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Since I moved to America. I have faced many questions about my country (India) and my culture. I want to utilize this podcast to familiarize my culture to western world. Mahabharata is a story written by Veda Vyasa. The same person who originally deciphered Vedas and spearheaded the preservation of these ancient texts. Mahabharata is supposed to be his attempt to bring the knowledge of Vedas to common man, in the form of a narrative story. It is said, there is nothing that is not included within Mahabharata and there is nothing that is left out. I will just tell you the story. You be the Jude.
Let's start the story. Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a king named Mahabisha. Maha means great. And Bisha is his name, a great king. He ruled vast lands. He performed 1000 Ashwameda Yagas and 1000 Rajasu Yayagas. I'll explain Ashwameda Yaga and Rajasu Yaga later in the story, because as I said, Mahabharata covers everything. So I don't have to like, they will take, you know, I'll get an opportunity to tell you what those Yagas are. But right now, you know, he did these, like, you know, he established himself by doing these Yagas.
You know, Ashwameda Yaga, you send a horse and however long the horse travels in a year is all you claim that land to be yours. And if anybody questions you, you defeat them in a war. And that's how he did thousands of them. He basically captured most of the land. And then through after that, he also became a Rajarishi, which means he attained higher level of consciousness through meditation. And and he got once he died, he got access to the heavens with his own body. I mean, this guy is basically next in line for Indra. Indra is the king of the heavens. And usually he is that it is a title bestowed upon a I mean, anybody, any of the beings in the 14 worlds could become Indra and usually humans could do that too. And Indra is basically controls the like, I'll get more deeper into it, but he controls the heavens. He controls all the elemental gods, the planetary gods, our internal gods. And this this is a very valuable position. And this, you know, and Bisha is right in right up there in the line for the for the throne.
And so he is pretty much hanging out in the heavens, waiting for his time to take over. And one day he was present in the court of Brahma, the creator, and all the celestials are there. They're all worshipping Brahma and Ganga, goddess of water, comes there.
And when she arrives, a gust of wind blows and and displaces her garment and reveals her thigh.
And everybody looks down because they don't want to look at her.
And in that in that position, you know, out of respect, they bow their head.
But Bisha continues to gaze her. And this disturbs Brahma.
And Brahma says, you know, you haven't lost your humanly desires yet. So you need to go back and reborn in human through a human vagina and.
And enjoy the worldly desires and and figure out a way to get rid of them and come back. So he basically curses him to be born as a human.
So Bisha.
Doesn't know what to do. He is shocked. The only thing he can do is he thinks quickly, like how can I have the best life in the world? And then he realizes King Pratipa is the biggest king at this time. I know. So he's like, I would like to be born to King Pratipa, the king of Hastinapura, the present day Delhi. So Brahma grants him that wish and Mahabha Bisha is born to King Pratipa and his wife Surandha as Shantanu. That's his name on the earth. And Shantanu, as he gets older, he takes on the throne. His only job as the king at the time is a big vast kingdom. They don't really have enemies. So the only thing he needs to do is protect the farmers from wild bees.
So he's pretty much he takes up. He's hunting all the time. He loves hunting. His kingdom is vast.
He's ruling the entire world as far as he's concerned.
There is no threat of attacks.
So he's enjoying his favorite pastime of hunting.
Now farmers need help. He's there. And he's having fun. Instead of sending army, he would go and hunt by himself.
Ganga, who saw what happened and kind of feels bad that Mahabha Bisha lost his position because of her and through that sorrow, she also feels love for him and a desire for him. Decides she would come and take care of him in the earth and help him resolve his desires. So she desires. So she starts. She comes down to earth. And by now, Pratipa, Shantanu is the king. He took over the kingdom. Pratipa is retired. He's a Rajaishi. He's sitting on the banks of Yamuna. And he's meditating. He gave up his kingdom.
And Ganga comes and sits on his right thigh.
A man's right thigh is reserved for his daughter or daughter-in-law, while the left thigh is for his wife.
Since she sat on his right thigh, he realizes she doesn't desire him, but she desires his son. And he opens his eyes. She looks at him and says, "I need your permission to marry your son." And he grants it to her to marry his son.
And Shantanu, one day while he's hunting at the banks of Ganga,
Ganga herself shows up.
Beautiful woman is already being attracted to her. Shantanu immediately falls in love with her and asks her to marry her, marry her. She agrees, but with one condition. He cannot question her actions, no matter what. The day he stops her from acting on her free will, she will leave him at once. And Shantanu eagerly agrees to this condition. He doesn't know what's coming.
