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Avatra or Cirajvin? Paraurma and His Problems

Brian Collins

Paraurma, the Mahbhrata hero best known for decapitating his mother and exterminating

twenty-one generations of Katriyas in a campaign of varicide, is possessed of a list of

seemingly opposing attributes. He is at once an avatra and a cirajvin (long-lived one), a

Vaiava deity and a aiva devotee, a Brhmaa and a Katriya, a Vedic sage and a Tantric hero.

His story, with its themes of matricide, violations of varramadharma, extreme violence, and

exile, presents problems for sectarian communities who would assimilate him into their theo-

cosmology, even if they find it necessary to list Paraurma as an avatra to establish their

lineage or facilitate the spread of their influence. In this essay, I will explore the ways in which

the problem of Paraurmas divinity is addressed by three groups: the medieval Pcartrins,

the Gauiya Vaiavas of sixteenth century Bengal, and the Citpvans of the eighteenth century

Marh Smrjya.

In his famous and controversial essay Hamlet and His Problems, T. S. Eliot judges

Shakespeares Hamlet a failure mired in dramatically inexpressible emotion. In the same way

most scholars view the Mahbhrata, Eliot insists on seeing Hamlet as a stratification [that]

represents the efforts of a series of men, each making what he could out of the work of his

predecessors and argues that Shakespeares play is superimposed upon much cruder material

which persists even in the final form.1 In attempting to take the original story at the core of

Hamlet, in which a protagonist seeks revenge on an usurper king and feigns madness to allay

suspicion until he can get close enough to carry out an assassination, and turn it into what is

ultimately a play dealing with the effect of a mothers guilt upon her son,2 Shakespeare

displaces the central revenge motive and renders large parts of the action incomprehensible. As a

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result, there is nothing in the play to account adequately for the melancholy Danes paralytic

existential despair except for the problems of redacting and editing that inhere in the text of the

play itself.

Like Hamlet, Paraurma is faced with a slain father (Jamadagni) and a sinful mother

(Reuk). And like Hamlet, Paraurma is also clearly subject to an inexpressible emotion in

excess of the facts as they appear, and in that way his problems do resemble those of Hamlet,

both the man and the play. And just as the intractable elements of the Hamlet story Shakespeare

adapted are ultimately, in Eliots view, unable to bear the weighty themes he places on them, so

the story of Paraurma as we have it contains violent actions so wildly out of proportion to their

purported causes (chopping off Reuks head for looking at another man, killing twenty-one

generations of Katriyas to avenge one death) that they seem to distort the narrative, which

rapidly moves from time measured in moments to time measured in generations. And as the

ambivalent reception of Paraurma into the Vaiava theo-cosmology attests, the readers of the

epic have as hard a time making sense of his motives as Eliot does with Hamlets.

In the Mahbhrata, Paraurma is not portrayed as an avatra of Viu in any of the

narrations of his exploits in 3.115-117, 12.48-49, or 14.29-30. Although Choudhary has made an

argument based on his appearance in two separate avatra lists in the Naranya section that

Paraurma is an avatra very early on,3 the question remains as to why this fact never made it

into his story in the epic. Paraurmas appearance in Rmyaa 1.73.6 may be an early indicator

that Vaiavas had begun to deify the Brhmaa-warrior, though the text places him in an

inferior position to Rma Darathi. In the Rmyaa, Paraurma challenges Rma and finds

himself outmatched. Paraurmas defeat forces him to recognize Rmas superiority as well as

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his identity as Viu. But it is in his post-epic career that the issue of Paraurmas divinity

comes to the fore.

The Pcartra sect of Vaiavas hold Vsudeva as the highest form of God, part of a

pure creation that precedes the creation of matter. And to resolve the question about whether

the Supreme Godhead is with or without gunas, or qualities, they ascribe to him six guas that

are different from the three guas of created things (light, passion, and dark inertia). The six

guas of Vsudeva are knowledge, lordship, power, strength, virility, and splendor. And

emanating from Vsudeva, who embodies these six qualities, are the first three beings to come

into existence, the vyhas. The vyhas emanate one from the other as a flame goes from candle

to candle, and each of the three embodies two of Vsudevas six guas. Building on extant

stories about the genealogy of Ka (already identified as Vsudeva in the Mahbhrata), the

Pcartrins identify each of the three vyhas with a member of Kas family (his older brother

Sakaraa, his son Pradyumna, and his grandson Aniruddha) and give each a creative and a

moral function. The vyha we will be concerned with here is Sakaraa, because he is the

vyha of whom the Pcartra tradition lists Paraurma as a manifestation.

