The Price of a Hundred Sons

The sages told the Pandavas of King Somaka, who had a hundred wives and yet for long only a single son, and of the hard rite by which he gained a hundred sons, and the loyalty by which he would not let his priest suffer alone for it. It is a tale of a father's longing, the cost of desire, and the bond between a king and the man who acts at his bidding.

King Somaka was a righteous and prosperous ruler who had a hundred wives, and he longed above all things for sons to continue his line. But for a very long time, though he had so many queens, not one of them bore him a child, until at last, after long waiting, a single son was born to him - a boy named Jantu, his only child among all his hundred wives. And because Jantu was his one and only son, born after such long longing, the king and all his hundred queens doted upon the boy and loved him beyond all measure, lavishing upon that one child all the love that a hundred mothers had to give.