Ep 6-10

Vichitravir passes away without giving heir to Hastinapur because of bad health.So, Quen Satyavati calls in Vyasa who is also like a son to her. Vyasa has been in penance and so his looks are quite frightening and distorted. To carry on the heirloom of the family, he agrees. When Ambalika enters the chambers of Vyasa, she gets freigtheened by his looks and closes her eyes, and so the offspring born is blind, he is Dhritarastra. When Ambika enters the chambers she gets freigthened but does not close her eyes so, she gives birth to a child who is born weak, and will remain of a bit ill health throughout the life, he is Pandu. These childrens are not born of coitus,  but by divine powers of Vyasa. Since both the princes born have some incompetency, Satyavati order Ambika and Ambalika that either of them should again visit Vyasa. But freightened by his looks they don't go and send their maid instead. The child born of maid is going to be the most learned and bright minds of the kingdom in future. He is Vidura.

 

All the three princes grow up and come back to Hastinapur. Bhisma wanted Dhritrashtra to become the king, but Vidura using the knowledge gained during his study, puts a point, and advises to make Pandu the king. And thus Pandu becomes the king. When time of marriage comes, Dhritrashtra is married first as he is the elder brother. He marries the princess of Gandhar, "Gandhari". Since her husband is blind, she also ties a ribbon to her eyes, so she could feel the pain of her husband and understand him. Pandu marries Kunti, Kunti is daughter of King of Yadavas, King Shoorsen, and thus is the sister of Vasudeva. Vasudeva is the father of Lord Krishna. Thus Kunti is the aunt of Lord Krishan (Bua). In her father's home Kunti's name is Pritha. When King Shoorsen  gave her away to his heirless brother Kuntibhoj, "Pritha" became 'Kunti". During those days, Sage Durvasa visited Kuntibhoj. Kunti worshipped the sage and sage Durvasa pleased with her service, grants her a wish. She asks for a mantra, "that would help her in the future". Sage teaches her a mantra, which when recited can call any god from heaven to earth. One day she was skeptical about sage Durvasa's granted verse so looks upto Sun and recites the mantra, so Sun God comes down to earth and grants her a child, who is born with  Child was born with an armor and earrings. He was Danveer Karna. Since Kunti was not married when Karna was born, she gave him away. She wrapped him up in a box and gave him away in the river.

Kunti and Pandu marries. When Pandu is winning battles and extending boundaries of Hastinapur. He has a face off with King of Madra. Instead of having a fight, King of Madra offers a hand of friendship which is accepted by Pandu. King of Madra also gives Pandu a gift in form of his Sister, princess Madri. Thus Pandu has two wives, Kunti and Madri. When Pandu returns to Hastinapur. He is asked by Vidura and Bhisma to go on a vacation with both his wives and get some rest. So Pandu along with both the queens go to Tapovan for spending some peaceful time.In Tapovan they meet Sage Kindam. Sage Kindam tells the  king and queens about the debts one needs to fulfill before dying, they are:

 1.) Gods Debt  (Devrin) : It is of Lord Vishnu  - Can be fulfilled through Charity

2.) Sage's Debt (Rishirin) : It is of Lord Shiva -Can be fulfilled by acquisition and sharing of Knowledge

 3.) Ancestral debt (PitruRin): It is of Lord Brahma -Fulfilled through extending heirloom

Before leaving for Tapovan, Pandu makes Dhritrashtra the acting king. Dhritrashtra's ear are filled by Shakuni, brother of Kunti, as how he looks great and the crown suits so well on him. In Tapovan accidentaly Pandu kills Sage Kindam and his devotee, mistaking him for a tiger. While dying the enraged sage curses Pandu that he will die when he fill get closer to a women for procreation. Pandu gets frieghtened by listening to this. He returns back to Hastinapur and tellls the court everything that has happened.To save himself from the curse, he punishes himself an exile from kingdom and worldy pleasures. But both the queens also come with him. In exile in Tapovan, he tells Kunti about the curse of Sage. At the time Kunti remembers the Mantra given to her by Sage Durvasa, she recites the mantra and thus Yudhistira, Bheema and Arjuna are Born. Nakul and Sahadev are children of Queen Madri. Back in Hastinapur Gandhari gives birth to Duryodhan. 

Ep 1-5

Kuru dynasty has six generations. And the seeds of Mahabharata were laid way before loosing Draupadi in gambling by Pandavas.
King Bharat, the ruler of Hastinapur had nine sons. When it was time to choose a heir he was hesitated and finally decided to make none of them the heir of throne. He implemented his belief of "Karma" above " Birth". And Shantanu was made the King.



King Shantanu fell in love with Devi Ganga. He asks her to marry him, to which Ganga agrees but with only one condition, that "King Shantanu should never ask Devi Ganga any question, if he will ask her, she will leave him forever". The pink heart of King promptly agrees with the Devi. After their marriage Devi Ganga gives birth to a son, heir to the throne of Hastinapur. Devi Ganga takes the newborn child and to disbelief of King Shantanu drowns him in the river. King Shantanu is astounded and hurt, but to his condition( VACHAN), he couldn't ask her. And the same scenario repeated for more 6 time. Thus in total 7 of the new born child of King Shantanu and Devi Ganga are drowned by Devi in the river. When their 8th child is born, King Shantanu finally made the courage and stopped Devi from drowning the child.