The Pcartrins are prolific when it came to producing texts, and the ocean of

Pcartra literature contains, unsurprisingly, quite a few inconsistencies and contradictions

when it comes to explaining the vyhas, avatras, and vibhavas. The Vivaksena Sahit lists

Paraurma as a secondary avatra, described by Schrader as a soul in bondage with a natural

body which, however, is possessed (via) or pervaded, for some particular function, by the

power (akti) of Viu.4 The same text has all the avatras emanating from Aniruddha, but the

earlier Padma Tantra maintains that Paraurma is a manifestation of Sakaraa while, in a

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strange kind of cosmic anachronism, assigning Balarma to Pradyumna and Ka to

Aniruddha.5

The Sanatkumra-Sahit gives a list of eleven avatras or vibhavas that include, in

order, Varha, Nsiha, Matsya, Krma, Trka (Garua), Vmana, Hayagrva, Kapila,

Jmadagnya Rma, Kakutstha (Rma), and Ka. Describing the exploits of Paraurma the text

states that Sakaraa goes down to earth as Jamadagnis son at the same time that powerful

demons are born on the earth as Katriyas. Then Paraurma takes up his axe to kill Haihaya

(Krtavrya) and destroys all the demonic Katriyas before going away into the south. The text

makes no mention at all of the matricide, and though it does mention an axe as Paraurmas

weapon of choice, it knows him by his patronymic Jmadagnya or Jamadagnisuta.6

The Sanatkumra-Sahit depicts Paraurma using his axe (not the bow he uses in the

Mahbhrata) to kill the demons, and he carries out the slaughter not because of his knowledge

that they have been born on the earth as Katriyas, but out of a desire to destroy the Haihaya

prince Krtavrya. The text does not say that Paraurma even knows the Katriyas he is

slaughtering are actually demons. Using parallel sati saptam constructions, the text only says

that Sakaraa came down to earth as Jamadagnis son at the same time that the demons were

being born on the earth as Katriyas. Consistent with the nature of the secondary avatra,

Paraurma is a mortal warrior whose earthly actions (carrying out his revenge) are invested with

cosmic significance when he is pervaded by the vyha of Sakaraa.

But what is most innovative about the Pcartrins conception of Paraurma is the way

the tradition imbues him and Sakarana with so many distinctly aiva characteristics. The

Vivaksena Sahit makes a clear identification of Sakaraa with iva as the one who by

means of the power of his gua takes away all this, while Pradyumna and Aniruddha use their

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guas to create and support, respectively.7 Even the Pcartra Sahits conception of

Sakaraas creative function is remarkably aiva, echoing themes of poison, blackness and

chaos found in the stories of the ivas role in the churning of the Ocean of Milk and the birth of

Kl from the poison he holds in his throat. Schrader writes,

With Sakaraa, Non-pure Creation becomes dimly manifest in an embryonic condition, as a chaotic mass without internal distinctions. This is expressed in the Sahits by the grotesque but often repeated statement that Sakaraa carries the whole universe like a tilaklaka (dark spot under the skin), which apparently signifies that the world he carries is still so to speak under the surface, existing only in a germinal condition, as a minute part, as it were, of his body.8

Possibly following the earliest association in the Kara Parvan of the Mahbhrata,

Pcartrins imbue Paraurma with the qualities of a aiva figure while absorbing him into a

Vaiava framework. They deify him, but only partially, and his violent behavior, as well as his

mixed-vara nature, can be ascribed to his emanation from the chaotic aiva vyha Sakaraa.

The lengthy Paraurma story in the Pcartra Viudharmottara Pura (c. 600-1000

CE), described by Gail as a Vaiava encyclopedia which was put together in a rather short

time, while amply using the older scientific and narrative literature,9 is the first major puric

account of the myth to appear after the redaction of the Mahbhrata and it presents a different

picture from those in the epic and in the Sanatkumra-Sahit. To insulate Paraurma and his

slaughter of the Katriyas against charges of impropriety, the Pcartra mythmakers have twice

removed his story from the realm of human Dharmafirst by changing his victims from humans

to demons and then by making Paraurma an incarnation of Viu carrying out the orders of

iva. He is also no longer just a mixed-up Brhmaa-Katriya hybrid or a manifestation of

Sakaraa, but a full-fledged avatra. And his enemies are no longer any Katriyas he happens

to come across. Nor are they Katriyas that, unknown to him, are demons born as humans.

