Column | The legend of Nagarjuna

How regional iterations of folk tales from the Mahabharata have spread across the country in a bid to promote dharma

Say Nagarjuna, and most people will think of a silver screen superstar. Few, if anyone, will think of a character from Mahabharata folklore, the son of Arjuna who fights him over a rhinoceros, or a costume that is linked in Puri Jagannath temple with Parashurama, the brahmin who took up arms against greedy kings.

The deities Jagannath and Balabhadra, in the temple of Puri, Odisha, are occasionally dressed as warriors, sporting a beard, and bearing over a dozen weapons. This costume is known as Nagarjuna. Dressed thus, Balabhadra, considered locally to be a form of Shiva, embodies Kirata, the tribal who challenged Arjuna to a duel over a wild boar they both claimed to have hunted. Dressed thus, Jagannath, considered locally to be a form of Vishnu, embodies Parashuram who challenged the thousand-armed Kartaviryarjuna to a duel over the cow Nandini. Both brothers seek to force errant warriors to follow the path of dharma. Arjuna, his pride humbled, listens to the Kirata. Kartaviryarjuna does not, and is killed by Parashuram.

To remind kings to always follow dharma (governance, fairness), giant images of Nagarjuna are carried in processions every year during Navaratri celebrations in Puri. Navaratri is the festival when kings are supposed to evoke Durga, worship weapons and reaffirm their royal role as keepers of dharma.

In the 15th century, Sarala Das creatively retold the Mahabharata in Odia. It is amongst the earliest vernacular versions of the Sanskrit epic. Here, we come upon a very different Nagarjuna. Kunti tells her sons, the Pandavas, that their father’s soul is not able to enter Swarga (heaven). This is because he has not received proper funeral offerings befitting his stature. That offering happens to be a rhinoceros. So the brothers set out to hunt one.

Arjuna finds the beast in the garden of Shiva. There, another warrior challenges him. In the battle that follows, Arjuna is defeated. At that moment, his opponent’s mother appears on the scene and tells the victor that Arjuna is none other than his own father. Thus, Arjuna is reunited with his son, born of a Naga (serpent) wife. This son is, therefore, referred to as Nag-arjuna, the son of Arjuna by a Naga wife.

The same story is found far in the north. In Uttarakhand, in Pandavani performance, we find the story of Arjuna battling Nagarjuna over a rhinoceros he needs as a funeral offering for his father, Pandu. Here, the rhinoceros is an asura named Gaya who is actually a Brahmin thus reborn for the crime of killing a cow.

The story draws attention to the relationship between food and death. The dead need feeding. And producing food involves killing. Too much eating and feeding means too much killing. A king, who wants to eat and has to feed, needs to show restraint. That is dharma. The rhino is perhaps a metaphor for the king, the apex beast of the jungle, who has no natural predators, later replaced by the elephant.