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I am looking into the site and I have seen this question: Did Ravana ever meet Parashurama?. Though there is no problem with the question, instead problem seems to be with answer.

In my opinion answer to this question should be "No, Parashurama and Ravana never met".

My question is, how can we cite a source for this question?

I am raising this question here because there are lot of questions of this type and I fear, they will remain unanswered forever. A similar question is this:

Did Hanuman ever meet Lord Dattatreya?.

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2 Answers 2

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In my Opinion we should use Negation Rules for citing in such cases: ie,

Rather than searching it is mentioned in this scripture we can state it is not mentioned in these scriptures.

Ie. For the question like: Did Ravana ever meet Parashurama?

We can answer as:

No, Ravana didn't met Parashurama: Meeting of Ravana and Parashurama isn't attested in authentic scriptures like:

Valmiki Ramayana, Adhyatma Ramayana of Brahmanda Purana, Padma Purana, story of Parashurama in Brahmanda Purana, etc...

However if the answer is simply 'Yes'.

we can simply cite sources where that 'yes' part is found.

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    I agree with this too.
    – Triyugi Narayan Mani
    Jul 19, 2016 at 12:34
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    I think a bit more than that should be required. Like saying "this is the part of the Valmiki Ramayana that discusses Ravana's life, and this is the part of the Valmiki Ramayana that discusses Parashurama's story, and neither part mentions anything about them meeting." And similarly for the other scriptures you mentioned.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Jul 19, 2016 at 17:43
  • @Keshav Srinivasan Oh! It's also good... Feel free to edit the answer...
    – Tezz
    Jul 19, 2016 at 18:18
  • We should concentrate on answering these type of questions than just commenting. @TriyugiNarayanMani
    – Sarvabhouma
    Jun 29, 2017 at 5:38
  • @SreeCharan Yes. I am trying in this area. You may check hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/18883/…
    – Triyugi Narayan Mani
    Jun 29, 2017 at 6:09
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Though this has been answered, I would like to add my opinions on this.

Negations are always complicated especially when we have the following conditions:

  1. We do not have the entirety of scriptures (puranas / vedas etc) that have ever been written available to us.

  2. The scriptures are not a daily dairy of what every noteworthy person does in his/her lifetimes until death.

Hence I think we should mention something along the lines of:

There is no scriptural evidence (currently available) that point to the fact that Ravana met Parasurama. Hence it is unknown if they met. Or if they did meet, the meeting was not deemed noteworthy enough to be documented.

That would be the more accurate representation rather than negating the occurrence. Note that Ravana's and Parasurama's lifetimes overlapped, and they were among the illustrious ones of their times, they both worshipped Shiva and obtained weapons from him, and they lived / are living very long lives. It's quite probable that they would have met each other in some public gathering / one-on-one etc.

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    Quite appropriate.
    – Triyugi Narayan Mani
    Jun 29, 2017 at 5:26
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    'are living very long lives' - Ravana is still alive? He's dead even according to scriptures.
    – Say No To Censorship
    Sep 16, 2018 at 22:51
  • @sv. The phrase is 'they lived / are living very long lives'. Parashurama fits into the latter context and he is one of the subjects of the question.
    – user1952500
    Sep 17, 2018 at 18:17

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