A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion, Geography, History, and Literature c5.713

c5.713

JAMAD-AGNI. A Brāhman and a descendant of Bhrigu. He was the son of Richīka and Satya-vatī, and was the father of five sons, the youngest and most renowned of whom was Parasu-rāma. Jamad-agni’s mother, Satya-vatī, was daughter of King Gādhi, a Kshatriya. The Vishnu Purāna relates that when Satya-vatī was pregnant, her Brāhman husband, Richīka, prepared a mess for her to eat for the purpose of securing that her son should be born with the qualities of a Brāhman. He also gave another mess to her mother that she might bear a son with the character of a warrior. The women changed the messes, and so Jamad-agni, the son of Richīka, was born as a warrior-Brāhman, and Viswāmitra, son of the Kshatriya Gādhi, was born as a priest. The Mahā-bhārata relates that Jamad-agni engaged deeply in study and “obtained entire possession of the Vedas.” He went to King Renu or Prasena-jit of the Solar race and demanded of him his daughter Renukā. The king gave her to him, and he retired with her to his hermitage, where the princess shared in his ascetic life. She bore him five sons, Rumanwat, Sushena, Vasu, Viswāvasu, and Parasu-rāma, and she was exact in the performance of all her duties. One day she went out to bathe and beheld a loving pair sporting and dallying in the water. Their pleasure made her feel envious, so she was “defiled by unworthy thoughts, and returned wetted but not purified by the stream.” Her husband beheld her “fallen from perfection and shorn of the lustre of her sanctity.” So he reproved her and was exceeding wroth. His sons came into the hermitage in the order of their birth, and he commanded each of them in succession to kill his mother. Influenced by natural affection, four of them held their peace and did nothing. Their father cursed them and they became idiots bereft of all understanding. When Parasu-rāma entered, he obeyed his father’s order and struck off his mother’s head with his axe. The deed assuaged the father’s anger, and he desired his son to make a request. Parasu-rāma begged that his mother might be restored to life in purity, and that his brothers might regain their natural condition. All this the father granted.