need, he will forget everything he has
learned as his student.
Parashurameshvar Temple
Temple constructed about 750 C.E.in
the city of Bhubaneshvarin the state
of Orissa, dedicated to the god Shiva
in his aspect as the “Lord of
Parashuram.” This title refers to
Parashuram’s long period of asceti-
cism, in which he worshiped Shiva as
his chosen deity and was rewarded
with Shiva’s grace. The temple is an
early example of the Orissan variant
of the northern Indian Nagaratemple
style. The Nagara style emphasizes
verticality, with the whole temple
building culminating in a single high
point, and the Orissan variant of this
style has a single enormous tower
(deul) over the image of the temple’s
primary deity, with shorter subsidiary
buildings leading up to it. The
Parashurameshvar temple is the first
example of this basic pattern—a low,
flat assembly hall (jagamohan), fol-
lowed by a much taller and narrower
tower (deul), in this case about forty
feet high. Although later Orissan tem-
ples are much larger—some of the
deuls tower over 200 feet—and often
include additional buildings and struc-
tures, they all retain this basic pattern.
Parashuram Jayanti
Festival marking the birthday of
Parashuram avatar, Vishnu’s sixth
avatar. This takes place on the third
day of the bright (waxing) half of the
lunar month of Baisakh (April–May),
the same day as the festival of
Akshaya Trtiya.
Parikshit
Mythic king in the Lunar Line, who
serves as an example that one’s fate can-
not be escaped. Parikshit is the grand-
son of Arjuna, one of the five Pandava
brothers who are the protagonists in the
Mahabharata, the later of the two great
Hindu epics.
Parikshit inherits the throne from
Yudhishthira, Arjuna’s elder brother,
and according to tradition rules right-
eously for sixty years, but it is his death
that is best remembered. Fond of hunt-
ing, Parikshit one day comes across a
meditating sage while he is chasing a
wounded deer. When the sage refuses to
answer to his inquiries about the deer,
Parikshit grows angry and, with his bow,
drapes a dead cobra around the sage’s
neck. The sage remains unaware of this,
but his sonfinds out about it when his
playmates jeer at him. Furious, the son
lays a curse that the person responsible
will be fatally bitten within seven days
by the great serpent Takshaka. When he
discovers that the king is responsible,
the son repents his curse to the King.
Parikshit takes all possible precau-
tions to avoid his fate. He builds a house
on a huge pillar, has anything brought
into the house carefully searched, and
surrounds himself with physicians who
can cure snakebite. After six days with-
out incident, the king begins to relax his
vigilance. As the seventh day is ending,
Takshaka conceals himself as a worm in
a piece of fruit, changes into his real
shape when the fruit is cut open, and
bites the king, killing him.Parinamavada
(“transformation-relationship”) Philo-
sophical perspective that explains the
relationship between the Ultimate
Reality or realities and the perceivable
world, and describes the world as a gen-
uine transformation of this reality.
This position is espoused by propo-
nents of the Samkhya, Vishishthadvaita
Vedanta, and Bhedabhada philo-
sophical schools. All three of these are
proponents of a causal modelcalled
satkaryavada. The satkaryavada model
assumes that effects preexist in their
causes, and that, when these effects
appear, they are transformations (pari-
nama) of those causes. The classic
example for this model is the transfor-
mation of milk to curds, butter, and clar-
ified butter: each of these effects wasParinamavada