![]() ![]() Bheeshm brought up these three boys with great care. To a maid of these queens was born a son of Vyasa called Vidur. Thus, by the Niyog custom, the two queens each had a son of Vyasa: to the elder queen was born a blind son called Dhritarashtra, and to the younger was born an otherwise healthy but extremely pale son called Pandu. According to the laws of the day, a child born to an unwed mother was taken to be a step-child of the mother's husband by that token, Vyasa could be considered Shantanu's son and could be used to perpetuate the Kuru clan that ruled Hastinapur. ![]() Vyasa had been born to Satyavati of a great sage named Parashar before her marriage to Shantanu. So that the family line did not die out, Satyavati summoned her son Vyasa to impregnate the two queens. Shantanu was so pleased with his son that he granted to Devavrat the boon of choosing the time of his own death.ĭhritarashtra was the strongest of all princes in the country, Pandu was skilled in warfare & archery, & Vidur knew all the branches of learning, politics, & statesmanship. On account of the terrible vow that he'd taken that day, Devavrat came to be known as Bheeshm. The prince then took Satyavati home to the palace so that the king, his father, could marry her. Unwilling to deny Devavrat his rights, Shantanu declined to do so but the prince, on coming to know of the matter, rode over to Satyavati's house, vowed to renounce the throne and to remain celibate throughout his life. Her father refused to let her marry the king unless the king promised that Satyavati's son and descendants would inherit the throne. ![]() Several years later, when Devavrat had grown up to be an accomplished prince, Shantanu fell in love with Satyavati. Shantanu, the king of Hastinapur, was married to Ganga (personification of the Ganges) with whom he had a son called Devavrat. Including within it the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata is one of the most important texts of ancient Indian, indeed world, literature. It was first narrated by a student of Vyasa at a snake-sacrifice of the great-grandson of one of the major characters of the story. The events in the epic play out in the Indian subcontinent and surrounding areas. At 100,000 verses, it is the longest epic poem ever written, generally thought to have been composed in the 4th century BCE or earlier. Krishna-Dwaipayan Vyasa, himself a character in the epic, composed it as, according to tradition, he dictated the verses and Ganesha wrote them down. Interwoven into this narrative are several smaller stories about people dead or living, and philosophical discourses. The Mahabharatais an ancient Indian epic where the main story revolves around two branches of a family - the Pandavas and Kauravas - who, in the Kurukshetra War, battle for the throne of Hastinapura. ![]()
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