SIGNIFICANCE OF SHAMI

On this Vijaya Dashami day, there is a tradition of offering worship to Shami Vruksha and exchanging the leaves of Shami by reciting the following  Shloka:

Shamee shamayatE pApam Shamee shatruvinashanam|Arjunasya DhanurdhAree RAmasya priyadarshini||

Shami eradicates sins, destroys enemies. It was bearing the bow (Gandeevi) of Arjuna and showed Seetha to Hanumantha.

Arjunasya Dhanurdhari: Arjuna, before joining the services of the King of Viratanagara as Bruhannale to spend one year without getting identified, packed all his weapons, including the Great Gandeevi, in such a way it looked like a packed corpse. He kept the packed weapons on a Shami tree. This tree has thorns and hence  nobody dares to climb it and steal the package. Shami is a rare tree and hence, it was easily identifiable. The package was shaped like a corpse because none gets attracted by a hanging corpse. In fact, a hanging corpse might trigger fear in the minds of onlookers.

When Bheema killed Keechaka for behaving mischievously with Draupadi, who was in the guise of Sairandhri in the court of King Virata, Duryodhana immediately guesses that Bheema was there. This was because, there was a divine truth that whoever kills one of the two Asuras namely Bakasura and Keechaka would invariably kill the other. Bheema had already killed Bakasura and it was known to the entire universe. When Keechaka too was killed, Duryodhana guessed that only Bheema had killed Keechaka and to bring either him or, if his guesswork was right, all the Pandavas would be exposed so that he could send them all for yet another term of exile for twelve years and one year of living incognito as per the agreement. That is why, Duryodhana orders for confiscation of all cows belonging to King Virata. He knew very well that to get the cows released for their king, Pandavas would certainly plunge into war and therefore it would be easy for him to identify the Pandavas.

One portion of his guesswork was right as Arjuna plunged into war, discarding the attire of Bruhannale. Originally Uttarakumara, the son of King Virata, was supposed to do the fight. Arjuna had one quality or boon. Whoever is behind him would lose all their strength, power and valor. When Uttara starts off for war, Bruhannale volunteered to be the chariot. As Arjuna was driving the chariot, Uttara lost his power and strength. As a result of this, Uttara started escaping from the battlefield. Arjuna emerges from his Bruhannale attire and takes the weapons from the Shami, combats Kaurava army.