer any K#atriyas he happens
to come across. Nor are they K#atriyas that, unknown to him, are demons born as humans.
Instead, Para!ur"mas enemies are an army of unambiguously demonic demons who have taken
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the earth away from the gods. The texts association of Para!ur"ma with his battle-axe and the
inclusion of the )a*kara G"ta suggest that the authors of the Vi'#udharmottara Pur!#a were
basing their portrayal on more than just the epic version of Para!ur"ma.
Along with giving him his name, the axe is the most popular of Para!ur"mas
iconographic features. There is even one temple located at Hiremagal*r in the Ka&*r district of
Karnataka that is dedicated to the para$u itself.
10
The Vi'#udharmottara Pur!#a closely
identifies Para!ur"ma with his emblematic axe, now a battle-axe and not a wood-chopping axe as
it almost certainly is in the Mah!bh!rata, where the name Para!ur"ma never even appears (at
least not in the critical edition). As Goldman has observed, nowhere in the endless references to
this figure which find their way into the most remote corners of this most massive and
comprehensive of epics is he called by a name which refers to what is generally thought to be his
most characteristic attribute; the mighty and fearful para$u, the dreaded battle-axe.
11
The
Citra!"l" edition of the Mah!bh!rata and a few others included in the appendices to the Critical
Edition do, however, mention the axe. Goldman suggests that they belong to an emerging
pur"$ic tradition that sees Para!ur"ma as an avat!ra and gives him an axe to distinguish him
from the similarly named bow-wielding king R"ma Da!ar"tha, with whom Para!ur"ma now
shares avat!ra-hood.
12
An inscription from Karnataka dated to 522 CE in which a king named
Durvin+ta Kongu$iv(ddha declares himself an incarnation of Para!ur"ma is further evidence that
there existed at that time the veneration of an axe-wielding R"ma like the one who appears in the
Vi'#udharmottara Pur!#a.
But the axe is not the only weapon Para!ur"ma wields. As Inden points out, he also
carries the c!paratna, the jewel among bows, which identifies him as a P"car"tra adept, since
P"car"trins used the metaphor of archery to describe their practice of yoga as the bow and
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arrow by which the P"car"tra adept reached the target of the transcendent Vi#$u by piercing
through the sun and the moon.
13
By the time he appears in the Vi'#udharmottara Pur!#a,
Para!ur"ma has become an avat!ra and his enemies have gone from being humans to demons.
And unlike the destruction of the K#atriyas in the Mah!bh!rata, the massacre of the demons
does not result in Para!ur"mas exile. He does not accrue the sin of killing heroes that becomes
such a problem for him in later myths associated with t"rthas in northeastern India,
14
but %iva
does tell Para!ur"ma twice that he will have to give up his tejas and lay down his arms (except to
protect women and Br"hma$as) when he meets R"ma D"!aratha, a theme echoed in the
Br!hma#+a Pur!#a and the legend connected with the Para!ur"ma temple in Pedhe,
Mah"r"#'ra,
15
and indeed in the R!m!ya#a.
Para!ur"mas status as a devotee of %iva is also the occasion for the second of the texts
innovations: the insertion of a g"t!, in this case, the )a*kara G"t!, to provide Para!ur"mas
campaign of violence with a systematic theological justification that emphasizes its dharmic
necessity in the mah!kalpa scheme and the fact that only he can carry it out. While it is spoken
by %iva, the )a*kara G"t! is decidedly Vai#$ava is its theology. Inden writes:
Here we have the first major example in the VDhP of the deployment of historical
narrative as an illustrative proof (pram!#a). Vi#$u was, in P"car"tra theology,
the master of deceptive appearances (m!y!). The authors of the VDhP wanted
to show that %iva was in reality V"sudeva K(#$a, and that his preeminent devotee,
Bh"rgava R"ma, was actually the foremost P"car"trin.
16