Instead, Paraurmas enemies are an army of unambiguously demonic demons who have taken

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the earth away from the gods. The texts association of Paraurma with his battle-axe and the

inclusion of the akara Gta suggest that the authors of the Viudharmottara Pura were

basing their portrayal on more than just the epic version of Paraurma.

Along with giving him his name, the axe is the most popular of Paraurmas

iconographic features. There is even one temple located at Hiremagalr in the Kar district of

Karnataka that is dedicated to the parau itself.10 The Viudharmottara Pura closely

identifies Paraurma with his emblematic axe, now a battle-axe and not a wood-chopping axe as

it almost certainly is in the Mahbhrata, where the name Paraurma never even appears (at

least not in the critical edition). As Goldman has observed, nowhere in the endless references to

this figure which find their way into the most remote corners of this most massive and

comprehensive of epics is he called by a name which refers to what is generally thought to be his

most characteristic attribute; the mighty and fearful parau, the dreaded battle-axe.11 The

Citral edition of the Mahbhrata and a few others included in the appendices to the Critical

Edition do, however, mention the axe. Goldman suggests that they belong to an emerging

puric tradition that sees Paraurma as an avatra and gives him an axe to distinguish him

from the similarly named bow-wielding king Rma Daartha, with whom Paraurma now

shares avatra-hood.12 An inscription from Karnataka dated to 522 CE in which a king named

Durvinta Konguivddha declares himself an incarnation of Paraurma is further evidence that

there existed at that time the veneration of an axe-wielding Rma like the one who appears in the

Viudharmottara Pura.

But the axe is not the only weapon Paraurma wields. As Inden points out, he also

carries the cparatna, the jewel among bows, which identifies him as a Pcartra adept, since

Pcartrins used the metaphor of archery to describe their practice of yoga as the bow and

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arrow by which the Pcartra adept reached the target of the transcendent Viu by piercing

through the sun and the moon.13 By the time he appears in the Viudharmottara Pura,

Paraurma has become an avatra and his enemies have gone from being humans to demons.

And unlike the destruction of the Katriyas in the Mahbhrata, the massacre of the demons

does not result in Paraurmas exile. He does not accrue the sin of killing heroes that becomes

such a problem for him in later myths associated with trthas in northeastern India,14 but iva

does tell Paraurma twice that he will have to give up his tejas and lay down his arms (except to

protect women and Brhmaas) when he meets Rma Daratha, a theme echoed in the

Brhmaa Pura and the legend connected with the Paraurma temple in Pedhe,

Mahrra,15 and indeed in the Rmyaa.

Paraurmas status as a devotee of iva is also the occasion for the second of the texts

innovations: the insertion of a gt, in this case, the akara Gt, to provide Paraurmas

campaign of violence with a systematic theological justification that emphasizes its dharmic

necessity in the mahkalpa scheme and the fact that only he can carry it out. While it is spoken

by iva, the akara Gt is decidedly Vaiava is its theology. Inden writes:

Here we have the first major example in the VDhP of the deployment of historical narrative as an illustrative proof (prama). Viu was, in Pcartra theology, the master of deceptive appearances (my). The authors of the VDhP wanted to show that iva was in reality Vsudeva Ka, and that his preeminent devotee, Bhrgava Rma, was actually the foremost Pcartrin.16 The Pcartra contributions to the Paraurma corpus of myths establish his dual

identity as an incarnation of Viu and a devotee of iva and mitigate the harshness of his

campaign against the Katriyas by turning them into demons. The Pcartras also give

Paraurma a consort in the form of Dhara, the Earth, and establish his relationship with

Varua, a pair of associations that may have fed subsequent stories in which Paraurma enters

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an elemental struggle against the Ocean. The transition from Rma to Paraurma that occurs in

these texts points to an elevation of Paraurma to divine or semi-divine status, the association of

the Katriya-slayer with his emblematic axe, his incorporation into the Vaiava cosmos, and a

projection of aiva attributes on to the figure, while incorporating the aiva elements into a

Vaiava devotional context.

