Krisha mocks Shringi about his father's humiliation
Shringi, a powerful but hot-tempered young sage, returns home after a divine audience. His friend Krisha greets him not with welcome, but with a taunt about his father carrying a carcass. The mockery strikes at Shringi's pride and provokes the rage that will soon be unleashed upon a king.
Shringi was the son of the sage Shamika. He was young, blessed with the power of austerities, and extremely powerful. He was also great in his vows, but given to great anger and difficult to appease. He had just been in the presence of the supreme god Brahma, engaged in ensuring the welfare of all beings, having been commanded to attend him. He was returning home from this divine audience.
A friend of his was there to meet him. His name was Krisha, also a rishi’s son, and the two often spent time together. Krisha did not offer congratulations. Instead, he jestingly told Shringi what had happened in his absence.
On hearing the news, the rishi’s son, easily prone to anger and like poison itself, was enraged.
Krisha pressed the taunt. “O Shringi! Do not be too proud. You are an ascetic of great powers. But your father has got a carcass around his shoulders.” He framed it as a question of status among their peers: “Sons of rishis like us are successful, have knowledge of the brahman (the ultimate reality) and are immersed in asceticism. But you should keep quiet.” Then he delivered the final, mocking challenge: “Where are your powers, your proud words and your arrogance when you see your father carrying a carcass?”
The insult was precise. It questioned Shringi’s spiritual merit, his social standing among the sons of sages, and his very identity as a powerful ascetic—all by pointing to the humiliation of his father, who sat silently with a dead snake around his neck. For Shringi, whose anger was a well-known and formidable force, this provocation was a spark thrown into dry tinder.