The P"car"tra contributions to the Para!ur"ma corpus of myths establish his dual
identity as an incarnation of Vi#$u and a devotee of %iva and mitigate the harshness of his
campaign against the K#atriyas by turning them into demons. The P"car"tras also give
Para!ur"ma a consort in the form of Dhara$+, the Earth, and establish his relationship with
Varu$a, a pair of associations that may have fed subsequent stories in which Para!ur"ma enters
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an elemental struggle against the Ocean. The transition from R"ma to Para!ur"ma that occurs in
these texts points to an elevation of Para!ur"ma to divine or semi-divine status, the association of
the K#atriya-slayer with his emblematic axe, his incorporation into the Vai#$ava cosmos, and a
projection of %aiva attributes on to the figure, while incorporating the %aiva elements into a
Vai#$ava devotional context.
The Bengali Gau&iya Vai#$ava tradition of the sixteenth century accords a similar place
to Para!ur"ma, although he is of much less import. K(#$ad"sa Kavir"ja, author of the central
Gau&iya Vai#$ava hagiographic text, the Caitanya Carit!m,ta, expounds on the inferior relation
of the other emanations of Vi#$u to K(#$a, the Supreme Godhead. In systematizing their
theology, K(#$ad"sas intellectual predecessors the six Gosv"mins utilized the concept of
vy%has, but as the threefold manifestation of the demiurge Puru#a.
17
As the P"car"trins attribute
two out of V"sudevas six gu#as to each Vy*ha, K(#$ad"sa explains that one of the Gods many
$aktis becomes manifest in each avat!ra. And like the P"car"tras, who recognize both full and
partial avat!ras within the vibhavas, K(#$ad"sa also differentiates between full avat!ras and
partial ones, called vibh%tis.
18
Listing these vibh%tis, the Caitanya Carit!m,ta reads, In %e#a is
the svasevana-$akti, and in P(thu is the p!lana-$akti. In Para!ur"ma is the heroic !akti of
destroying evil-doers.
19
Once again, a Vai#$ava tradition keeps Para!ur"ma below the level of a
full avat!ra and associates him with the forces of destruction.
In the context of the Pe!wa period of the Mar"'h" S"mr"jya the problem posed by
Para!ur"ma was not his excessive violence. For the privileged Citp"van who traced their lineage
to him, it was how to deal with his opposition to the K#atriyas, with whom they shared power.
Mar"'h" identity as it developed in the period following Ala-ud-Din-Khiljis incursions into the
Deccan plateau at the beginning of the fourteenth century was based on the privileged status that
9
the new Muslim rulers granted to clans who participated in military service. Castes like the
Lohar, Kunbi, Thakar, and Sutar received hereditary land grants and collectively developed into
a new martial caste with its own distinctive dress, customs, and marriage rules. But since the
Deccan was ruled by five Muslim kingdoms instead of a single conqueror, prominent families
developed independently, and were not hesitant to fight each other or their Muslim rulers, as the
17th century Mar"'h" ruler %iv"j+ famously did during the reign of Aurangzeb.
20

As this new military class emerged, the role of Br"hma$as changed in Mah"r"#'ra. %"h*j+
(the grandson of %iv"j+ and son of %a)bh"j+, who was tortured and executed by Aurangzeb in
1688) grew up as a well cared for hostage in the Mughal court, but left upon the death of
Aurangzeb in 1707 to reclaim his throne. In 1713 he appointed a Citp"van Br"hma$a named
B","j+ his Pe!w", or prime minister. Due to factional infighting and Mughal expansion, the land
controlled by %"h*j+ had been reduced to Pune and its immediate surroundings and it was B","j+
who, through military force and diplomatic pressure, forced the Mughal emperor to formally
recognize the Mar"'h" princes legitimacy and sovereignty.
21

The Pe!w" died in 1720 and %"h*j+ appointed his son B"j+rao to be his fathers successor.
B"j+rao saw an opportunity to expand the Mar"'h"s borders since the power of the Mughals was
declining and pushed into Gujurat and Malwa, briefly taking the emperor hostage in Delhi in
1737.
22
During these military campaigns, B"j+rao consolidated de facto power in the office of the
Pe!w", gaining control over the military, banking and land-granting, financially supporting
Br"hma$as, and bringing in fellow Citp"van Br"hma$as to fill out his bureaucracy.
23

