Shiva Vs Vishnu

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Rehanism

@Rehanism

Dazzler

+ 2

Posted: 14 years ago

Hey guys...

I have two queries, one related to Ramayan and the other one to Mahabharat.

Recently, in youtube, I watched an old promo/episode of NDTV's Ramayan, which said about a fight between Hanumaan and Shri Ram. I have read several versions of Ramayan, most recently Krittivas Ramayan, and obviously, I have never heard of any such fight. Neither was anything of that sort shown in Sampurna Ramayan. So I wish to know how far is this thing authentic? I might have ignored it as an invention of the director's mind, if it had come from someone like Ektaa. But the Sagar's are renowned for their mythological serials - I don't expect them to show anything baseless. I wish to know if this fight happened and if yes, then how did it conclude? Can anyone throw some light on this? Here's the video of a part of that episode - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me87QrMpvK0

The second instance is regarding the face off between Krishna and Rudra nearing the end of Krishna's life. Banasura was a devotee of Shiva and he had obtained powers from him which had made him virtually invincible. Also Shiva promised to protect Bana. Bolstered by this, he became an Adharmi and once kidnapped and imprisoned Aniruddha, the grandson of Krishna, who wished to marry Bana's daughter Usha. Enraged at this, Krishna attacked Banasura, defeated his army and chopped off his 998 hands out of 1000. But just as Krishna was about to kill him with the Sudarshan Chakra, Shiva appeared before it and ordered the Sudarshan Chakra to go back to Krishna. Shiva requested Krishna to forgive Banasura but Krishna politely refused and requested Shiva to step aside so that He can kill Banasura and punish him for his crimes.
Shiva, bound by his words, said that he cannot do so. So both Shiva and Krishna had only one choice - fight each other.

Now there are two versions of how the fight concluded.:

i) Krishna neutralized Shiva's weapons, defeated Him and Shiva begged for mercy for Banasura. Since Shiva was His greatest devotee, He forgave Banasura. Undoubtedly this is a Vaishnava version. I found this on Google - http://www.krsnabook.com/ch63.html

ii) Krishna and Rudra fought indecisively with each other for days. The Sages and Gods led by Brahma pleaded them to stop as their fight would bring an end to the creation. Banasura himself was intimidated by this and realized his mistake. Krishna and Shiva both smiled at each other and merged their bodies to display their conjoined Universal HariHara form, declaring their unity and non-duality. This is preached by more radical Vaishnavas and the Smartas. I found it on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniruddha

Interestingly, Ramanand Sagar's Shri Krishna, completely discounted the fight between the two patriach's of Hinduism. They showed only upto the part where Shiva stops Sudarshan. After that Narad muni declares Hari and Hara as one. Instead of HariHara form, they end the tale with Krishna's Viraat Roop. http://movietime4u.blogspot.com/2009/03/krishna-part-422.html

So how far is this true? Which version seems to be most appropriate? And was there any fight at all between Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu?

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Frequent Posters

Vrish

@Vr15h

Stunner

+ 6

Posted: 14 years ago

Rehan

The Rama vs Hanuman was a latter addition - not originally there in either Valmiki, nor even the Adhyatma Ramayan. I'm not sure about Ananda Ramayan. But even as the serial showed, no direct battle b/w them took place. You can read about the original account here

On Banasura, Krishna was fighting Rudra, Pradhyumna was fighting Kartikeya and Satyaki Banasura (Curious why Krishna didn't bring Balarama w/ him instead). Both Krishna & Pradhyumna seemed to have a slight edge, and Banasura was furious to see Mahadev losing, and so b4 that fight ended, he inserted himself in and attacked Krishna. Krishna w/ his discus destroyed all but 2 of his 1000 arms, and then Shiva asked Krishna not to kill him. But in return for that, Anirudha and Usha were turned over to Krishna.

