Sri Raghavendra Swamy Virachita
SRI #RAMACHARITRYA #MANJARI
(ಶ್ರೀ #ರಾಘವೆಂದ್ರಸ್ವಾಮಿ
ವಿರಚಿತ “#ಶ್ರೀ ರಾಮಚಾರಿತ್ರ್ಯ ಮಂಜರಿ”)
Valmeeki
narrates the history of his hermitage to Shatrughna/ಮಹರ್ಷಿ ವಾಲ್ಮೀಕಿಗಳು ತಮ್ಮ ಆಶ್ರಮದ
ಇತಿಹಾಸವನ್ನು ಶತ್ರುಘ್ನನಿಗೆ ವಿವರಿಸಿದುದು
“In this place, a king named Mitrasaha, son of King
Sudasa, was living. He was a descendant of Surya dynasty. Once he was on a
hunting spree. Two demons were roaming about in the forest in the guise of deer
and Mitrasaha killed one of them with his arrow. The other one disappeared from
the place and that demon decided to create some serious problem to the killer
of his brother, Mitrasaha. He managed to join the royal kitchen in the guise of
a chef.
“Once, Mitrasaha performed a holy sacrifice. After the
completion of that Yajna, the demon went close to Mitrasaha in the guise of
Royal Priest Vasishtha. Expressing his desire to each human flesh, he urged
Mitrasaha to serve human flesh to him. King was unwilling to fulfill this
demand. However, unable to identify the demon within, because of his reverence
to Vasishtha, Mitrasaha agreed to provide disguised Vasishtha with human flesh
to eat. The fake sage said he would complete routine oblations and return by
which time the food prepared with human flesh should be ready and went away.
Now, he transformed into his earlier form of chef and baked the human flesh.
Meanwhile the real sage Vasishtha came and the king, inadvertently, served the
human flesh. Vasishtha became furious by mistaking the king to have planned to
corrupt him by serving human flesh and cursed the king.
‘Oh King, you have tried to feed human flesh to me.
Therefore, I curse to be a demon cannibal. The king, who was innocent, was
enraged by the curse slapped on him by Vasishtha without any reason and he too
decided to curse the sage. He performed the ‘Aachamana’ and vouched to curse
the sage. The queen Damayanti stopped the king from cursing a Brahmin and the
king obliged.
“The king looked at the water he had taken in the palm
to announce the curse and the water were actually boiling because of the power
he had secured through penance. The king was in a dilemma. If he were to throw
that water upward, the clouds would be scattered and the vegetation on earth
would be dried. He did not want the entire humanity and vegetation on earth to
get destroyed due to his rage. He could not decide on how to discharge the
water from him. Finally, he poured that water on his own leg and the leg was
fully burnt. As a result, the leg wore a horrible look and therefore the king
came to be known as ‘Kalmashapada’ since that day.
In the meantime, Sage Vasishtha came to know that King
Mitrasaha was innocent and that he had cursed the king in haste. He regretted
that he had insensibly cursed the king and told the latter that he could not ‘withdraw
the curse’ but could lay a deadline for the curse and limit its impact to a certain
period. The king agreed. Vasishtha said that the curse would be effective for
twelve years and later, the curse would lose its power.
At this juncture, a demon named ‘Kinkara’ entered the
body Kalmashapada.
As per the curse, King Mitrasaha became a demon with
the soul-power of Kinkara. He ate human flesh and lived as a demon. Once, he
disguised as a deer and saw a couple of sages romancing by disguising
themselves as deer. He caught the male deer of that romancing couple to kill
it. Then, the female deer appeared in human form as a woman and appealed to
demon-converted king not to kill her husband. The demon did not agree. He
killed the male deer and ate it.
The woman prepared a pyre, put the corpse of her
husband and set fire. When the flames started blazing, the woman too entered
and sacrificed her life for her husband. However, before dying, she cursed the
demon: ‘I was romancing with my husband when you unnecessarily intruded and
killed my husband. You should never get satisfaction from your wife in your
life. If you try to do so, you will immediately die.’
(Will be continued…)
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