The Stolen Calf

Once, when his sons had gone out, King Kārtavīrya Arjuna, lord of the Anūpa country, a king with a thousand arms, came to the hermitage. The sage's wife honoured him, but he, drunk with pride of battle, took no pleasure in her welcome. He laid waste the hermitage, and while the cow whose milk was for the offerings bellowed, he carried off her calf by force, and he broke down the great trees.

When Rāma came home, his father told him himself, and when Rāma saw the cow lowing, anger seized him. He went after Kārtavīrya, fought him, and cut off his thousand arms with his arrows. Kārtavīrya's sons, enraged at Rāma, came to the hermitage when Rāma was away and attacked Jamadagni. He did not fight. They shot him with their arrows, while he cried out again and again, Rāma, Rāma! like one who has no protector, and they went away.

Rāma came back with firewood in his hands and saw his father lying dead, a death he had not deserved, and he wept. You were killed by those wretches because of what I did, father, shot like a deer in the forest, he said. How could such a death come to one who knew dharma and walked the good path, who wronged no creature? An old man, deep in austerity, not fighting, killed by a hundred sharp arrows: what sin have they not done?

So he lamented, and did all the funeral rites for his father, and burned his body in the fire. And Rāma vowed to destroy all the kṣatriyas, and he killed Kārtavīrya's sons, and all the kṣatriyas who followed them. So began his feud with the kṣatriyas of the whole world. He emptied the earth of kṣatriyas, and made five lakes of their blood at Samantapañcaka, and in them he made the offerings to his ancestors, until his grandfather Ṛcīka stopped him.