Reading Notes: Narayan's Mahabharata, Part A

Notes:
  • Shantanu is the king that rules the city of Hastinaoura.
    • He marries a women where they met by the river and then had babies.
    • Shantanu protests when the eighth child was born.
    • His wife then explains she was the river Ganga incarnated in the form to give birth to eight gods.
    • Vasus was punished with human incarnation for having stolen Vashishtha's cow.
    • Bhishma was the eighth child.
  • Shantanu then falls in love with a different woman named, Satyavati.
    • He wanted to marry her, but her father objects. 
    • They both have two sons, Chitrangada and Vichitravirya.
    • Amba vows to take revenge on Bhishma.
    • Ambika and Ambalika both married Vichitravirya.
  • Parashara and Satyavati slept with each other and then had a child, Vyasa.
    • Satyavati summons her son to sleep with Vichitravirya's widows. 
    • Dhritarashtra was born blind.
    • Pandu was born looking very pale.
    • Ambalika made her maid sleep with Vyasa in her place. 
    • Vidura was born without any flaw.
  • Dhritarashtra marries Gandhari, who covered her eyes to share her husband's blindness.
    • Pandu could not have children because of a curse.
    • Pandu shot a dear making love and then the deer curse him whenever he makes love so he can die too.
  • Pandu wants a child so he asked Kunti to summon the god Yama.
    • Yudhishthira is characterized by Dharama.
    • Bhima is enormously strong.
    • Pandu cannot help resist his passion with Madri so he dies from making love.
  • Kunti and the Pandavas lived in Hastinapura.
    • Pandu's brother Dhritarashtra is now the king there.
    • Duryodhana had Bhima drugged and threw him into the river.
    • Bhima survives.
    • Arjuna rescues Drona from the crocodile in the river and then rewards him with a secret weapon.
    • Drona wants his pupils to capture King Drupada.
    • Drupada betrayed Drona and now Drona wants revenge. 
    • Drona captures Drupada and kept halt of Drupada's kingdom & returns half to Drupada.
  • Purochana, agent of Duryodhana, builds a House of Joy for the Pandavas.
    • Vidura wanrs the Pandavas about this trap where the house is made of oil, resin & straw to make it easy to catch on fire.
    • The Pandavas set the house on fire and made everyone think that they are dead, but what they didn't know was that there was a tunnel that made them escape.
  • Bhima killed a dangerous rakshasa. 
    • Hidimbi falls in love with Bhima and had a son named Ghatotkacha. 
    • Vyasa urges the Pandavas to disguise themselves as brahmins and conceal their identity as kshatriyas.
  • King Drupada holds a swayamvara for his daughter, Draupadi.
    • Arjuna wins Draupadi as his bride.
  • Drupada was surprised that his daughter will have five husbands.
    • Back then, she slept with a sage that was disguised of five different men.
    • After he husband left, she prayed to Lord Ishvara to give her the five husbands back in another lifetime, and then boom; it happened
The Pandavas, Link Text.

Bibliography: Narayan's Mahabharata.

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