The Backstory from the Mahabharata
The lord does not partake
of anyone’s evil or good conduct;
knowledge is obscured by ignorance,
so people are deluded.
—Bhagavad Gita 5:151
The Bhagavad Gita is a small part of the much greater story of the Mahabharata, an ancient Indian epic poem that tells what happens when hatred, jealousy, and vengeance take control of the human heart. The Mahabharata’s drama culminates in a larger-than-life battle between two related royal families, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, who can no longer settle their disagreements through diplomatic means. The heartbreak is multiplied when family members face off on the battlefield; uncles, cousins, friends, and relatives end up divided and fighting one another on opposing sides. The only apparent path through the hatred and distrust, it seems, is for the families to fight it out—and they do—until almost no one is left alive.
How Did It Get to This?
It all starts generations earlier with the descendants of the patriarch King Bharata after whom the Mahabharata is named. Promises are made and broken. Secrets and intrigue influence decisions. Honor and pride are put to the test. The intersection of the scheming of supernatural beings with the hopes and aspirations of ordinary humans creates the backstory to this one moment in time, this battle in Northern India some three thousand years before our common era. I will cover some of the fantastic plot twists later in this chapter in “Twists and Turns and Supernatural Solutions.” But for now, here are some key points to help understand the bigger picture of the story.
What You Need to Know About the Mahabharata
It’s not easy to summarize the world’s longest epic poem that tells the story of the descendants of King Bharata. The Mahabharata is many times longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined and is filled with cultural references that may be confusing to the first-time reader. I will present here what I think you need to know to understand the importance and placement of the Bhagavad Gita within the Mahabharata.
As mentioned earlier, the Bhagavad Gita is a pivotal moment that is frozen in time when all surrounding action on the battlefield ceases. Not unlike that moment at a party when your focus shifts to a person who becomes so fascinating that everything else fades into the background and time seems to slow down. Everything in the Mahabharata that came before, and everything that will come after it, fades into the background while two friends, a prince and a god, discuss the nature of doing one’s dharma2 in life even though every choice seems difficult and unjust. (The paraphrase of this conversation that is the Bhagavad Gita is here.)
THE FAMILY TREE OF THE PANDAVA AND KAURAVA FAMILIES
Another significant detail about the Mahabharata is that, after generations of conflict, two related families, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, emerge with competing claims to the throne. The oldest son of the Pandavas, Yudhishthira, is the legal heir to the throne. However, his cousins, the Kauravas, disagree; and through trickery, insult, attempted murder, and eventually banishment, they prevent Yudhishthira and his family from ascending to the throne.
The Kaurava challenger to the throne is Duryodhana, the eldest son of the blind King Dhritarashtra who currently occupies the throne as regent. Duryodhana is obsessed with the fame and achievements of his cousins, the Pandavas, and desires the throne for himself. His father was appointed to rule the kingdom until the firstborn Pandava cousin came of age and could rule. Duryodhana tries everything he can to get rid of his cousins, including a rigged game of dice. Yudhishthira has a weakness for gambling and loses everything in the game, including his family’s right to live in the kingdom. The winner of the game, Duryodhana, exiles the whole Pandava family to live in the woods for thirteen years in the hope that they won’t survive. They do survive, and upon their return at the end of their exile, they discover that their cousins have become accustomed to ruling and are unwilling to surrender the throne. Typically, in the popular retelling of the story of the Mahabharata, attention is given primarily to the events leading up to and during the exile. The adventures of the Pandava family in exile are fabulous and have been retold to generations upon generations of Hindu children as spiritual teaching tools about honor, justice, truthfulness, and the consequences of willfully going against these values. In India, the story has been the source of inspiration for TV shows, movies, and novels. For a full animated movie in English about the basic storyline, visit the YouTube channel Kids Planet Hindi.3
The Only Way to Settle It Is to Fight It Out
After the opposing armies have gathered and are facing off on the battlefield, just before the signal is given for the battle to commence, there is a moment of quiet. Prince Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers and a hero of the story, asks his chariot driver to take him onto the field between the armies for one last look before all is lost. It is significant that his chariot driver is the Lord Krishna4 of a neighboring kingdom. Because of his friendships on both sides, Lord Krishna could not engage in the battle but offered a choice to all: either take me or take my massive army. Duryodhana was thrilled to take Lord Krishna’s army. In keeping with Duryodhana’s greed and aggression, he believed in the power of numbers; whereas the Pandavas choose Lord Krishna, and with him his divine presence and guidance.
