week 6: reading notes Mahabharata part A

The Mahabharata, written by R. K. Narayan

• Shantanu is a king who roles over Hastinapura
• falls in love with a woman who he meets by the river and she agrees to marry only if he never questions her actions
• she drowns her newborn babies in the river and when the 8th child is born, Shantanu protests
• wife explains she is an human form of the river and is punishing 8 gods who stole a cow by having them reincarnate into human form and dying to be sent to heaven
• the wife takes the 8th child and disappears into the river, coming back later once the child is grown to give back to the father
• the child's name is Bhishma
• Shantanu falls in love again but the woman's father refuses to let her marry because Shantanu has already had a son
• Bhishma renounces claim to throne and to having kids to help his father
• Shantanu remarries and has 2 sons, where the first son becomes king but dies soon after
• Bhishma rules under the second son and seizes the 3 daughters from a neighboring kingdom as wives for his brother
• One of the daughters is already promised to another man so she gets to leave but the man rejects her because she is now impure
• the daughter is furious and vows to take revenge on Bhishma
• the 2nd son dies without having any sons and Bhishma refuses to break his vow to not have any children 
• Satyavati orders her son Vyasa to sleep with the daughters but because of his frightfully appearance, the daughters are scared of him and that causes their babies to be born flawed
• the 3rd daughter has her maid sleep with Vyasa and because the maid likes Vyasa, their baby is born perfect
• Pandu can't have children himself due to a curse so he has his wife summon the Gods to have children with them
• Pandu ends up with 5 sons, known as Pandavas
• Duryodhana and his brothers are not as popular with the people as the Pandavas so he urges his father to send them into exile
• Pandavas are set up in a house that catches on fire but they end up getting away and hide in the forest
• One of the brothers win a bride but because the Pandavas share everything, the bride now has 5 husbands
• Turns out in a past life she also had 5 husbands and when her husbands left her, she prayed and begged to have them back

Picture Source.