On my Youtube channel, in one of my videos, there was once an argument over which was greater - Narayan or Mahadev? I argued that neither was, and that it depended on the situation. Banasura was an example where Vishnu/Krishna got the better of Shiva, but in the Daksha yagna, after the death of Sati, when Virbhadra was sent to punish Daksha, all the devas, and even Vishnu, who were attendees of the yagna, felt duty bound to protect him and his yagna, and so defended him. But in this battle, not just the devas, but Vishnu himself was defeated by Virbhadra, b4 he went on to behead Daksha.

So I argued there that depending on who happened to be following dharma in any particular instance, he prevailed. Rudra tried to protect Banasura in his plans to keep Anirudha and Usha separate, and so lost. Hari tried to prevent Daksha from being punished for causing the death of Sati, and so he too was defeated.

Edited by _Vrish_ - 14 years ago

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Rehanism

@Rehanism

Dazzler

+ 2

Posted: 14 years ago

Thanks...Actually, I made this post a long time ago but no body replied so I did some research and found out these two legends. That Ram Vs Hanuman must have been an addendum, but there were many disputable versions regarding Shiva Vs Krishna. ISKCON texts claimed that Krishna easily countered Shiva's weapons and won the battle and Shiva pleaded for mercy for Banasura while some other Smartist texts claimed that the battle ended in a stalemate with both the Gods exhausting each other. In the serial Shri Krishna, the battle itself was omitted in the first place. They showed Shiva coming and repelling the Sudarshan after which Narad declares that Hari and Hara are both one and the same and Banasura sees Shiva in Krishna and the series ends there with a Vishwaroop scene.

Incidentally, have you heard of the legend of Shanta Durga, where Parvati, at the behest of Brahma and Gods, intervenes to stop a fight between Shiva and Vishnu? Most sources, including the official website of Shantadurga temple of Goa, speak about Durga's role as peacemaker. But what was the context of that battle? Why were the two Gods fighting in the first place?

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Vrish

@Vr15h

Stunner

+ 6

Posted: 14 years ago

No, I had not heard of Shata Durga - the only 2 fights I was aware of was the ones I described earlier - the Banasura war, the Rama-Hanuman confrontation and the Daksha yagna battle. And yes, I was going thru old threads, found out yours, and so posted.

I'm interested in the historic origins of Rama vs Hanuman. As you may know, it has the same moral as the Krishna Tulabharam incident, where Satyabhama has to give Krishna to Narada to fulfill some condition, and due to objections from others, has to find something of equal value to give him. That was when Rukmini had the idea of putting Krishna's name on the weighing scale instead of him, and finding out that it outweighed him.

So the thing I'm interested in here is whether the Tulabharam story was written b4 or after the Rama-Hanuman story.

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Janaki

@RamKiSeeta

Achiever

+ 6

Posted: 14 years ago

The Ram-Hanuman Yudh that ASR showed is not at all a fictional account that the Sagars came up with. It's a famous story (especially in Southern India) that has its origins in one of the 14 sources of Ramayan that are out there. I don't know which one, but I do know it's in one of them, because my parents used to tell me this story when I was young and they were reading it from this one book...maybe it's from Ranganath Ramayan, I'll have to have a look once I get it sometime.

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Vrish

@Vr15h

Stunner

+ 6

Posted: 14 years ago

So both Rama-Hanuman and Krishna Tulabharam are southern versions (not Kamban in case of the former)? I'm curious about which one preceded the other?

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Janaki

@RamKiSeeta

Achiever

+ 6

Posted: 14 years ago

Originally posted by: _Vrish_
So both Rama-Hanuman and Krishna Tulabharam are southern versions (not Kamban in case of the former)? I'm curious about which one preceded the other?

So Krishna Tulabharam is not in Bhagwat Puraan? I do think the Ram-Ravan Yudh is a Southern tale, because this one movie that had NTR playing Ram, called Shri Ramanjaneya Yuddham, came out that was pretty famous among viewers. It focused on just that story of Ramayan, though the major difference between it and ASR is that it showed the battle between Ram and Hanuman happen before Sita's vanvaas, whereas in ASR it is after.