The Bengali Gauiya Vaiava tradition of the sixteenth century accords a similar place

to Paraurma, although he is of much less import. Kadsa Kavirja, author of the central

Gauiya Vaiava hagiographic text, the Caitanya Caritmta, expounds on the inferior relation

of the other emanations of Viu to Ka, the Supreme Godhead. In systematizing their

theology, Kadsas intellectual predecessors the six Gosvmins utilized the concept of

vyhas, but as the threefold manifestation of the demiurge Purua.17 As the Pcartrins attribute

two out of Vsudevas six guas to each Vyha, Kadsa explains that one of the Gods many

aktis becomes manifest in each avatra. And like the Pcartras, who recognize both full and

partial avatras within the vibhavas, Kadsa also differentiates between full avatras and

partial ones, called vibhtis.18 Listing these vibhtis, the Caitanya Caritmta reads, In ea is

the svasevana-akti, and in Pthu is the plana-akti. In Paraurma is the heroic akti of

destroying evil-doers.19 Once again, a Vaiava tradition keeps Paraurma below the level of a

full avatra and associates him with the forces of destruction.

In the context of the Pewa period of the Marh Smrjya the problem posed by

Paraurma was not his excessive violence. For the privileged Citpvan who traced their lineage

to him, it was how to deal with his opposition to the Katriyas, with whom they shared power.

Marh identity as it developed in the period following Ala-ud-Din-Khiljis incursions into the

Deccan plateau at the beginning of the fourteenth century was based on the privileged status that

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the new Muslim rulers granted to clans who participated in military service. Castes like the

Lohar, Kunbi, Thakar, and Sutar received hereditary land grants and collectively developed into

a new martial caste with its own distinctive dress, customs, and marriage rules. But since the

Deccan was ruled by five Muslim kingdoms instead of a single conqueror, prominent families

developed independently, and were not hesitant to fight each other or their Muslim rulers, as the

17th century Marh ruler ivj famously did during the reign of Aurangzeb.20

As this new military class emerged, the role of Brhmaas changed in Mahrra. hj

(the grandson of ivj and son of abhj, who was tortured and executed by Aurangzeb in

1688) grew up as a well cared for hostage in the Mughal court, but left upon the death of

Aurangzeb in 1707 to reclaim his throne. In 1713 he appointed a Citpvan Brhmaa named

Bj his Pew, or prime minister. Due to factional infighting and Mughal expansion, the land

controlled by hj had been reduced to Pune and its immediate surroundings and it was Bj

who, through military force and diplomatic pressure, forced the Mughal emperor to formally

recognize the Marh princes legitimacy and sovereignty.21

The Pew died in 1720 and hj appointed his son Bjrao to be his fathers successor.

Bjrao saw an opportunity to expand the Marhs borders since the power of the Mughals was

declining and pushed into Gujurat and Malwa, briefly taking the emperor hostage in Delhi in

1737.22 During these military campaigns, Bjrao consolidated de facto power in the office of the

Pew, gaining control over the military, banking and land-granting, financially supporting

Brhmaas, and bringing in fellow Citpvan Brhmaas to fill out his bureaucracy.23

The Citpvanas are one of the groups of Brhmaas who claim to have been imported by

Paraurma after he reclaimed the land from the sea following his exile. One account of the

origin of the clans name from the 18th century Marh rescension of the Skanda Pura claims

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that Paraurma was so polluted by bloodguilt after he slaughtered the Katriyas that no

Brhmaa would perform rites for him. So he found 14 dead bodies washed up on shore and put

them on altar where he burned, purified, and resurrected them. He then taught the fourteen

revived men the Veda and they became the ancestors of the Citpvans, which means, purified

on an altar.

The Paraarma Caritra, a semi-historical account of the rule of the Brhmaa Pews

in Maharashtra, was composed in Marh around 1772 by an author called Vallabha, who has no

other surviving works to his name. A man named Durlabh, a banker at the Pew ruler

Mdharvas mint in Pune, commissioned the work, possibly as a tribute to Mdharva after his

death and probably to improve his standing with the Pew who succeeded him.24 It belongs to a

literary genre called bakhar, a kind of cross between a Pura and a historical biography, popular

between the reign of ivj in the late 17th century and the British conquest of the Marh state,

which became official when they removed the last Pew in 1818.

