The Birth of the Princes

In the great city of Hastinapura, on the banks of the holy river, the Kuru throne had passed into the hands of Dhritarashtra, eldest son of the line, who had been born sightless. By the ancient laws of inheritance his blindness had once cost him the crown, for a king was expected to lead his people in war and ceremony with his own eyes. Yet when his younger brother Pandu withdrew from the world, it was Dhritarashtra who sat upon the lion-seat and governed the realm, guided by the wise minister Vidura and the elder Bhishma.

To wed this powerful king there came a princess of Gandhara, far to the northwest beyond the mountain passes. Her name was Gandhari, and she was famed for her purity, her steadiness, and the strength of her vows. When she learned that the husband chosen for her had never seen the light of the sun nor the faces of those he loved, she made a decision that astonished the entire court.

"My lord is blind," she said quietly. "It is not right that I should enjoy with my eyes what is forever denied to him. I will share his darkness as I share his life."

With that she took a length of fine cloth, folded it many times, and bound it firmly across her eyes. From that day forward Gandhari walked the corridors of the palace in a darkness she had chosen, refusing to look upon a world her husband could not see. The people marveled at her devotion, and the rishis spoke of her as a model of wifely virtue. But few guessed what sorrow and fury that blindfold would one day come to hide.

Pandu, the younger brother, was a king of a different fortune. Pale of complexion but mighty in arms, he had conquered far and wide and won great glory for the Kuru name. He had two queens, both radiant in their own way. The first was Kunti, daughter of the Yadava chief Shurasena and adopted by King Kuntibhoja, a woman of grave intelligence and hidden secrets. The second was Madri, princess of the Madra kingdom, gentle and quick of mind. Loving his wives and weary of the burdens of rule, Pandu left Hastinapura to his blind brother and went to dwell in the forests at the foot of the Himalayas, hunting and living simply among the ascetics.

One fateful day, deep in the woods, Pandu loosed his arrows at what he took to be a pair of mating deer. But the cries that rose were not the cries of beasts. The arrows had struck a great sage named Kimdama, who in the form of a stag had been coupling with his mate. Mortally wounded, the sage turned upon the king with eyes full of grief and reproach.

"Even cruel men, slaves to desire, do not strike a creature in the act of love," Kimdama gasped. "You are a king, born to uphold dharma. You should have known better. For this I lay upon you a curse. As I have been slain while seeking the joy of union, so shall you die in that very moment. The day you approach a wife in love, that day shall be your last."

And with those words the sage and his mate breathed their last. Pandu fell to the forest floor, overwhelmed with horror at what he had done and what he had brought upon himself.

Crushed by sorrow, Pandu renounced the last of his royal pleasures. He gave away his ornaments and fine robes, took up the rough bark garments of an ascetic, and resolved to live as a celibate sage upon the slopes of Mount Shatashringa, the Hundred-Peaked Mountain in the high Himalayas. Kunti and Madri, refusing to abandon him, followed him into that pure and lonely country.

Yet a deep grief gnawed at Pandu still. A man, the scriptures taught, was born owing four debts: to the gods, to the sages, to his fellow men, and to his ancestors. Three of these a life of virtue could discharge, but the debt to the ancestors could be repaid only through sons who would continue the lineage and offer the rites for the departed. "Without a son," Pandu lamented, "there is no door to heaven for me. The curse has shut that door with iron bolts."

When he had poured out this anguish to Kunti, she gently revealed a secret she had carried since girlhood. Years before, in her father's house, she had served the fierce and short-tempered sage Durvasa with such tireless care and patience that the sage, well pleased, had granted her a boon. He taught her a sacred mantra of great power: whenever she wished, she might call upon any god she chose, and that deity would come to her and grant her a child radiant with his own divine nature.

"My lord," Kunti said softly, "I am not barren of hope, and you are not barred from fatherhood. Tell me which of the shining ones I should summon, and through his grace your line shall not die." Tears of relief filled Pandu's sightless grief, and he bid her begin with the most righteous of all the gods.

But Kunti's mantra was not untested, and her heart carried a sorrow of its own that she did not yet dare to speak aloud. Long before her marriage, when she was still a young maiden in the palace of Kuntibhoja, curiosity had moved her to try the gift Durvasa had given her. In the innocence of youth she had recited the mantra one morning while gazing at the rising sun, scarcely believing it would work.

