Dr Vineet Agarwal

While the detailed book review is available on our website, here is the summarized one.

Dr. Vineet Aggrawal, a famous author who started his career as an author by writing a book about Vishwamitra, came with a detailed book on Parshuram.

The plot of this book has its root in the book about Vishwamitra, however, don't worry if you haven't read it yet. The book is complete in itself and you can enjoy reading it without missing any important detail.

The Plot:
Let us take a bird's eye view to the plot of the book where I will try to keep most of the spoilers at the bay, but some of them are unavoidable :).

It all stars with the actions of Ruchik, the descendant of Bhrigu who feel disheartened by the actions of his wife Satyavati and her mother, as decided to leave the domestic life. He leaves everything in a moment, including his newborn, and went to the Himalayas to complete his spiritual journey.

The Karma is a great leveler and one has to fulfill all his/her duties, and thus, the circumstances took the turn and Ruchik has to come back into the lives of his wife Satyavati and son Yamadagni (aka Jamadagni)!

Arjun is one of the great rulers of Nabhivarsh and he followed the path of Dharma. With the able guidance of his father and immense warrior skills of his own, he went ahead to have some of the most remarkable political alliances and fought some great wars, all to establish the kingdom of Dharma all over the earth. He was almost successful in his efforts.

Almost, because, there are tribes, which want to keep following their own way of ruling and don't care much about the ideal practices advised by the Dharma. And some of the most cunning minds and brave fighters were there at their side also. Adding to them was Ravana, the rising figure in Asura tribe who is of mixed origin and possessor of the good qualities of both the clans.

Why, Arjun, the ferocious warrior, better known as Sahatrarjun, then is considered as the one who did some wrong stuffs? Why he is killed by Raam (who became Parshuram by then)? And why Raam started a series of wiping out the Kshatryia rulers who were not following the path of Dharma? The sequence of actions and their reactions, are better to explore by reading this book.

Views and Reviews:
The book is written in a gripping manner and is a delight for the lovers of Indian Mythogoly. More importantly it explore the characters which are comparatively less explored, but played a very important role in making Bharat (that is India) what it is today.

Of course, there are some gaps when you try to trace the incidents mentioned in various scriptures, which the author may need to go through to collect material for this book, and he had to instill the imaginary stuff there.

While I think that the character of the protagonist could have been given more footage, especially, his days of teen, whatever explored is good in terms of content and representation both. Despite it being the story of Raam, the incident which were responsible to make him Parshuram are explored quite nicely.

Before many years, when reading reviews for a movie, I found a nice line written by a reviewer which was telling something like, without properly exploring the antagonist, you cannot explore the abilities of the protagonist. Very true. The stronger the antagonist is, the protagonist will automatically become stronger than him/her. Often we start marking various characters as black and white, while there is nothing can be attributes so in absolute manner. Practically, almost everyone has the shades of grays, and it is the responsibility of the storyteller to explore them in that way.

What I like in this book is the way the character of Arjun is explored. Of course, the way characters of Ravana, Ruchik, Satyavati, Yamadagni, Renuka, Ram and others are explored are pretty effective and nice, Arjun's character is given proper footage. I'd not seen it is explored so much in other scriptures I came across so far. And I confirm that if it is not explored so nicely, his actions and others' reactions towards the same might not be that convincing. With that let me tell you that each of the character is given its due importance.

The book is good at philosophical and spiritual level as well. The expertise of the author in building scenes and explaining surroundings and exploring battle is admirable. He is a worthy competitor to the bestselling authors in this genre in many aspects.

Here are some of the interesting lines from the book:
In every country or society, there exists a few who are unhappy with the way things are…
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No matter how far one travelled, one had to come back home at the end of the journey.
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Well, what is history but the variation of facts by the victorious and the self-sympathizing delusions of the defeated?
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The cover page is good but could have been a little better.

Overall, a fantastically retold mythological tale with logical approach. The book has good literary attributes and strong characters.

Book Review Link: https://thinkerviews.com/books/english-books/the-legend-of-parshuraam-by-dr-vine...… (mehr)