Krisha Tells Shringi How Parikshit Insulted Shamika
Shringi, the sage's son, hears a shocking rumor: his father is carrying a corpse. He demands the truth from his friend Krisha. Krisha narrates the incident—how a tired, frustrated King Parikshit placed a dead snake on the silent sage's shoulders.
Shringi was a rishi’s son, powerful and easily prone to anger. When the news reached him that his father, the sage Shamika, was carrying a corpse, he was enraged. He turned to his friend Krisha, abandoning all pleasantness of speech. “Why,” he demanded, “should my father carry a corpse?”
Krisha told him. “O friend! When King Parikshit was roaming around on his hunt today, he placed a dead snake on your father’s shoulders.”
Shringi’s anger sharpened into a focused point. “What harm had my father done to that evil-souled king? O Krisha! Tell me this and you will witness my ascetic powers.”
Krisha laid out the sequence. Abhimanyu’s son, King Parikshit, had been hunting. He wounded a swift deer with a feathered arrow and chased it alone into the deep forest until he lost sight of it. Wandering the wilderness, suffering from hunger, thirst, and fatigue, the king came upon Shamika seated in meditation.
Parikshit asked the sage about the missing deer. He asked repeatedly. But Shamika was under a vow of silence — mauna vrata — and remained immobile, offering no reply.
Thereupon, the king picked up a dead snake with the tip of his bow and placed it on the sage’s shoulders.
“O Shringi!” Krisha concluded. “Rigid in his vows, your father is still seated there. However, the king has returned to his city, named after the elephant.”