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Padma Puranaपद्मपुराण · Jain Ramayana
हिन्दी

Parva 90

Chamarendra Strikes the People of Mathura with Calamity

Enraged by the death of his friend Madhu, Chamarendra, lord of the Asurakumara gods, strikes Mathura with a deadly plague, and Shatrughna withdraws to Ayodhya though his heart stays in Mathura.

Part of The Reign, Mathura and Sita's Exile

Summary

The god who guards Madhu's trident-jewel carries it back to its giver Chamarendra and tells him how his friend died. As Chamarendra sets out in fury, the Garuda lord asks whether he has not heard of Vishalya's power, and he replies that her matchless power came from her celibacy as a maiden and left her once she married Lakshmana. Finding Mathura celebrating under its new king as if Madhu had never been, he judges the people ungrateful and strikes them with a plague so sudden that they die where they stand, sit or lie. Shatrughna returns to Ayodhya, where Rama and Lakshmana welcome him and his mother Suprabha holds a great worship, yet he pines for Mathura as Rama once pined for Sita.

What happens

8 points

  1. After King Madhu's death, the god who presides over his trident-jewel carries the trident back to its giver, Chamarendra, the fierce lord of the Asurakumara gods (a class of gods dwelling below the earth), and tells him everything about Madhu's end. Chamarendra had been Madhu's great friend, and in anger he rises out of Patala (the netherworld) to go to Mathura.

  2. The Garuda lord (Garudendra) comes to him and asks where he is going. Chamarendra answers that he will torment the man who killed his friend Madhu, and the Garuda lord asks whether he has not heard of the glory of Vishalya.

  3. Chamarendra replies that Vishalya's wondrous power belonged to her maidenhood: until she married the Vasudeva Lakshmana, her brahmacharya (celibacy) gave her matchless strength, but now she is like a serpent without venom. She is a faithful wife, he says, but no longer a brahmacharini (celibate woman), so that power is gone.

  4. He goes on to praise shila (chastity): the glory of those who keep celibacy without any lapse cannot be told, gods and men alike honour them, and no one can defeat a person who holds the sword of chastity. He names wine, meat, honey, sexual indulgence and butter as great sins that keep the soul's power from awakening, calls unbroken celibacy the supreme cause of moksha (liberation), and then sends the Garuda lord home and goes on alone.

  5. Reaching Mathura, Chamarendra finds the same festivities going on as in Madhu's time. He judges the people wicked and ungrateful: their lord has died together with his son and another king sits in his place, yet they feel no grief for the king under the shelter of whose arms they lived happily so long, and he decides they are sinners whose faces should not even be seen.

  6. In great wrath he resolves to destroy the people and the land and unleashes a terrible upasarga (calamity), spreading many kinds of disease like the fire at the end of an age to burn down the forest of men. A plague breaks out so swiftly that whoever is standing dies standing, whoever is sitting dies sitting, and whoever is lying down never rises again.

  7. Seeing his people stricken by disease and fearing the god, Shatrughna comes back to Ayodhya. Rama and Lakshmana, the Baladeva and the Narayana, rejoice that their brother has returned after conquering by his valour, and his mother Suprabha has a wondrous worship of the Lord performed and gives many gifts, out of compassion to the suffering and with reverence to the righteous.

  8. Ayodhya, with its temples of gems and gold, is like a city of the gods and grants every wish like the wish-fulfilling cow Kamadhenu, yet Shatrughna's heart is so bound to Mathura that he finds no joy there, and he stays as downcast without Mathura as Rama once was without Sita. The chapter closes with the lesson that union with lovely things is as fleeting as a dream and burns like the summer sun, so one should love the bliss of the soul rather than the things of the world.