Ikshvaku, Yuvanashva and Soubhari

Manu happened to sneeze once. As a result of the sneeze, a son known as Ikshvaku came out of his nose. Ikshvaku’s son was Vikushi. Ikshvaku wished to perform a shraddha ceremony and sent his son off to the forest to bring meat for the ceremony. Vikushi killed many deer and felt hungry and tired. To satisfy his hunger he ate a rabbit and brought the other meat to his father, who then offered the mat to Vashishtha who was looking after the ceremony.

“This meat is unclean,” said the sage, “Your son has already eaten the meat of a rabbit”.

Ikshvaku banished Vikushi, although Vikushia did rule the kingdom after Ikshvaku died. Vikukshi had a very brave son called Paranjaya. The devas and the asuras once fought a terrible war and the devas could not defeat the asuras. The devas prayed to Vishnu and Vishnu told them that he would be born on earth as Paranjaya. Under Paranjaya’ as leadership, the devas would be able to defeat the asuras. So the gods came to Paranjaya and asked him to be their leader in this war. Paranjaya agreed to do this only if he could fight the war perched on Indra’s shoulders. Indra adopted the form of a bull. Paranjaya fought the war seated on the bull. The demons were defeated. But from the word Kakut, which means shoulder, Paranjaya hereafter came to be known as Kakutstha.