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Today, they showed Banasura as one of the contestants, and Mahadev describing to Parvati how he's arrogant, and would be killed by Vishnu's next avatar 🤬 These scriptwriters are showing how little they know of Shiva.
Does anyone know whether Banasura is in the Shiva Purana - I don't recall seeing it. The only case I know of Banasura is in Shrimad Bhagvatam, in which case, they've gotten the story completely wrong. I'll summarize it here, for those who don't know.
Banasura was the son of Bali, and great grandson of Prahlad. He had a 1000 arms and was a great Mahadev bhakt. He would entertain Mahadev by playing some 500 instruments and singing hymns in his praise, while Mahadev would enjoy that and dance to it. Mahadev was therefore pleased w/ him and promised him that he would defend Banasura if he was threatened in war. For some reason, Kartikeya too was included in the deal, so he too promised his support.
Now, after a while, Banasura got bored and once complained to Mahadev that his 1000 arms were a burden, since there was no one his match. It was then that Mahadev cursed him that in a war, someone who was Mahadev's equal would defeat Banasura.
Cue to the story of Anirudha & Usha, Anirudha being Pradhyumna's son & Usha being Banasura's daughter. Usha had Anirudha abducted and secretly married him, infuriating her father, who imprisoned Anirudha. So Krishna went to war against Banasura, and this caused Mahadev to join Banasura. As a result of Mahadev's own curse, Krishna defeated Shiva (some people try to claim Vishnu's superiority on this basis, however, it lacks a foundation if Mahadev himself caused it to happen due to his curse, since Banasura couldn't have been defeated, as per the curse, w/o defeating Mahadev). He followed it up by severing all but 4 of Banasura's arms.
But here is what then happened. Mahadev told Krishna that he had promised Banasura his protection, and asked him not to kill him. He also asked Banasura to return both Anirudha & Usha to Krishna, which he did, and so the end result was a chastened, but still living, Banasura.
Now, in this serial, I don't expect them to show Mahadev being defeated in battle - even though they did show Veerbhadra losing when he actually didn't. But then, the logical thing to do would be to not include any mention of Banasura in the first place. But they seem to want to include him, but then distort things by claiming that Krishna would kill him, when he did nothing of the sort.
Aside from the fact that there is nothing to suggest that Banasura attended Sita's swayamvara, he had 1000 arms, not 2, at the time, assuming that he was around in the Treta Yuga. But they did not show that here. Instead, they showed a somewhat wimpy and lanky ruler, who could not have fitted any image of Banasura.
I do hope they correct it when they come to the Krishna avatar.
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