Paippalādi (son of Śravishṭhā)

Paippalādi

Kauśika has other meanings too: see all meanings of Kauśika. Śravishṭhā has other meanings too: see all meanings of Śravishṭhā.

Paippalādi is a brāhmaṇa, the son of Śravishṭhā. With his brother Kauśika he found the infant son of King Śvetakarṇa and Mālinī lying abandoned on a mountain, washed him, named him Ajapārśva and became his minister. He is not Paippalāda or Pippalāda.

The finding of Ajapārśva

The Sūta tells the munis, at the end of the Paurava line, of the Jānamejaya kings. The first of them was Satyakarṇa, who lived in Vārāṇasī, a hero and a yajvan (one who performs yajñas), generous with dakshiṇā. His heir was the mighty Śvetakarṇa, who, being without a son, went to the forest. There Mālinī, also called Grāhamālinī, the daughter of Sucāru of the Yadu line, conceived by him. Then Śvetakarṇa set out on the mahāprasthāna, the great final journey he had resolved on. Mālinī followed her beloved, gave birth to a tender son on the way, and leaving the infant there followed the king, as Draupadī followed her husbands on the mahāprasthāna.

The child lay crying on the mountain, and the clouds in compassion gave him shade. Then the two sons of Śravishṭhā, Paippalādi and Kauśika, took pity on him and washed him in water. He had rolled crying on the stone, and his two blood-stained flanks had become like a goat’s; so the munis named him Ajapārśva, “goat-flanked”.

The two brāhmaṇas raised him in the house of Remaka, whose wife took him as her own son. Paippalādi and Kauśika became his ministers, and their sons and grandsons lived alike.

Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 13

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 13