The first book contains a puric account of history, starting from the incarnation of

Paraurma and his destruction of the Katriyas. The matricide is left out completely. In this

variant, Paraurma destroys Krtavrya and his army after they steal his fathers cow but leave

his father unharmed. Later, other Katriyas send an assassin who decapitates Jamadagni and

shows his head to Reuk. This prompts Paraurma to make an oath with water to wipe out the

Katriyas and use their blood to perform his fathers funeral rites. Then he goes to Kuruketra

and proceeds to kill Katriyas after he plants what the text calls a stabha rovila.25 After a time,

Narda steps in and stops the bloodshed, telling Paraurma that the surviving Katriyas will

surrender. Paraurma ceases the killing, gives the earth to the Brhmaas after completing his

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fathers funeral rites, and goes off to settle the Konkan coast with Brhmaas from the Deasth,

Karhde, and Citpvan clans.

The story ends with two unusual statements. The first is that Paraurma settles the

Brhmaas without respect to the divisions among them, an idea that seems to undercut the

Citpvans privileged status. The second occurs after Paraurma has finished establishing a

dharmic society in the Bhrgavaketra. The text reads, r Bhrgav svakiya rami ye

virakt (r Bhrgava was alienated from his own rami). The translators leave the term in

the original Mrh, and it could refer either to a hermitage or to one of the four stages of life.

But since this comes at the end of the story and Paraurma is already far away from his fathers

rama, the line seems to suggest that this is when the world-weary Paraurma becomes a

renouncer. Here, Paraurmas forced exile has become a voluntarily renunciation.

The second book takes the reader via a path of anachronism and chronological error from

the reign of the last true Katriyas (Yudhihiras line) up to the Mughal sultans of Delhi. In true

puric fashion, the influence of Ka, the male demonic figure who is an embodiment of the

adharmic forces of the yuga, exerts more and more influence over the rulers until the mlecchas

and yavanas are in control of Karmabhmi. And though early yavana rulers like Bbar respect

the Brhmaas and upholds Dharma, Kas power soon turns them against the Hindus and they

begin to persecute them and defile their sacred sites. This disastrous turn of events sets the stage

for Paraarmas return to earth.26

The third book opens by extolling the wisdom of the emperor Shhjahn, then tells how

Ka enters the body of his son Aurangzeb, who is already known for his anger. Aurangzeb then

begins oppressing Brhmaas, killing cows, and otherwise undoing Dharma. This causes the

divine king Vikrama to come to earth as ivj to fight the mlecchas and yavanas. But after the

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deaths of ivj and his son, the gods decide they have to step in again. Unfortunately Viu

(who is here distinguished from Paraurma), when he was incarnated as the Buddha, had

decreed that no more gods could enter the Bhmaala (Earth). So Indra turns to Paraurma,

who, like Vikrama, is apparently not included among the gods since he is unaffected by Vius

ban, to go down to earth and rescue Dharma. Paraurma agrees to send his aa (portion) in

human form down to earth, but informs the gods that it is improper to bear weapons in the

current yuga. So Paraurma decides to take birth in the lineage of Bj to destroy the

mlecchas. Meanwhile, iva takes birth in the form of hj, the Marh prince who appoints

Bj as the first Pew.27

In book four, Paraurma sends his aa into Bjs body, but then faces a dilemma. He

has already given the earth to the Brhmaas in his great sacrifice and cannot retake control of it

now. So, as Bj, Paraurma decides to give nominal power to someone else and accomplish

his ends from behind the scenes. After becoming the Pew serving under hj, Bj begins

to expand the kingdom and even marches on Jaipur. And when he dies, as all humans must in the

Kali Yuga, Paraurma places his aa into his son Bjrao. The rest of the text concerns the

deeds of the Pews, especially the recently deceased Mdharva, and consistently refers to them

as aadhrs.

The Paraarma Caritra is unusual in a number of ways. First, it ties Paraurma and the

puric history of which he is a part to current events. Second, it seems to differentiate him from

Viu and the rest of the gods. Third, Paraurmas incarnation is in the entire institution of the

Pews rather than one individual. Fourth, unlike the Mahbhrata, the text does not impart any

guilt to Reuk. Instead it places great emphasis on the virtue of women and is full of queens

committing sat upon their husbands funeral pyres. Finally, it puts Paraurma in a superior

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position to iva (who has somehow broken the ban on entering the world of humans to be born

as hj), since the gods Katriya incarnation is only a figurehead while Paraurmas

Brhmaa aadhrs hold all the real power.