Shantanu and Ganga get married. They have their first child. Shantanu is happy. He's ready to celebrate. Ganga, as soon as the baby is born, takes him, a boy takes him straight to the water,
river Ganga and drops him right there, kills him.
She drowned him in water.
This shocks Shantanu, but remember he cannot question her.
So he bites his lip and continues on with his life with her, enjoying.
They have six more kids, seven kids. She kills them all.
He's not allowed to question her, so he doesn't question her. And then the eighth kid is born. Now Shantanu is in turmoil. He's like, how long is this going to go on?
His desire on her is gone. So he goes and questions her. He's like, no, you got to stop. You can't question her. You can't kill my offspring. So I need a successor.
And she says,
remember the promise you made? You will not stop me from exercising my free will. And today you did. It's time for me to leave. And then she's like, but you have a right to know why I killed seven of your kids. So Ganga tells him what happened. Well, Ganga was en route to find Shantanu on the earth and marry him. She ran into eight Vasus. They're part of the 33 types of gods mentioned in Hinduism. I couldn't find too many details because, you know, as I said, a lot of our literature is destroyed. But from what I gathered is that their attendance at Vishnaloka, Vishnu's world, Vaikuntam. And they came to earth on vacation and out of boredom, there's still a cow belonging to the sage Vasishta. And Vasishta gets upset because cows are a very integral part of a ashramal life. Ashramal life is, you know, where his sage would, you know, have a lot of cows. And pretty much in India, like, you know, if you want to live in villages, a tropical country like India, you know, cow is a very essential. We can go into all the benefits of cow. I will probably do through the story. But let's just say Vasishta is upset and he realizes these people don't understand human suffering. That's why they so blatantly went and stole his cows. So he curses that whoever stole his cow will be born as human beings through a human vagina and go through the pain and suffering.
And these guys, when they immediately they realized they messed up, they don't want to live as humans. So they're like, how do we get rid of this curse? How can we, you know, not suffer as humans? And they came up with the idea that whoever they're born to, they will ask them to kill them. So they are looking for a, to find a mother who will free them of that life as soon as they're born.
And when they see Ganga and they look sad, Ganga asked them like, what's up, what's going on? And they tell her their problem. They got cursed. And now they don't know what to do. And, and if she, if she could do anything to help them and Ganga says, well, I'm going to go to go down to the earth and get married and I might have some kids. So you guys can be born to me and I'll kill you as soon as you're born. I'll do this favor to you. So they make the deal.
And that's how she was killing all the, all the seven and now the eighth one Prabhasa, the main culprit who stole the cow and bias Karma.
He is has to survive on this planet, you know, because Shantanu stopped Ganga from killing him. And now he will suffer. I'm telling you this guy, the kid that she saved, his name is Devavrata.
Later on, he will be known as Bhishma. He is, he suffered more than any other character in the story. Coming back to the story, Ganga explains this to Shantanu and why she killed, you know, their offsprings.
She's like, okay, now that you start me, I'm not going to kill the eighth kid. He's going to live the entire life and pay back for, for all the, all the deeds, you know, pay back for the curse.
But as a mom, she's like, it's my duty to raise him till he's 16. So she's like, I'm going to take him with me and then I'll return to return him to you back to you when he's 16. So she takes the eighth kid with her and she lives. And now Shantanu is depressed.
He lost his beloved wife. He lost his children. He has nobody. He gives up on life. He stops doing everything. He's not attending the court. He's not resolving the issues of his subjects. He gave up his duties as a king. He just fills his time doing what he likes to do best, hunting. I mean, that's pretty much all he does. He did before when he was happy, but now he's sad. That's pretty much all he does. I guess he does it a little bit slow, you know, but that's, that's it. He's very depressed.
So he's shooting his arrows slower.
And one day as he was resting on the banks of Ganga after several years, probably the same place where he met Ganga the first time,
you know, he notices the water flow slowing down and he walks up the stream to find why the water flow is slowing down. And he notices there is a 16 year old boy practicing his archery skills by building a dam on the river.
And he is the one who's slowing the flow of water. And he watches this kid in amazement and his, his, his skills.
And then at that time, Ganga shows up and introduced the boy to Shantanu as his son, Devarota. And she tells him, I trained him with everything I know. I trained him with Vedas, the skills of war. And now he is ready to succeed you, you know, take your son and enjoy your life. And she disappears. Talk about luck. Like he didn't have to do nothing. He got a child ready to go. He's set to do it like no diaper changes, no stress, just shows up ready to go. So Shantanu is happy. His son is back. He orders festivities all over the kingdom and the kid impresses everybody with his knowledge and skills, takes over the day to day tasks of running the kingdom immediately, you know, and Shantanu happily leaves all the responsibilities to his 16 to 16 year old son and gets back to doing what he likes to do hunting.
