Brian Collins' book The Other Rāma Matricide and Genocide in the Mythology of Paraśurāma (SUNY Press, 2020) examines a fascinating, understudied figure appearing in Sanskrit narrative texts: Paraśurāma, i.e., “Rāma with the Axe”. Though he is counted as among the ten avatāras of Viṣṇu, his biography is quite grisly: Paraśurāma is best known for decapitating his own mother and launching a genocidal campaign to annihilate twenty-one generations of the warrior caste. Why do ancient Sanskrit mythmakers elevate such an arguably transgressive and antisocial figure to so exalted a religious status? The Other Rāma explores this question by undertaking analysis of the Paraśurāma myth cycle using the methods of comparative mythology and psychoanalysis.
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