The Citp"vanas are one of the groups of Br"hma$as who claim to have been imported by
Para!ur"ma after he reclaimed the land from the sea following his exile. One account of the
origin of the clans name from the 18th century Mar"'h+ rescension of the Skanda Pur!#a claims
10
that Para!ur"ma was so polluted by bloodguilt after he slaughtered the K#atriyas that no
Br"hma$a would perform rites for him. So he found 14 dead bodies washed up on shore and put
them on altar where he burned, purified, and resurrected them. He then taught the fourteen
revived men the Veda and they became the ancestors of the Citp"vans, which means, purified
on an altar.
The Para$ar!ma Caritra, a semi-historical account of the rule of the Br"hma$a Pe!w"s
in Maharashtra, was composed in Mar"'h+ around 1772 by an author called Vallabha, who has no
other surviving works to his name. A man named Durlabh, a banker at the Pe!w" ruler
M"dhar"vas mint in Pune, commissioned the work, possibly as a tribute to M"dhar"va after his
death and probably to improve his standing with the Pe!w" who succeeded him.
24
It belongs to a
literary genre called bakhar, a kind of cross between a Pur"$a and a historical biography, popular
between the reign of %iv"j+ in the late 17th century and the British conquest of the Mar"'h" state,
which became official when they removed the last Pe!w" in 1818.
The first book contains a pur"$ic account of history, starting from the incarnation of
Para!ur"ma and his destruction of the K#atriyas. The matricide is left out completely. In this
variant, Para!ur"ma destroys K"rtav+rya and his army after they steal his fathers cow but leave
his father unharmed. Later, other K#atriyas send an assassin who decapitates Jamadagni and
shows his head to Re$uk". This prompts Para!ur"ma to make an oath with water to wipe out the
K#atriyas and use their blood to perform his fathers funeral rites. Then he goes to Kuruk#etra
and proceeds to kill K#atriyas after he plants what the text calls a sta&bha rovila.
25
After a time,
Nar"da steps in and stops the bloodshed, telling Para!ur"ma that the surviving K#atriyas will
surrender. Para!ur"ma ceases the killing, gives the earth to the Br"hma$as after completing his
11
fathers funeral rites, and goes off to settle the Konkan coast with Br"hma$as from the De!asth,
Karh"de, and Citp"van clans.
The story ends with two unusual statements. The first is that Para!ur"ma settles the
Br"hma$as without respect to the divisions among them, an idea that seems to undercut the
Citp"vans privileged status. The second occurs after Para!ur"ma has finished establishing a
dharmic society in the Bh"rgavak#etra. The text reads, )r" Bh!rgav! svakiya& !$rami ye&
virakt" (%r+ Bh"rgava was alienated from his own !$rami). The translators leave the term in
the original M"r"'h+, and it could refer either to a hermitage or to one of the four stages of life.
But since this comes at the end of the story and Para!ur"ma is already far away from his fathers
!$rama, the line seems to suggest that this is when the world-weary Para!ur"ma becomes a
renouncer. Here, Para!ur"mas forced exile has become a voluntarily renunciation.
The second book takes the reader via a path of anachronism and chronological error from
the reign of the last true K#atriyas (Yudhi#'hiras line) up to the Mughal sultans of Delhi. In true
pur"$ic fashion, the influence of Ka,+, the male demonic figure who is an embodiment of the
adharmic forces of the yuga, exerts more and more influence over the rulers until the mlecchas
and yavanas are in control of Karmabh*mi. And though early yavana rulers like B"bar respect
the Br"hma$as and upholds Dharma, Ka,+s power soon turns them against the Hindus and they
begin to persecute them and defile their sacred sites. This disastrous turn of events sets the stage
for Para!ar"mas return to earth.
26

The third book opens by extolling the wisdom of the emperor Sh"hjah"n, then tells how
Ka,+ enters the body of his son Aurangzeb, who is already known for his anger. Aurangzeb then
begins oppressing Br"hma$as, killing cows, and otherwise undoing Dharma. This causes the
divine king Vikrama to come to earth as %iv"j+ to fight the mlecchas and yavanas. But after the
12
deaths of %iv"j+ and his son, the gods decide they have to step in again. Unfortunately Vi#$u
(who is here distinguished from Para!ur"ma), when he was incarnated as the Buddha, had
decreed that no more gods could enter the Bh*ma$&ala (Earth). So Indra turns to Para!ur"ma,
who, like Vikrama, is apparently not included among the gods since he is unaffected by Vi#$us
ban, to go down to earth and rescue Dharma. Para!ur"ma agrees to send his a&$a (portion) in
human form down to earth, but informs the gods that it is improper to bear weapons in the
current yuga. So Para!ur"ma decides to take birth in the lineage of B","j+ to destroy the
mlecchas. Meanwhile, %iva takes birth in the form of %"h*j+, the Mar"'h" prince who appoints
B","j+ as the first Pe!w".
27