And one day while he was hunting, his mom's a wonderful perfume and follows it. And it leads him to a woman cleaning her boat on Yamuna river. She is a fisher woman who is helping her dad by rowing and taking care of the boat. Shantanu meets her and falls in love with her. She is beautiful. She smells wonderful. He could not resist her. Her name is Satyavati. She is also known as Yojan Gandhi because of a fragrance that emits from her that spreads for Yojana around her. We don't really know how much Yojana is. There's a dispute on this, but they estimate it to be around eight to nine miles. So wherever she is, about eight to nine miles around her is spread with beautiful fragrance.
And so Shantanu is in love with her. He asked her to marry him and she's like, you got to go talk to my dad Dasaraju. So Shantanu approaches Dasaraju to ask him for his daughter's hand.
Dasaraju is okay with the marriage, but he has few conditions.
He wants the offspring of his daughter to be the successor of Shantanu's kingdom.
Like basically he's saying like Devaratha cannot be the king. Whoever is born to you and my daughter has to be the king.
And this Shantanu cannot accept. It's not reasonable. I mean, he already gave up the kingdom. He's not even running the show anymore. And he can't just go back and say like, hey, I got married. I'm going to get married and you're not the king anymore. So he can't do that. So he's like, he says, I can't accept this. And he goes back to his kingdom. He's depressed again, still hunting, doing what he likes, just slow hunting, you know, the depressed hunting.
And one day Devaratha notices that his dad is depressed again, you know. So he tries to find out. He asks him. He doesn't tell him. So he asks Shantanu's confidantes and gets to know that his dad is in love. And there are conditions for his love to succeed that he cannot accept.
So,
I mean, so he goes to Satyavati's house. Satyavati means a truthful person, a truthful woman. That's the meaning of her name. So he goes back to her, to Bhishma goes to her and her place, talks to her dad, Das Raju and tells him that he is the son of Shantanu and he is willing to give up his kingdom for his father's happiness. So he is okay with the condition of Shantanu's and Satyavati's offspring being the kingdom and he's willing to give up his kingdom. But Das Raju says,
well, you are a good guy. So yeah, you are agreeing for it, but what about your kids? They might try to come back and take the kingdom back and what about them? So it's not going to work out. Like, you know,
and Bhishma says, you know what?
I will fix that.
I won't get married and I will take an oath of brahmacharya.
Oath of brahmacharya means oath of celibacy. He is staying an oath of celibacy for the rest of his life. He is not even going to get married and he's not going to be the future king. All problems solved.
This shocks everyone. I mean, this is, you know, like everybody is stunned, like including the gods. I mean, a kid, you know, a teenager about to inherit the greatest kingdom on the planet,
not only gave it up, but chose to live a life of celibacy. He is showered with praises and everyone starts calling him Bhishma, a person who took a formidable oath. That's the meaning of it. You know, person who took the formidable oath and is living by it stubbornly. That's what Bhishma means. And he gets to know all over the world as Bhishma and rest of the story, we will call him Bhishma. Deva Vrata means it's kind of cool. Like the name kind of gives you an idea of what he might do because Deva means God.
And Vrata means taking a oath or taking a, you know, doing something as a systematically.
So it's like he took up a Vrata, like a divine Vrata that is not, that he's going to be celibate.
So it's kind of, his name kind of gives it away in a way. If you know the story, you can see that like Deva Vrata becomes Bhishma.
So he takes up this vote. He gets his dad and Satyavati, you know, Yojang Gandhi married. His dad doesn't agree in the beginning, but eventually he realizes, you know, he already took the oath and he's not going to go back on it. So he might as well get married. So he does that. And now Bhishma, instead of becoming the successor of the kingdom, he becomes the protector of this kingdom,
the Kuru kingdom.
And Satyavati and Shantanu are married and Shantanu is happy again, happy hunting.
Satyavati and Shantanu have two sons. Their names are Chitrangada and Vichitravidya.
I will finish the story. Well, I won't finish the story, but that is the end of, I want to leave you on a hook. So I hope this is a hook. They have two kids and I'll come back. Episode two, guys. Thank you so much for listening.
And make sure, please comment with your questions or anything you think of, anything I might have missed, or even any improvements I can do, because I'm also learning. This is like my first time. So I could definitely use your help. Please do that for me. Thank you.