Devi Ganga answers King Shantanu that she has actually freed their newborns from a curse. She is actually  from heaven and is daughter of Brahma. And on earth she is living a curse along with King Shantanu. In the previous life King Shantanu was King Mahabhishak, who was also a friend of  Lord Indra. he usually used to visit Lord Indra to watch the dance of celestial damsels. One day Lord Brahma also visited the court along with his daughter Ganga. King Mahabhishak and Devi Ganga looked at each other and instantly were infatuated with each other. They looked in each others eye without blinking. At the moment a light breeze blew away the stole( aanchal/dupatta) of Devi Ganga. Because of that everyone averted their gaze from the damsels and looked away as a form of respect, but King Mahabhisak lost in the eyes of Devi Ganga didn't notice  the event and kept looking in her eyes. This act was was seen by Lord Brahma. Lord Brahma was infuriated and  cursed King Mahabhishak and also Devi Ganga as she was a willing participant in the digressing event, that in their next life both of them will be born on Earth(Mrutyu Lok).

To free their newborns from the curse i.e to live on earth, Devi Ganga drowns them in the river. And since King Shantanu has broken his condition (vachan) given to Devi Ganga, she is also freed from the curse.She takes the new born child who she names, "DEVRATA" with her.

In the hope that Devi Ganga would meet him someday, he would usually take a stroll by the river. One day he finds two new born children by the river, as there was no one around and they happened to be children of some sage, he takes them with him. As they were found by grace of god, he names the boy child, "KRIPA" and the girl child "KRIPI". These children were given to the royal priest for their bringing them up. Kripi later grows up to become the wife of DRONOACHARYA.

When the right time comes she comes back to earth along with Devrata and gives him to King Shantanu. Devrata has excelled in his skills of archery which he has learned from Rishi Bhargava. Rejoiced by the return of his son,  he names him the Yuvraj of Hastinapur.

One day King Shantanu and  Yuvraj Devrata go for hunting. On their course, King Shantanu sees a beautiful lady in a boat. She turns out to be SATYAVATI, she helps passerby to cross the river. King Shantanu though being rejoiced with the return of his son, still felt a void in his heart, void of not having a loved one. To ask Satyavati's hand for marriage King Shantanu visits her house. "Dasa", her father readily accepts the marriage but puts a condition in front of the king, that the offspring of  Satyavati and Shantanu should only be made heir to the throne. Since King Shantanu has already given his word to Devrata, he defies the condition and storms out of the house. When Devrata comes to know about his father's love with Satyavati, he himself goes to the house of Satyavati and convinces her to marry his father King Shanatanu. On realizing the complexity of the scenario he takes a oath (PRAN) that he would never sit on the throne and he also vows(PRATIGYA) celibacy.  Thus he unites his father King Shantanu with Satyavati. For his act King Shantanau pronounces Devrata as "BHISMA". And King Shantanau also gives Devrata a boon (Vardaan), that he can not die, till he wishes to die, "IchhaMrutyu".

King Shantanu has two sons with Satyavati, Chitrangada and VichatraVir. After the demise of King Shantanu, Chitrangada sits on the throne but within few days, he passes away. And then Vichatravir rules Hastinapur. Time passes and Vichitravir reaches the age of marriage. Kashi and Hastinapur had old relations between them since, princess of Kashi was married to King Bharat of Hastinapur. But the relations got soured when King Shantanu refused the marriage proposal of princess of Kashi with Devrata. So for the swayamvar of  princesses of Kashi, Amba,

 Ambika and Ambalika, Hastinapur is not invited. When Bhisma gets to know about it, he gets angered and goes to Kashi on behalf of Vichitravir. He storms the event and using his divine powers of archery, frightens all the princes and ministers present there, including  King of Kashi. He brings all the three princesses with him back to Hastinapur for making them queens of the empire.

On meeting Satyavati, Amba confesses to her she was in love with King of Shaalva and in the swayamvar she already had chosen her husband. Satyavati and Bhisma, heartily accepted her dialogue and allowed her to go to King of Shaalva . When the king sees Amba, he feels insulted as he thinks he was given Amba out of pity and instead there should have been a duel or war between him and Bhisma, and so he doesn't accepts Amba and sends her back to Bhisma. Amba takes this a grave disrespect. She feels she is disdained because of Bhisma, if only Bhisma wouldn't have sent back her to Shaalva, then nothing would have happened. To rectify the mistake, she demanded Bhisma to marry her.  But since Bhisma has taken the vow of celibacy, he denies her proposition. Amba gets deeply hurt by the words of Bhisma and takes vow in front of the court of Hastinapur, that she would never forgive Bhisma and would avenge her insult by becoming the reason of Bhisma's death. And she storms out of the court.

Prologue

We are the generation of technology and smartness. For most of us interest lies in technology, movies, reading thrillers and mysteries and so forth. But in the lifestyle adapted we forget a very important part. And the part is our history, our mythology. Our country is a very religious place and we have two great epics to our country land, MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA. And to our utter shame, our knowledge about both the epics is grotesquely disturbed. In this fast pace generation it isn't possible for anyone to read our great Indian literature and get the knowledge for the same, or patiently hear about the stories from our grandparents or a priest in temple.

In the late '90s, to educate Indian audience, these two epics were portrayed on Indian television for the first time. B.R.Chopra's MAHABHARATA and Ramanand Sagar's  RAMAYANA. 30 Years later amidst lock-down imposed across the nation due to CORONA VIRUS, these series are re-telecasted. But again our interest and patience lies in different dimension. In the series of blogs, I will be summarizing the episodes, and try my best to bring the vividness of the scene. Thus, making our mythology easily understandable. .