To her terror, Surya the sun god himself descended in a body of blinding gold and stood before her. "You have summoned me," he said, "and the boon of Durvasa cannot be wasted. A son must be born of this meeting." Kunti pleaded and wept, for she was unwed and afraid of disgrace, but the law of the boon could not be undone. Surya granted that she would remain a virgin even so, and a son was born to her, clad already in golden armor and gleaming earrings fused to his very flesh.

Unmarried and afraid, Kunti had done a thing that grieved her ever after. She laid the infant in a sealed basket and set it adrift upon the river, weeping as the current bore him away. That child, found and raised by a humble charioteer, would grow into the great warrior Karna, though neither he nor his brothers would know the truth for many years. Now, on the cold mountain, Kunti held that memory close and silent. She had wielded the mantra once in fear. This time, with her husband's blessing, she would wield it in duty and in hope.

At Pandu's bidding, Kunti purified herself, sat in meditation, and summoned first the god Dharma, lord of righteousness, that her firstborn might never stray from the path of virtue. The god of justice came in a form of serene light and blessed her, and in due time, at the noon hour beneath an auspicious star, she gave birth to a son. From the heavens an unseen voice declared, "This child shall be the foremost of all who uphold dharma. By the name of Yudhishthira he shall be known, and his fame shall fill the three worlds."

Pandu's heart, long starved of joy, leaped at the prophecy. "A son of righteousness is good," he said, "but a king must also be strong. Summon now the mightiest of the gods of strength." Kunti invoked Vayu, the god of wind, and through his grace was born a second son of vast and terrible power. As the unseen voice proclaimed him the strongest of the strong, the infant slipped from his mother's lap and fell upon the rocks, and it was the stone that broke, shattering into a hundred pieces beneath his unhurt body. They named him Bhimasena, the dreadful one.

Still Pandu hungered for more. He longed for a son who would be matchless in arms and dear to the gods themselves, and so he performed austerities of fearsome severity, standing on one leg for a year to win the favor of Indra, king of the gods. Indra, pleased at last, promised a son of unequaled valor. Kunti summoned the lord of the storm, and Arjuna was born. At that moment the very heavens rejoiced: flowers rained from the sky, celestial drums thundered, the gandharvas sang and the apsaras danced, and a great voice foretold that this child would be invincible in battle, the equal of the mightiest, a conqueror whose deeds would never be forgotten.

Three radiant sons now graced the mountain hermitage, and Pandu, intoxicated with joy, begged Kunti to invoke the mantra yet again. But Kunti held up her hand. "My lord, the wise do not counsel a fourth such summoning. To go beyond is to step outside what dharma permits, even in a time of need. Let us be content with the gifts the gods have already given." Pandu, who was learned in the law, bowed to her wisdom.

Yet there was one in the hermitage whose heart was heavy. Madri, Pandu's second queen, had borne no child, and though she rejoiced in the sons of Kunti, a quiet ache grew in her. At last she confided in Pandu. "I do not envy the hundred sons rumored to fill Gandhari's house in distant Hastinapura," she said. "But it grieves me that I, your wife, remain childless while my sister-queen is blessed threefold. I am shy to ask Kunti myself. Will you not speak for me?"

Moved by her sorrow, Pandu went to Kunti and pleaded Madri's cause. Generous and dutiful, Kunti agreed to share her sacred boon, but only this once. "Let her fix her mind upon a god," Kunti said, "and a son will surely come." Madri, thoughtful and clever, set her mind not upon one deity but upon the divine twins, the Ashvins, the beautiful celestial physicians who rode the dawn. Both came to her together, and she gave birth to twin sons of dazzling grace and matchless beauty. They were named Nakula and Sahadeva. So were the five sons of Pandu completed, born one upon another in those high and holy peaks.

Far away in Hastinapura, in the years before the Pandavas were born, Queen Gandhari had received a boon of her own. The great sage Vyasa, weary and parched, had once come to the palace, and Gandhari had tended to him with such devotion that he granted her a wish. She asked for one hundred sons, each as mighty as their father the king, and Vyasa, true to his word, declared that it would be so.

In time Gandhari conceived. But her pregnancy did not run its course. One year passed, and then another, and still no child was born. The weight within her grew heavy and unmoving, and her heart filled with dread and impatience. Then there came to her ears the news that Kunti, wife of Pandu, had given birth to a radiant son in the mountains. The thought that her husband's younger brother might now have an heir before her own firstborn drove Gandhari to despair.

