Jamadagni, the rishi

Birth: the exchanged rice offering

Richika, a brahmin of the Bhrigu line, asked King Gadhi of Kanyakubja for his daughter Satyavati. As the bride-price the king asked for a thousand horses white as the moon but with one black ear, and Richika brought such horses from Varuna and married her (Bhagavata 9.15.5-7; Vishnu Purana 4.7). Satyavati and her mother both wanted a son. Richika prepared two charus (grain cooked in milk and ghee): the one for his wife consecrated with mantras for a brahmin’s nature, the one for his mother-in-law with mantras for a kshatriya’s (9.15.8).

At her mother’s request Satyavati exchanged the charus. When Richika learned of it he said that Satyavati’s son would now be a stern punisher and her brother a knower of Brahman. At her plea he changed only this much: the nature would come not in her son but in her grandson; then Jamadagni was born (Bhagavata 9.15.9-11). The Vishnu Purana (4.7) adds that Satyavati’s mother gave birth to Vishvamitra. That grandson was Parashurama. Satyavati later became the river Kaushiki; the Bhagavata (9.15.12), the Vishnu Purana (4.7) and the Valmiki Ramayana (Bala Kanda, sarga 34) all say so.

The wish-giving cow, Renuka and Jamadagni’s death

Jamadagni married Renuka, and the youngest of their several sons was Rama (Parashurama) (Bhagavata 9.15.12-13). Once the Haihaya king Kartavirya Arjuna (Sahasrarjuna), out hunting, came to his hermitage. Through his wish-giving cow the sage entertained the king and his whole army, but the king grew greedy and had the cow and her calf taken away (9.15.23-26). Parashurama came back, slew the king in battle and brought the cow home; that story is on the Parashurama page.

In the Bhagavata (9.15.37-41) Jamadagni did not praise his son for this; he said instead that killing the king was a sin: brahmins are honoured for their forbearance, and Hari is soon pleased with those who forgive. He sent Parashurama on pilgrimage to the holy places as atonement, and he came back after a year (9.16.1).

The Bhagavata (9.16.2-8) goes on: one day Renuka went to the Ganga for water, stood watching Chitraratha, king of the gandharvas, and the time for the homa went by. Knowing the fault in her mind, Jamadagni in anger told his sons to kill her. The other sons would not obey; Parashurama, knowing the power of his father’s tapas, carried out the command, and his mother and brothers lost their lives. When his pleased father offered him a boon, Parashurama asked that they all live again without remembering what had happened; and they rose as if from sleep.

Later, while Parashurama and his brothers were away in the forest, Sahasrarjuna’s sons came to the hermitage for revenge. Jamadagni sat in the sacrificial hall in meditation on the Lord; ignoring Renuka’s pleas, they killed the sage and carried off his head (Bhagavata 9.16.9-12). The Mahabharata (Vana Parva, section 116) says that, strong as he was, the sage would not fight because he was engaged in tapas, and kept calling for Rama. Parashurama later joined his father’s head to the body and performed a yajna (Bhagavata 9.16.20), and according to the Bhagavata (9.16.24) Jamadagni, in a body of pure consciousness, became the seventh star of the Saptarishi.

Anger and forbearance

Tradition remembers Jamadagni as a rishi of fiery temper, and the texts show both sides. In the Mahabharata (Anushasana Parva, sections 95-96) he was practising archery while Renuka gathered and brought back his arrows. The midday sun of Jyeshtha scorched her head and feet and she came back late, so Jamadagni set out to bring down the Sun himself with his arrows. The Sun came in the guise of a brahmin and asked for refuge; the sage forgave the one who sought shelter and asked for a remedy against the heat, and the Sun gave him an umbrella and a pair of sandals. The text says this is why giving umbrellas and sandals came to be counted as meritorious.

In the Ashvamedhika Parva of the Mahabharata (section 92), Dharma took the form of Anger and spoiled the milk Jamadagni had kept for a shraddha, but the sage was not angered. Anger then said that men have a saying that the Bhrigus are very wrathful, but that it had proved false that day, for Jamadagni had conquered him.

Where the sources differ

• Who gave the charu: Richika in the Bhagavata (9.15.8-11) and the Vishnu Purana (4.7); Richika’s father Bhrigu in the Mahabharata (Vana Parva, section 115), where the two trees (a peepal and a fig) to be embraced are exchanged along with the charus.
• Renuka and the sons: the Bhagavata and the Vishnu Purana call Renuka the daughter of King Renu (the Vishnu Purana places him in the Ikshvaku line), the Mahabharata (Vana Parva, section 116) the daughter of King Prasenajit. The Bhagavata (9.15.13) speaks of several sons ‘Vasuman and others’; the Mahabharata’s Adi Parva (section 66) has four sons with Rama the youngest, and the Vana Parva (section 116) four sons and then Rama as the fifth.
• His death: in the Bhagavata (9.16.9-12) and the Mahabharata (Vana Parva, section 116) Kartavirya’s sons kill Jamadagni (with arrows, in the Mahabharata). In the Valmiki Ramayana (Bala Kanda, sarga 75) Parashurama himself says that his father, who had laid down arms to practise tapas, was killed by the king Sahasrabahu (‘Sahasravaku’ in Shastri’s translation). There he also tells how Vishnu’s bow passed from Richika to Jamadagni and then to him.

Frequently asked questions