Week 9: Narayan's Mahabharata (pp. 1-83)Assignments - Reading Guide A - Reading Guide B - Mahabharata Resources |
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Your Reading A for this week is Narayan's Mahabharata, pp.
1-39.
p.1 Śantanu
and Ganga. Śantanu is
a king whose capital is at Hastinapura.
He falls in love with a woman whom he meets by the river. The woman agrees
to marry him provided that he never question her actions. She then proceeds
to drown their newborn babies one by one in the river. When the eighth child
is born, Śantanu protests. His wife then explains that she is the river
Ganga incarnated
in this form to give birth to eight gods, the Vasus,
who are being punished with a human incarnation for having stolen Vasishtha's
cow. By drowning the babies, Ganga returns them to heaven. She takes
the eighth child with her when she disappears into the river and later returns
him to his father when he is grown. His name is Devavratha,
although you will know him by the name Bhishma.
p.
3. Śantanu and Satyavati. Śantanu then falls in love again
with a woman who is a fisherman's daughter named Satyavati.
He wants to marry her but her father objects because Bhishma has already
been designated as Śantanu's successor. Bhishma renounces his claim to the
throne to help his father, and he also renounces the possibility of having
children of his own. It is because of this extreme vow that he acquires
the name Bhishma.
Satyavati and Śantanu
have two sons, Chitrangada and Vichitravirya.
Chitrangada becomes king, but is killed. After his death, Bhishma rules as
regent for the young Vichitravirya. A king holds a swayamvara for
his daughters,
Amba, Ambika,
and Ambalika.
Bhishma seizes all three for Vichitravirya, but Amba had promised herself to
the king of Śalwa. Bhishma sends Amba away, but the king of Śalwa rejects
her because she has been in another's man's house. Amba vows revenge on Bhishma.
Meanwhile, Ambika and Ambalika are married to Vichitravirya.
p.
5. The birth of Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura. Vichitravirya
dies without having fathered any sons. Satyavati begs Bhishma to father sons
with Vichitravirya's widows Ambika and Ambalika. Bhishma says he cannot
break his vow of celibacy. Satyavati proposes another solution: the widows
can sleep with her son Vyasa.
Before her marriage, Satyavati had ferried a rishi named Paraśara across
the river. He fell in love with Satyavati, even though she smelled like a fish
(she had been conceived when the sperm of a gandharva had
fallen into the river and been swallowed by a fish). Paraśara changed Satyavati's
fish smell to a lovely perfume. He then slept with Satyavati and they had a
child: Vyasa. Satyavati summons her son Vyasa to sleep with Vichitravirya's
widows. He looks very strange because he has been practicing severe austerities
and religious rituals. Ambika is repelled by Vyasa's appearance and closes
her eyes, so their son, Dhritarashtra,
is born blind. Ambalika turns pale with fright when she sees Vyasa and their
son, Pandu, is
born looking very pale. Then Ambalika has her maid sleep with Vyasa in her
place. The servant likes Vyasa and reacts to him positively; their child, Vidura,
is born without any flaw.
p.
9. The sons of Pandu and the sons of Dhritarashtra. Dhritarashtra
marries Gandhari,
who covers her eyes to share her husband's blindess.Pandu has two wives, Kunti and Madri,
but he cannot have children because of a curse.
While he was out hunting, Pandu shot at a deer as it was having sex. This
deer was a celestial being in disguise. The dying deer cursed Pandu so that
he would also die when making love. Kunti, however, has a mantra for
obtaining sons from the gods. She got this mantra from the sage Durvasa as
a reward for her kindness to him. Kunti
knows that the mantra works because previously she had summoned Surya,
the sun god, and conceived a child with him. That
child was named Karna.
Kunti had set her son Karna adrift in a basket in the river (and he was rescued
and raised by a charioteer and his wife). In order to get sons, Pandu asks
Kunti to summon the god Yama first
and have a child by him. Yudhishthira is
the son of Kunti and Yama. He is characterized by dharma.
Next, Kunti summons Vayu,
the god of wind, and she has a son called
Bhimasena, or Bhima,
who is enormously strong. [Be careful not to mix up
the characters Bhishma and Bhima!]
The third son, Arjuna is
the son of Kunti and Indra,
and he is an expert in weapons. Pandu wants more sons, so Madri uses the mantra
to summon the Aświns,
the twin gods, and has two sons by them: Sahadeva and Nakula.
These
five sons of Pandu - Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva - are
called the Pandavas.
