A battleensued between Arjuna and Lord Siva when the latter
deliberately provoked Arjuna. Lord Siva had not intended
it to be a serious fight, but as time went by, Parvati became
concerned that Arjuna might be hurt. So She recited a
mantra saying that bow, arrow and target were all auspicious.
The mantra may be taken as referring to Lord Siva,
Agni or Lord Narayana, said V.S. Karunakarachariar in a discourse.
When Rama was exiled, sages performingpenance in the
forest requested Him to save them from the demons. Sita argued that He should not take up arms against these demons, for they had not harmed Him. She even offered to hide His bow and arrows and narrated a story to show that the presence of weapons was dangerous.
There was a sage whose penance Indra wanted to disturb.
Assuming a disguise, he told the sage that he was proceeding on a journey and wanted to leave his rare sword, in the hermitage for safekeeping. But after Indra left, the sage
wanted to try how good the sword was. So he used it to cut
down a plantain tree, thereby committing his first sin, for
what was the need to cut down the tree? He next killed a cat,
and finally a sage, and all his merits acquired through penance were destroyed. Sita said that this story showed that weapons should be kept away.
However, Rama wanted to keep His promise to the sages.
He killed 14000 demons that attacked Him. But the demons
were in fact sages who had been cursed by Sage Gautama,
who had told them that they would be released from the
state of being demons when Rama’s arrows struck them.
So Rama using His bow and arrows turned out to be auspicious for everyone. Therefore Parvati’s mantra to save Arjuna, which talks of the auspiciousness of bow, arrow and
target could well be a reference to Rama.
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