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.