At first, it isn’t clear to Prince Arjuna who exactly Lord Krishna is, but through their conversation, he soon realizes that Lord Krishna is the embodiment of the Divine. When Prince Arjuna sees friends and family on the opposing side, he becomes dismayed by the potential tragedy of the approaching war and loses his resolve to continue. He can find no way to soothe his feelings of anguish and says that it wouldn’t be worth fighting the battle, even if he were to win a kingdom. Dejected, he falls back into his chariot seat and resolves not to fight. Lord Krishna smiles, and what follows between them in this moment of quiet is the conversation that has become known the world over as the Song of God, the Bhagavad Gita, in which Lord Krishna explains the role of personal duty and how it relates to living a spiritual life, the pathways to freedom, and oneness with God.
Next, after an eighteen-day war, the Pandava family wins the battle by destroying the Kaurava forces. It is a devastating ending for both sides. The extensive loss and destruction is a terrible price to pay for bringing matters back into balance, even though the Pandavas rule for thirty-six years after the war.
Twists and Turns and Supernatural Solutions
The Mahabharata explains how everything is connected and how every action is a result of a previous action. Quite a long time before the battle took place on the field of Kurukshetra, forces were at play that set in motion strands of interconnectedness that would eventually bring matters to a head. Throughout the complicated storylines and subplots, the poem emphasizes the relationships between causes and effects, showing how every outcome is linked to something in the near or distant past. It also reveals how the consequence of every action is shaped by the intent behind the choice that causes it.
The story starts generations before the battle, with King Shantanu, a descendant of King Bharata. The two royal families, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, share a common ancestry in King Shantanu. The simplified version of his story, for this beginner’s primer, begins when King Shantanu sees a beautiful woman on the banks of a river and falls in love with her. The woman, Ganga, isn’t what she appears to be. She is a divine being on a mission of mercy that cannot be interrupted. The couple is so love smitten, that when King Shantanu asks Ganga for her hand in marriage, she agrees on the mysterious condition that he promises never to ask her anything about her personal life and never to question anything that she does. If he breaks the promise, she explains, she will have to leave him.
This seemingly minor event in the Mahabharata reveals a theme that runs throughout: that promises matter. A person is bound by their word; and broken promises lead to consequences like debts that must be paid, now or in the future, by the person who incurred the debt or by their descendants.
King Shantanu promises never to question Ganga. They marry, and Ganga quickly becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son. To everyone’s shock and horror she immediately takes her son to the river and drowns him. But because of his promise, the king could not stop her nor question her motives.
Now ordinary people are expected to keep their promises, and sovereigns even more so. The king’s word is considered to be law. Breaking his promise is not only a break in personal honor but also a break in the reputation of the kingdom and would set in motion Karmic consequences that would impact the well-being of the whole nation. So the grim reality that faces Shantanu is that he must decide between stopping something quite barbaric, the drowning of a newborn baby, or keeping a promise he made when driven strictly by emotions without consideration of the consequences. The dilemma of making a right decision when strong emotional forces and desires are at play is a central theme throughout the poem and an important teaching of the Bhagavad Gita.
Soon after, Ganga gives birth to another child, who she also drowns, and another, who she drowns. And so it goes, resulting in seven drowned children. When his eighth child is born, the king cannot take it anymore. Not even the bond of his promise or the potentially unfavorable consequences for his nation can prevent him from speaking up and asking Ganga so he can stop what she is apparently about to do.
Ganga is disappointed that Shantanu couldn’t keep his word. She reminds him that he has violated his pledge and now she must follow through and leave him to return to her heavenly home. But before she goes, out of affection for him, she tells him the story behind the barbaric and cruel drownings.
