Week 9 Reading Diary A: A new beginning

This week we began reading Narayan's Mahabharata. The book begins with the introduction to Shantanu, the king of Hastinapura. He and his wife have an extremely strange marriage where he is never allowed to question anything she does, including drowning all of their newborn babies. However, on the eighth child's birth, he questions her a s she begins to drown the child. This is where we learn she is the river Ganga reincarnated in order to give birth to eight gods. She is drowning the children in order to return them to heaven, however, she takes the eighth child with her. She then returns Devavratha or Bhishma to his father when he is grown. Shantanu then falls in love with Satyavati. Her father forbids her from marrying him since the heir to the throne has already been named in Bhisma. Naturally, Bisma steps down and lets them get married and have their son Chitrangada take the throne. Unfortunately, he dies soon there after. Bhisma takes his place as regent for their other young son Vichitravirya. Bhisma claims Amba, Ambika, and Ambalika all for Vichitravirya. Amba then says she is already taken but then she is rejected by her husband in waiting and vows revenge. We then meet the next group of sons from Vyasa and the mistresses including the servant of Ambalika and we get Dhritarashtra, Pandu, and Vidua. The first two being flawed and the last, from the servant, not being flawed. After all of them go on to have children, Dhritarashtra rules as king. His son Yudhishthira is deemed the heir to him.

Shantanu chasing after his wife and child 

Source: Wikipedia