In book four, Para!ur"ma sends his a&$a into B","j+s body, but then faces a dilemma. He
has already given the earth to the Br"hma$as in his great sacrifice and cannot retake control of it
now. So, as B","j+, Para!ur"ma decides to give nominal power to someone else and accomplish
his ends from behind the scenes. After becoming the Pe!w" serving under %"h*j+, B","j+ begins
to expand the kingdom and even marches on Jaipur. And when he dies, as all humans must in the
Kali Yuga, Para!ur"ma places his a&$a into his son B"j+rao. The rest of the text concerns the
deeds of the Pe!w"s, especially the recently deceased M"dhar"va, and consistently refers to them
as a&$adh!r"s.
The Para$ar!ma Caritra is unusual in a number of ways. First, it ties Para!ur"ma and the
pur"$ic history of which he is a part to current events. Second, it seems to differentiate him from
Vi#$u and the rest of the gods. Third, Para!ur"mas incarnation is in the entire institution of the
Pe!w"s rather than one individual. Fourth, unlike the Mah!bh!rata, the text does not impart any
guilt to Re$uk". Instead it places great emphasis on the virtue of women and is full of queens
committing sat" upon their husbands funeral pyres. Finally, it puts Para!ur"ma in a superior
13
position to %iva (who has somehow broken the ban on entering the world of humans to be born
as %"h*j+), since the gods K#atriya incarnation is only a figurehead while Para!ur"mas
Br"hma$a a&$adh!r"s hold all the real power.
For religious systems of various types, the matricidal and var$icidal Br"hma$a warrior
Para!ur"ma has required some adjustments before he can be counted as a form of God. To fit
into the vaidika Vai#$avism of the P"car"trins, Para!ur"mas excessive violence had to be
mitigated by turning his victims into demons and his responsibility diminished by making his
annihilation of the K#atriyas %ivas idea. To take his place in the Caitanya-centered system of the
Gau&iya Vai#$avas, Para!ur"ma had to become an inferior partial avat!ra invested with only a
small part of the Supreme Godhead. And in the political theology of the Mar"'h" S"mr"jya,
Para!ur"ma had to maintain his position as clan deity of the Citp"vans and source of the
authority of the Pe!w", but be differentiated from Vi#$u and ambiguous in his divine status. As
Eliot complained of Hamlet, Para!ur"ma is excessive in his reactions, but he is also a tragic hero
that fascinates as he perplexes. He is, as Gail called him, a rather pale figure marked by his
rigid obedience and cruel heroism.
28
The question of how he becomes a form of God is
answered through an examination of the traditions texts and practices. The question of why he
becomes a form of God requires more speculation.

1
T. S. Eliot, Hamlet and His Problems in The Waste Land and Other Writings (New York:
The Modern Library, 2002), 138.
2
Eliot, Hamlet and His Problems, 139.
3
Pradeep Kant Choudhary, R!ma with the Axe: Myth and Cult of Para$ur!ma Avat!ra (Delhi:
Aakar Books, 2010), 162-167.
4
Friedrich Otto Schrader, Introduction to the P!car!tra and the Ahirbudhnya Sa)hit"
(Madras: Adyar Library, 1916), 47.
5
Schrader, Introduction to the P!car!tra, 48.
6
Sanatkum!ra-Sa&hit! of the P!car!tr!gama, ed. Pandit V. Krishnamacharya (Madras: The
Adyar Library and Research Center, 1969), 243-245.
7
Schrader, Introduction to the P!car!tra, 38.
14

8
Schrader, Introduction to the P!car!tra, 38.
9
Adalbert J. Gail, Para$ur!ma, brahmane und krieger: Unters. uber ursprung u. entwicklung e.
Avat!ra Vi'#us u. bhakta )ivas in d. ind. literatur (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1977), 223.
10
K. S. S. Janaki, Para!ur"ma Pur!#a 8:1 (1966), 70.
11
Robert P. Goldman, Some Observations on the Para$u of Para!ur"ma Journal of the
Oriental Institute, Baroda 21:3 (1972), 155.
12
Goldman, Some Observations on the Para$u of Para!ur"ma, 165.
13
Ronald B. Inden, Jonathan S. Walters, and Daud Ali, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the
History of Practices in South Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 57.
14
See Brian Collins, Headless Mothers, Magic Cows, and Lakes of Blood: The Parsa!ur"ma
Cycle in the Mah"bh"rata and Beyond (PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2010), 42.
15
M. S. Mate, Temples and Legends of Maharashtra (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2001),
103.
16
Inden et al., Querying the Medieval, 57.
17
Sushil Kumar De, Early History of the Vai'#ava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit
and Bengali Sources (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhya, 1961), 242.
18
K(#$ad"sa Kavir"ja Gosv"mi, Edward C. Dimock, and Tony K. Stewart. Caitanya Carit!m,ta
of K,'#ad!sa Kavir!ja: A Translation and Commentary, Harvard Oriental Series 56 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 662.
19
K(#$ad"sa et al, Caitanya Carit!m,ta, 662-663.
20
Stewart Gordon, The Marathas 1600-1818. New Cambridge History of India 2.4 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 13-17.
21
Gordon 1993: 110-113.
22
Gordon, The Marathas, 127.
23
Gordon, The Marathas, 130.
24
N. K. Vallabh"c"rya, N. Wagle, and Anant Ramchandra Kulkarni, Vallabhas Para$ar!ma
Caritra: An Eighteenth Century Mar!th! History of the Pe$w!s, Monographs of the Department
of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, University of Toronto, Vol. 2 (Bombay: Popular Prakashan,
1976), x.
25
The word sta&bha must refer to the sacrificial post, and the word rovila appears to be from the
Arabic rob, which enters Hindi as an adjective that means, causing fear.
26
Vallabh"c"rya et al, Vallabhas Para$ar!ma Caritra, 23-39, 151-157.
27
Vallabh"c"rya 1976: 39-43, 59-67.
28
Gail, Para$ur!ma, brahmane und krieger, 229.