Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Bāla · 7 of 50
7. Paraśurāma on the road
Bāla (बाल)
On the road home a figure stops the procession. Paraśurāma, the brahmin who has spent a life killing kṣatriyas, has heard that Śiva's bow is broken. He comes angry, carrying Viṣṇu's bow, and he demands that Rāma string this one if the breaking of the other was more than a boy's luck.
Rāma takes it and strings it, and the recognition that passes between them is the poem's. Two bearers of the same divine work, one of them an older and bloodier instrument, meet, and the older one stands down. There is no war on the road. Paraśurāma goes. The page says that he yields. It does not describe a combat, because the poem's point is the combat that does not happen.
Daśaratha, who has just survived a sage's request and a wedding, survives this too. The procession enters Ayodhyā. The Bāla-kāṇḍa closes on a city that believes the story is a happy one. The reader has been shown the hunter, the curse, the killed yakṣiṇī, and the brahmin with an axe. The happiness is real. It is not the whole poem.
नेपालीमा
बाटोमा परशुरामले रोक्नुभयो। उहाँले शिवको धनु भाँचिएको सुन्नुभएको थियो। उहाँले विष्णुको धनु चढाउन भन्नुभयो। रामले चढाउनुभयो। दुई दिव्य कार्यका वाहकमध्ये पुरानो र रक्तमय साधन पछि हट्यो। बाटोमा युद्ध भएन। यो पृष्ठले उहाँ झुक्नुभयो भन्छ। द्वन्द्व लेख्दैन, किनकि नभएको द्वन्द्व नै कुरा हो। बालकाण्ड सहरमा सकिन्छ, जहाँ कथालाई सुखी ठानिन्छ। सुख साँचो हो, तर पूरै कविता होइन।