Say Nagarjuna, and most people will think of a silver screen superstar. Few, if anyone, will think of a character from Mahabharata folklore, the son of Arjuna who fights him over a rhinoceros, or a costume that is linked in Puri Jagannath temple with Parashurama, the brahmin who took up arms against greedy kings.
The warriors
The deities Jagannath and Balabhadra, in the temple of Puri, Odisha, are occasionally dressed as warriors, sporting a beard, and bearing over a dozen weapons. This costume is known as Nagarjuna. Dressed thus, Balabhadra, considered locally to be a form of Shiva, embodies Kirata, the tribal who challenged Arjuna to a duel over a wild boar they both claimed to have hunted. Dressed thus, Jagannath, considered locally to be a form of Vishnu, embodies Parashuram who challenged the thousand-armed Kartaviryarjuna to a duel over the cow Nandini. Both brothers seek to force errant warriors to follow the path of dharma. Arjuna, his pride humbled, listens to the Kirata. Kartaviryarjuna does not, and is killed by Parashuram.
Deities of Balabhadra, Gagannath and goddess Subhadra in the Jagannath temple in Puri, Odisha. | Photo Credit: Wiki commons
To remind kings to always follow dharma (governance, fairness), giant images of Nagarjuna are carried in processions every year during Navaratri celebrations in Puri. Navaratri is the festival when kings are supposed to evoke Durga, worship weapons and reaffirm their royal role as keepers of dharma.
Rhino offering
In the 15th century, Sarala Das creatively retold the Mahabharata in Odia. It is amongst the earliest vernacular versions of the Sanskrit epic. Here, we come upon a very different Nagarjuna. Kunti tells her sons, the Pandavas, that their father’s soul is not able to enter Swarga (heaven). This is because he has not received proper funeral offerings befitting his stature. That offering happens to be a rhinoceros. So the brothers set out to hunt one.
Arjuna finds the beast in the garden of Shiva. There, another warrior challenges him. In the battle that follows, Arjuna is defeated. At that moment, his opponent’s mother appears on the scene and tells the victor that Arjuna is none other than his own father. Thus, Arjuna is reunited with his son, born of a Naga (serpent) wife. This son is, therefore, referred to as Nag-arjuna, the son of Arjuna by a Naga wife.
The same story is found far in the north. In Uttarakhand, in Pandavani performance, we find the story of Arjuna battling Nagarjuna over a rhinoceros he needs as a funeral offering for his father, Pandu. Here, the rhinoceros is an asura named Gaya who is actually a Brahmin thus reborn for the crime of killing a cow.
The story draws attention to the relationship between food and death. The dead need feeding. And producing food involves killing. Too much eating and feeding means too much killing. A king, who wants to eat and has to feed, needs to show restraint. That is dharma. The rhino is perhaps a metaphor for the king, the apex beast of the jungle, who has no natural predators, later replaced by the elephant.
Head atop a tree
Another folk story of Nagarjuna draws attention to the more familiar Mahabharata stories. Such as the one where Arjuna is defeated by Babruvahan, his son by the princess of Manipur. In the Sanskrit epic, Arjuna does have a Naga wife but her name is Ulupi and their son is Iravan.
Iravan becomes Aravan in Tamil folk Mahabharata. He is sacrificed by the Pandavas to the goddess Kali to ensure success during the Kurukshetra war. Later, his head is placed atop a tree from where he can witness the events of the Kurukshetra war. He sees what no one else sees, that the war is actually orchestrated by Vishnu to offer the blood of errant kings to Kali, the goddess, who is angry with men who only eat and do not feed.
The story of the head atop a tree observing the war of Kauravas and Pandavas is narrated in Rajasthan, too. But this head belongs to Khatu Shyamji. He is not the son of Arjuna, he is the grandson of Bhima, son of Ghatotkacha by a Naga woman. He is known as Belalasen and Barbarika in Nepal, Uttarkhand and Odisha.
Hunter and the hunted
The deity Vettakkorumakan, worshipped in North Kerala. | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons
In Kerala, we learn that when Shiva took the Kirata form to fight Arjuna, he enchanted Parvati and they produced a powerful child. This wild child did not follow the rules of society and was a troublemaker. He was finally calmed down by Vishnu who offered him a golden sword in exchange for the assurance that he would uphold dharma. He is worshipped in North Kerala as Vettakkorumakan or Kiratha-Sunu (son of the tribal god). Venerated by hunters, he reminds everyone to respect both the hunter as well as the hunted, and to not claim that which does not belong to you, abusing royal privilege as Arjuna once tried to.
The various folk stories from Nagarjuna to Aravan to Vettakkorumakan that emerge from the Mahabharata are more regional than national, but they ensure that the idea of dharma reaches every corner of India.
The columnist is author of 50 books on mythology, art and culture.
