Heroic Fury Wears the Body of a Sage
Bala Kanda, Doha 268
Doha 268 · Movement 2 of 2
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Parashurama's clothing belongs to peace: ascetic cloth, sacred ash, matted hair, deerskin, and the signs of a life withdrawn from ordinary possession.
His deeds belong to a harsher order. Bow, quivers, axe, immense arms, and the fear moving through the royal tiers declare a power terrible in action and impossible to describe fully.
The verse gathers the contradiction into one image. Heroic fury itself has assumed the body of a sage and arrived where all the kings are assembled. Renunciation has not made this ascetic mild, nor has warfare stripped him of austerity. His presence joins tapas and battle until the hall cannot decide whether to bow before a seer or flee from a warrior.
The garb promises stillness, the axe remembers battle, and both belong to one blazing form.
Read the passage from the Manas
सांत बेषु करनी कठिन बरनि न जाइ सरुप। धरि मुनितनु जनु बीर रसु आयउ जहँ सब भूप।।268।।
Saintly in garb, terrible in deed, his form beyond all description. As though the Vira Rasa itself had put on a sage's body and come to where all the kings were gathered.