For religious systems of various types, the matricidal and varicidal Brhmaa warrior

Paraurma has required some adjustments before he can be counted as a form of God. To fit

into the vaidika Vaiavism of the Pcartrins, Paraurmas excessive violence had to be

mitigated by turning his victims into demons and his responsibility diminished by making his

annihilation of the Katriyas ivas idea. To take his place in the Caitanya-centered system of the

Gauiya Vaiavas, Paraurma had to become an inferior partial avatra invested with only a

small part of the Supreme Godhead. And in the political theology of the Marh Smrjya,

Paraurma had to maintain his position as clan deity of the Citpvans and source of the

authority of the Pew, but be differentiated from Viu and ambiguous in his divine status. As

Eliot complained of Hamlet, Paraurma is excessive in his reactions, but he is also a tragic hero

that fascinates as he perplexes. He is, as Gail called him, a rather pale figure marked by his

rigid obedience and cruel heroism.28 The question of how he becomes a form of God is

answered through an examination of the traditions texts and practices. The question of why he

becomes a form of God requires more speculation.

1 T. S. Eliot, Hamlet and His Problems in The Waste Land and Other Writings (New York: The Modern Library, 2002), 138. 2 Eliot, Hamlet and His Problems, 139. 3 Pradeep Kant Choudhary, Rma with the Axe: Myth and Cult of Paraurma Avatra (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2010), 162-167. 4 Friedrich Otto Schrader, Introduction to the Pcartra and the Ahirbudhnya Sahit (Madras: Adyar Library, 1916), 47. 5 Schrader, Introduction to the Pcartra, 48. 6 Sanatkumra-Sahit of the Pcartrgama, ed. Pandit V. Krishnamacharya (Madras: The Adyar Library and Research Center, 1969), 243-245. 7 Schrader, Introduction to the Pcartra, 38.

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8 Schrader, Introduction to the Pcartra, 38. 9 Adalbert J. Gail, Paraurma, brahmane und krieger: Unters. uber ursprung u. entwicklung e. Avatra Vius u. bhakta ivas in d. ind. literatur (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1977), 223. 10 K. S. S. Janaki, Paraurma Pura 8:1 (1966), 70. 11 Robert P. Goldman, Some Observations on the Parau of Paraurma Journal of the Oriental Institute, Baroda 21:3 (1972), 155. 12 Goldman, Some Observations on the Parau of Paraurma, 165. 13 Ronald B. Inden, Jonathan S. Walters, and Daud Ali, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 57. 14 See Brian Collins, Headless Mothers, Magic Cows, and Lakes of Blood: The Parsaurma Cycle in the Mahbhrata and Beyond (PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2010), 42. 15 M. S. Mate, Temples and Legends of Maharashtra (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2001), 103. 16 Inden et al., Querying the Medieval, 57. 17 Sushil Kumar De, Early History of the Vaiava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhya, 1961), 242. 18 Kadsa Kavirja Gosvmi, Edward C. Dimock, and Tony K. Stewart. Caitanya Caritmta of Kadsa Kavirja: A Translation and Commentary, Harvard Oriental Series 56 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 662. 19 Kadsa et al, Caitanya Caritmta, 662-663. 20 Stewart Gordon, The Marathas 1600-1818. New Cambridge History of India 2.4 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 13-17. 21 Gordon 1993: 110-113. 22 Gordon, The Marathas, 127. 23 Gordon, The Marathas, 130. 24 N. K. Vallabhcrya, N. Wagle, and Anant Ramchandra Kulkarni, Vallabhas Paraarma Caritra: An Eighteenth Century Marth History of the Pews, Monographs of the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, University of Toronto, Vol. 2 (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1976), x. 25 The word stabha must refer to the sacrificial post, and the word rovila appears to be from the Arabic rob, which enters Hindi as an adjective that means, causing fear. 26 Vallabhcrya et al, Vallabhas Paraarma Caritra, 23-39, 151-157. 27 Vallabhcrya 1976: 39-43, 59-67. 28 Gail, Paraurma, brahmane und krieger, 229.