It turns out that eight gods, known as Vasus,5 offended a powerful being, Vasishtha, who cursed them to be incarnated as humans in the world to experience the suffering that humans experience. When the gods heard the curse, seven of them begged for leniency. But the powerful being who had uttered the curse could not go back on his word. He was able only to modify the curse with the service of a celestial being, Ganga, who agreed to temporarily take on human form, give birth to the Vasus, and immediately drown them.
It was a mission of mercy.
The terms of the curse would be fulfilled, but the stay on earth would be shortened by instant drowning. The eighth Vasu, the one who refused to beg, would not be drowned but would live out the terms of the curse on earth as a human.
That eighth child is King Shantanu’s son, Devavrata, the sole heir to the throne.
Without Ganga, the king falls into sadness and longing. Some years later, when he is about to retire and turn the kingdom over to Devavrata, the king sees a charming young woman named Satyavati, the daughter of a fisherman. He asks her father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The fisherman is agreeable to the union, with the condition that any child born to Satyavati would ascend to the throne. This creates a complication, because Devavrata and his future offspring are the rightful heirs to the throne. By now the king is sensitive to promises made and the consequences of breaking them. He becomes crestfallen and depressed and returns to his palace. He knows that he can’t agree to the fisherman’s terms because the throne belongs to his son, Devavrata.
Devavrata’s Promise to His Father
When Devavrata finds out what happened, he feels compassion for his father’s situation and decides to take matters into his own hands by making a vow of his own. He promises that he will never ascend to the throne, no matter what, and furthermore he promises never to marry so that he won’t have any offspring who might challenge the throne at some future point.
In the moment of taking this heroic vow, his name changes from Devavrata to Bhishma, which means “the firm,” because of the resoluteness of his decision. For his courage and self-sacrifice, he was granted the power to choose the time of his death, making him a formidable foe on any battlefield.
King Shantanu and Satyavati marry and have two sons, Chitrāngada and Vichitravirya. When the king dies, Satyavati rules the kingdom with Bhishma’s guidance, while her children are growing up.
However, things don’t work out too well for this family. Both sons die without children, leaving their widows without an heir to the throne. Bhishma and Satyavati send for a famous and powerful sage, Veda Vyasa,6 to help solve the problem. The sage must be awakened from an intense and long spiritual meditation practice during which he has become gaunt from not eating and somewhat scary to look at. The princess widows are sent to see him one at a time to receive a mantra that will allow them to conceive and produce an heir to the throne. The first found Veda Vyasa so terrifying to look at that she closed her eyes during the moment of conception. The result of her eye shutting is that she gives birth to a blind son, Dhritarashtra, the patriarch of the Kaurava family. The second princess is sent to receive the mantra from Veda Vyasa and is similarly put off by his appearance. Finding him too much to endure she holds her breath during the moment of conception. The result of her breath holding is that she gives birth to a son who is pale and fragile, Pandu, the patriarch of the Pandava family.
Dhritarashtra, although firstborn, because of his blindness is exempted from becoming king, making his brother, the pale Pandu, the heir to the throne.
It seems that things are sorted out when Pandu becomes king and marries two wives. But alas, no. He can’t touch his wives, and again the kingdom is in peril of having no successor. Why can’t he touch them? One day King Pandu was out hunting and he shot a deer. It turns out that it was a magical being named Kindama, who had taken on the form of the deer to mate with his partner. Because the magical creature was dying in the act of lovemaking, he cursed King Pandu, saying that the king would die the moment he touched his wives. Smitten with grief, Pandu retires to the forest, leaving his blind brother, Dhritarashtra, on the throne in his absence.
Now one of King Pandu’s wives, Kunti, has a secret. Before she was married, she received a mantra that she can use five times to call upon different gods to produce offspring. Secretly, she has already tried it out once calling upon the sun god, Surya, to make sure it works. As a result, she has a son out of wedlock, Karna. She puts the baby in a basket and sends him down the river to fend for himself. It’s no wonder that he later turns out to be a bitter and formidable foe against the Pandavas in the battle that surrounds the Bhagavad Gita.
Only four uses of the mantra remain, putting Kunti at risk of being discovered for her illegitimate child. But the princess widows work it out. They call first upon Dharma, the god of righteousness, to produce Yudhishthira the firstborn. Next, they call upon the wind god Vayu, to produce Bhima, the second son; then the chief of gods, Indra, to produce Arjuna, the third son and central character in the Bhagavad Gita; and lastly the twin Ashwin gods, to produce twins, Nakula and Sahadeva, the fourth and fifth children.