Meanwhile, Pandu's brother Dhritarashtra has 100 sons, the eldest of whom is
called Duryodhana.
The sons of Dhritarasthtra are known as the Kauravas (because
they are descended from Kuru).
Pandu then cannot resist his passion for Madri
and he dies while making love to her. Madri climbs into his funeral pyre leaving
Kunti behind to raise their five children.
p.
11. Drona trains the boys. Kunti and the Pandavas go to live
in Hastinapura where Dhritarashtra is king. He brings the sons of Pandu into
his household and the Pandavas and Kauravas (who are cousins to each other)
are raised together. Duryodhana, however, resents the tricks that his cousins
play on him, especially Bhima. Duryodhana has Bhima drugged and thrown in the
river, but Bhima survives.
Drona is the boys'
guru. Drona trains the Pandavas and the Kauravas, together with his own son, Aśwatthaman.
As a test, Drona's pupils have to shoot at an artificial bird. Only Arjuna
is able to focus on the bird with enough attention to pass the test. Once while
bathing in the river, Drona is caught by a crocodile but Arjuna rescues him
and as a reward Arjuna receives a secret weapon from Drona. 
After
their training, Drona holds a public ceremony for his pupils. The charioteer Sanjaya describes
the events that take place to the blind king Dhritarashtra. Arjuna gives an
amazing performance. Then a stranger arrives: it is Karna, and Kunti recognizes
him. Karna has come to challenge Arjuna, and Duryodhana is delighted to find
an ally in Karna. Kripa,
another guru, asks Karna about his parents. When Karna cannot prove that he
is of royal descent, Duryhodhana makes him King of Anga.
Before Karna and Arjuna are able to fight, the day comes to an end. As his
teacher's fee, Drona wants his pupils to capture King Drupada.
Drona and Drupada had been friends, but Drupada had betrayed Drona. Now Drona
wants revenge. Drupada is captured and brought back as a prisoner to Drona.
Drona keeps half of Drupada's kingdom and returns half to Drupada.
p.
21. The escape from the fire. Dhritarashtra had designated
Yudhishthira as his heir but he is disturbed by Yudhishthira's popularity with
the people. Duryodhana and his brothers are not as popular with the people
as the Pandavas. Duryodhana urges his father Dhritarashtra to exile the Pandavas.
Dhritarashtra decides to send Yudhishthira to Varanavata.
With hidden clues, Vidura gives Yudhishthira a warning. Purochana,
an agent of Duryodhana builds a House of Joy for the Pandavas. It is made of
oil, resin and straw to make it easy to catch on fire. Vidura sends a miner
to the Pandavas and they build an escape tunnel. Bhima sets fire to the House
of Joy and the Pandavas escape, although everyone thinks they have died.
p.
27. Life in hiding. In the forest, Bhima kills a dangerous
rakshasa. The
sister of the rakshasa, Hidimba,
falls in love with Bhima and they have a son named Ghatotkacha.
Kunti and the Pandavas travel into the forest, away from Hastinapura. Vyasa
urges the Pandavas to disguise themselves as brahmins and
thus to conceal their identity as kshatriyas.
They beg each day and in the evening Kunti divides the alms that they have
gathered. Bhima battles with another rakshasa named Baka,
and everyone is surprised that a brahmin is able to defeat such a savage demon..
p.
31. Draupadi's swayamvara. Meanwhile, King Drupada is
holding a swayamvara for
his daughter, Draupadi (Drupada
also has a son, whose name is Dhrishtadyumna).
The Pandavas go to the swayamvara where Karna and Duryodhana are also in attendance.
Krishna (an avatar of
the god Vishnu)
is also there, together with his brother Balarama.
Krishna is the king of Dwaraka and
the leader of the Yadava people.
Krishna recognizes that the brahmins are actually the Pandavas in disguise.
Arjuna is able to string the bow and hit the target, so he wins Draupadi as
his bride. As usual, Kunti tells the brothers to share whatever they have acquired
that day. This means the five brothers are going to share Draupadi as their
wife. Drupada is stunned to find out his daughter will have five husbands.
Vyasa explains that Draupadi had also had "five
husbands" in a previous
lifetime, when she was a woman named Nalayani married
to a sage who slept with her in the guise of
five different men. After her husband left her, she prayed to Iśvara
[Śiva] to have these five husbands back again. This prayer is
answered in the lifetime of Draupadi when she marries the five Pandava
brothers.
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