In a fit of grief and fury that she would regret all her life, she struck her own swollen belly with her fists, again and again. What came forth from her was no child at all, but a hard, cold, lifeless ball of flesh, gray as iron, with no shape of a human form upon it. Horrified at the ruin of her hopes, Gandhari believed the boon of Vyasa had failed, and through her tears she made ready to cast the dreadful mass away and bury her shame forever.

Even as Gandhari prepared to fling away the mass of flesh, the sage Vyasa appeared before her, for nothing in the world of his own boons escaped his knowing. "What is this you mean to do?" he asked, his voice stern.

Weeping, Gandhari confessed. "When I heard that Kunti had borne a son, grief overcame me and I struck my own womb. Instead of the hundred sons you promised, I have brought forth only this lump of dead flesh. Your word has failed, holy one."

"It has not failed," said Vyasa. "I have never spoken an untruth, not in jest and not in earnest. What I have said shall be. Bring me a hundred jars, and fill them with clarified butter, and set them in a cool and secret place. Then sprinkle this mass with cold water and watch."

Gandhari did as she was told. When the cool water touched the mass of flesh, it began to divide, separating piece by piece into a hundred small embryos, each no larger than a thumb. Vyasa took them up one by one and placed each into its own jar of ghee, sealing them away. "Guard them well," he instructed, "and let no one disturb them until their time is full." And then he added a word that surprised the queen: "There shall be one more, a daughter, for that too was hidden in the mass." So a hundred and one jars were set in the dark to ripen, and the queen who had chosen blindness now waited, sightless, for sounds of life from a hundred sealed vessels.

Months passed, and the jars in the secret chamber grew warm with hidden life. At last, on the appointed day, the first vessel was opened, and from it emerged a boy, dark and strong and full of vigor. He was the eldest of the hundred, and they named him Duryodhana, the hard to conquer. But the very hour of his birth was filled with dread.

As the child drew his first breath, jackals began to howl from the cremation grounds beyond the city. Asses brayed in unnatural chorus, vultures and carrion birds cried out and wheeled in the darkening sky, and a wind sprang up carrying the stench of burning. The sacred fires of the household sputtered and turned in the wrong direction. The earth itself seemed to shudder. Every omen known to the seers of evil and ruin gathered at once around the cradle of the newborn prince.

The wise of Hastinapura were deeply troubled. Vidura, the king's brother of unmatched insight, came before the blind Dhritarashtra together with learned Brahmanas, and they spoke without flattery. "Great king, these portents cannot be mistaken. This child is born to destroy your line. The scriptures say that for the sake of a family one may abandon a single member, and for the sake of a village a family, and for a kingdom a village, and for the soul the whole earth. There is peace in giving up this one son, and there is the ruin of all your house in keeping him. You have ninety-nine more, and Pandu's sons besides. Abandon him."

But Dhritarashtra, blind in his eyes and now blind in his heart, clutched the wailing infant to his chest. "He is my firstborn," the king said through his tears. "Whatever the omens say, I cannot cast away my own son." And so the counsel of the wise was set aside, and the seed of a great war was kept and cradled.

Within a month the remaining jars were opened one by one, and the rest of Gandhari's sons came into the world, until the full hundred Kauravas were born. Among them were Dushasana, who would one day lay rough hands upon a queen, and many another whose names would echo on the field of Kurukshetra. Last of all came the daughter Vyasa had foretold, and she was named Dussala, the only sister among the brood of brothers. The blind king's house was full of children, and for a time the dark omens were forgotten in the noise of so much young life.

Then sorrow came to the mountain hermitage. One spring day, despite his long restraint, Pandu was overcome at the sight of Madri and embraced her in love, and in that instant the curse of Kimdama struck him down, and he died. Madri, blaming herself, gave her own life upon his funeral pyre, and grieving Kunti gathered the five young Pandavas and brought them down from the mountains to Hastinapura, to be raised among their kin.

So it came to pass that the five sons of Pandu and the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra grew up together within the same walls. Yudhishthira the just, Bhima the mighty, Arjuna the matchless archer, and the gentle twins Nakula and Sahadeva walked the same courtyards as Duryodhana and his ninety-nine brothers. They learned their letters and their weapons side by side, ate at the same tables, and played in the same gardens. Yet even in their games the rift was already there, in jealousy and pride on one side and in patient strength on the other. Bhishma watched over them all, and Vidura grieved in secret, for the wise remembered the howling of the jackals. The children who would one day divide the earth and drench the field of Kurukshetra in blood were growing up together in Hastinapura, cousins and kin, beneath one anxious and uncertain sky.