Unknown Lessons From Mahabharata - Part I

Lesson I - Dream positive for your next generation. It’s worth it.

We all know about this story of Mahabharata, but we never realized it in this way. This is the moral of the complete story of Mahabharata. This may be a wrong analysis, many of you may not agree, but it’s worth believing in this way. Will also do some scientific analysis here.

The longest chapter in Mahabharata is the Aadi Parva, with so many plots and subplots the actual story of Mahabharata took off when king Shantanu wants to marry Satyavati, but she mentioned her condition that only Her blood will rule Hastinapur (In original story it’s her father who placed this condition).

Scientifically the ambition was only Satyawati’s Genes should rule Hastinapur. So is that dream got fulfilled? We all know what happened. She had two sons Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. One died young and other one died without any children.

Then Satyawati’s another son before marriage, Ved Vyas came into the picture and somehow her blood ruled Hastinapur in next generation too i.e. Dhritarashtra, Pandu, and Vidur. So what happened after the end of Mahabharata or post-Kurukshetra war? 

Yudhistir became the king of Hastinapur. Yudhistir being the Mantra Prasad of God does not have any Satyawati’s genes. In short, the whole Kurukshetra war actually triggered by someone seen an ambition few generations back. Even if Satyawati or her father did not cause any harm or did anything morally wrong still by the end of the epic Satyawati’s blood did not able to rule Hastinapur.

If you look on the flip side of this story, Dhritarashtra had exact same ambition that his blood will rule Hastinapur and did many evils to achieve it. In the end his all next generation perished. Probably this is how it ends when you have an ambition for your next generation and do some evil to meet it. Then why Satyawati or Her father’s ambition received the same fate? They didn’t plan or did anything wrong to achieve it? If you say about Bhisma pratigya, then Devabrata or Bhishma took that of own and no one forced him to do that.

Are there any differences between Dhritarstra’s Ambition and Satyawati’s ambition? As per what we all know there is no difference at all, then good and evil received same fate here. Then what about the most popular lesson of Mahabharata, Dharma will win over Adharma by any means? A food for thought.

Here is the twist to the tale and to understand this we need to go back to the birth of Satyawati. The father of Satyawati who actually placed the condition of marriage in front of king Shantanu was not her real or biological father. Satyawati was actually the daughter of a Chedi king Uparicara- Vasu. She was born with her twin brother. Her twin brother been kept by the King and Satyawati was given to fisherman or to the father we know originally. Now her twin brother actually founded the Matsya kingdom.

Now come back to the original context, Yudhistir (Who don’t have any Genes of Satyawati) was succeeded by Parikshit (Son of Abhimanyu) as a king of Hastinapur, which actually has the last reference of King of Hastinapur in Mahabharata and concludes Mahabharata. All stories of Parikshit’s next generation are actually part of different literature's and not of Mahabharata. If you still can’t guess where I am heading to then here is the complete moral of the story.

Satyawati’s twin brother carried same blood (similar genes) of Satyawati and founded the Matsya Kingdom. The blood or genes passes to some next generations and King Virata from Matsya kingdom got introduced in Mahabharata.

Virata’s daughter Uttara got married to Abhimanyu and Parikshit born or got introduced in Mahabharata. Since Parikshit was the person who ruled Hastinapur. Somewhere someway Parikshit was also carrying Satyawati’s blood as Uttara was an heir of the Matsya Kingdom which was actually founded by Satyawati’s twin brother. Indirectly Satyawati's blood ruled Hastinapur, that she desired at first place. So here also good and evil did not receive the same fate. To check the complete hierarchy Click Here.

Dhritashtra was alive to see his ambition diminished whereas Satyawati’s ambition got fulfilled even if she was not alive to see this. So the moral in my own word will be if you see an ambition for your next generation and don’t take any wrong way to achieve that in your whole life to fulfill, it will surely succeed someday, even if it’s beyond your life span.

If you don’t agree to this morale then if you go to the history of Indian independence way back Rani Lakshmi Bai dreamt that her son and grandson will live in independence (Her son was not even a year at that time, correct me if I am wrong). She may not able to see that day but today we are living in independence just because someone dreamt about it many generations ago. There are many people’s like this who have seen these dreams at that time for their next generation and they have not seen that dream fulfilled in their generation but their genes are reaping the benefit now.

So if we want something for our next generation, say a corruption free India then dream about it and try to achieve it without any wrong or evil means in our lifespan. We never know, if in this or next or some generations in future this will definitely be true, as history never tell any lie. Another food for thought.

Will continue this series for some other unknown lessons in Mahabharata soon.


©Tapas Majumdar