Things appear to be sorted out again. But alas they are not. King Pandu, who can’t stay away from his wives, touches Madri, only to die in her arms according to the curse of the deer. Madri, devastated that touching her is what killed the king, climbs on the funeral pyre to exit this world with her husband. Kunti heads for the capital to take the boys to King Dhritarashtra so that they can be raised as princes of the kingdom. The sons of Pandu—Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva—grow up alongside Dhritarashtra’s sons, their cousins, the Kauravas.
Surely now things will be stable? Alas, not.
Meet Gandhari
Dhritarashtra guides the kingdom while Pandu’s children are growing up. Dhritarashtra marries Gandhari, who has ambitions of her own. After all, her husband is the firstborn in the family, disqualified only because of his blindness. She wonders: Shouldn’t her husband’s children be the heirs to the throne? In solidarity with her husband, Gandhari blindfolds herself for the rest of her life. She, too, wants to produce children and calls upon the same sage, Veda Vyasa, for his help. While Pandu’s wives are working out the use of the mantra to produce children, Gandhari feels the pressure to produce a child first. After all, the firstborn child to a regent—who himself is the firstborn child—should surely be able to lay claim to the throne.
Veda Vyasa tells her it’s going to take some time. Gandhari isn’t worried about the timing at first, because at that point in the story the Pandava princes have yet to be born. But when Kunti and Madri start producing offspring, things become urgent. After an unusually long pregnancy and some genuinely bizarre complications, Gandhari gives birth to the one hundred sons and one daughter who are known as the Kauravas.
But it’s too late. The Pandava princes were born first and therefore are the legal heirs to the kingdom.
The children all grow up together and are trained in the way of courtly life, battle, and spirituality by the same teachers. Uncle Bhishma, seeing the potential for conflict, urges the blind king to name his brother’s firstborn, Yudhishthira, as the crown prince and heir to the kingdom. When Duryodhana, eldest of the blind king hears of it, he becomes obsessed with getting rid of his cousins. And so, his scheming begins: he cheats them, tries to burn them while they sleep, humiliates them, and banishes them. All of this leads to the war on the field of Kurukshetra.
The Battle Within
The Mahabharata is more than a story of these episodes of injustices, greed, deceit, and ambition. Woven into the twists and turns are timeless questions about how to live an upright life and how to make the best choices when all options seem bad. More importantly, it is a metaphor for the battles that rage between the competing and conflicting urges in every human mind. Diwaker Ikshit Srivastava, in Decoding the Metaphor Mahabharata,7 observes that dharma,8 as dealt with in the Mahabharata, is not a set of rigid commandments but principles upon which to live a life of peace and happiness. The Mahabharata offers no easy answers but instead depicts the complex nature of living an authentic life.
The placement of the Bhagavad Gita in the middle of the story is brilliant. It’s as if the reader is granted audience to an intensely intimate and private conversation about the very real struggle of how to do what is yours to do without compromising the values that define you. The conversation between Prince Arjuna of the Pandavas and his friend Lord Krishna of a neighboring kingdom is especially beautiful at that moment when Arjuna realizes that he is being instructed by God through this conversation. As a metaphor, it is not unlike those instants in life when during an inner struggle a moment of clarity arises and you see things just as they really are.
Prince Arjuna, like anyone facing an unsolvable dilemma, feels drawn to knowing the truth. He sincerely asks to see the reality of God in full form. Lord Krishna warns him that such a vision into the nature of Divinity is beyond the capabilities of mortal eyes, but Arjuna insists. Because of Lord Krishna’s appreciation of Arjuna’s earnestness, Krishna grants the prince a look into the nature of the Divine. What Prince Arjuna sees changes him, I imagine, and overwhelms his mortal senses and causes him to plead for a return to a more practical and friendly vision of God that he can relate to. Lord Krishna tells him that no one gets to see him in this form. Though people and gods long to see him in that form, they cannot achieve it by study, rituals, charity, or austerities. Only through single-minded devotion, Lord Krishna says, can a person truly see God.