Chandragupta Maurya, King of Kings, was relaxing with his chief minister, Kautilya. They were playing dice. As usual, the King had just won.

Kautilya, it seems to me that your start well, but towards the end, you seem to lose concentration. Your throws seem to lack the magic they had earlier. What is the matter? Are you losing your zest for the Great Gamble as you grow older?

The Great Gamble is one thing, O king. A game of dice is merely a game of dice. You should know better than to confuse the two.

Ah, yes, like Yudhisthira whom you mention in that long book you just delivered to the Scribes’ Guild for copying. Don’t look surprised -- they wanted me to authorize its copying. I have been reading it. When did you find the time to write it?

O Maurya, you know that during the Nanda tyranny, I wandered as an exile searching for a patron both intelligent and ambitious. Till we met. During those years, I formulated my ideas by wandering and meeting with other teachers and philosophers. I have had many years to compose my Arthashastra.

That’s certainly true -- you’ve quoted everybody who had anything to say about managing a kingdom. I bet there isn’t a single unreferenced political sage of the last thousand years.

That’s one bet you would lose.

And who might that be?

You mentioned Yudhisthira -- I did not quote from the school of Yudhisthira, though it was their work that resulted in our present society.

Yudhisthira, the Pandava? The one who lost his kingdom in a dice game. My imperial predecessor? My ancestor many generations removed -- my father would have been amazed and pleased to learn of the ancestors your scholars have discovered for me. What did he have to say about economics? And in what sense did his work result in our present society -- surely, his works are dead and gone for over a millennium.

Its a strange tale that I heard from a dying man. And if it is true, its a wonderful tale full of advice for one who would be a great king.

Kautilya, I am bored with this game. Especially, since you keep throwing it, just when I have to start thinking. Tell me the story instead. And if its any good, I’ll preside over the Holi celebrations myself and relieve you of that duty.

That’s certainly a generous offer. The Holi celebrations would drive any sponsor bankrupt.

Ah, but the merchants will pay to curry favor with me. I will miss seeing the look on your face when the treasurer presents you with the bill.

It is only your generosity, lord, that lets me bear that responsibility without flinching. I remember the years when I was poor only too well.

Tell me your story and you’ll get another chance to forget.

It will take many days.

Good. The longer I rest from gambling, the more zestful my return to it will be. And I’ll even forgive you for letting me win. You shall tell me the story every night after the evening court till you are done.

************************

After the king’s daily duties were done and he was relaxing in his study, he remembered Kautilya’s promise and called him in.

O Maurya, This happened early in my flight from the Nanda capital, I had left Pataliputra and was headed towards Vangadesa. I had sent messages to friends in Vangadesa, and I was waiting for a response that indicated that it was safe for me to go there. In the meantime, I was living quietly in a dharmashala just across the border. The dharmashala was on the outskirts of a small village.

I was thoroughly bored. My host and hostess were simple folk and eager to please. The lady was convinced that I was a secret emissary of the King. I had mentioned to him that I was a student of political economy, and he concluded from my behavior that I must be a scholar with royal sponsorship, not one escaping royal intrigue. My host told me that I would find many fellow scholars in the capital, but that unfortunately there were none in these villages to keep me company.

One day a traveling magician came by and gave a performance. It was quite spectacular. Prior to my exile, I had not had the leisure to watch the entertainment afforded the common people. Or, for that matter, the sense to do so. My memory says that he was the better than any I have seen since, even in your capital.

Really? What magic did he do?

Distracted so soon, O king? This is soon, even for you.

That is a dangerous crack, O minister. Even for you. A magician came by earlier today and he left me something to think about.

He did all the usual tricks -- he materialized coins from the heads of children and changed a staff into a snake. He brought back to life the dead skin of a mongoose that then fought with the snake. He planted a mango seed and before our very eyes, the seed blossomed to a living tree that brought forth flowers and fruit. He tossed a rope into the air and his son climbed up it and wouldn’t come down; so he scrambled up in anger and killed the boy with a sword, tossing the pieces of his body to the ground. He came back grief-stricken at his actions and collected the body parts into a basket. He then asked us for money to perform a ceremony that would restore his son to life. When we had all paid up, he set fire to the basket and mumbled some lines from the Atharvaveda. His son then miraculously appeared out of the basket.

After the performance, he came up to me.

What is this? A shaved head with a pigtail. Tch-ch! You should tie it up. So you are a brahmin come to see my magic. I never see brahmins in my audience. They think that these are foolish tricks. Tell me, sir, what did you think of my illusions?

Quite impressive. You are an accomplished magician.

You’ve seen nothing yet. I’ll tell you your future -- it is a prestigious one.

I don’t believe in such things.

Ah, but you will believe me. For instance, you will be famous all over Jambudvipa for many thousands of years as the advisor to the King of Kings.

King? What king? Is the Yavana Indra returning? Will he make it to the Yamuna this time? And this man will help him!?

Pshaw! The Yavana is dead of a septic wound. This man will advise the founder of a great empire.

Stop this, man. I am no advisor to kings and conquerors. I am an ordinary brahmin migrating in search of a sponsor.

Do you seek wisdom? I can lead you to it. Will you recognize it?

You are a clever knave. But what wisdom can a loose-mouthed illusion-monger lead me to?

The wisdom to guide a king and to construct a future for these good people you are living amongst.

Just keep quiet and I’ll go along with your scam.

Good. I will see you early tomorrow morning. We will go on a little trip. Bring food along for a few days.

We set out the next day. I asked him where we were going and he said that it was not far. He said that I would be able to make my way to it on my own whenever I wanted to -- he was just my self-appointed guide to the place. He was a bit taken with his own language and repeated the phrase "self-appointed guide" many times.

I asked him some questions about himself. He answered them, but his answers were either devoid of content or unverifiable. He had been born a long distance away -- the place was no longer reachable from there. His children were fine. He did not know where their mothers were. I asked him why he was taking me on this trip. He evaded my question. He talked instead about the arrogance of people who would change the world.

I asked him his name. He said it was Muladeva.

That’s the name of the magician who came by today!

It’s a common name among magicians. They claim that Muladeva teaches them their craft.

When we were some distance from the village, I told him that he should tell me where we were going, since there were no villagers around. I did not like the suspense.

In a few days the Nanda’s men will be coming through this village looking for you. The villager’s will tell them that you have been hypnotized by a wandering magician and have not returned. In the meantime, you can stay at this isolated ashram. Don’t fear, you will have company. There’s an old man on his deathbed. From him, you will acquire wisdom.

Thank you for saving me. But, why should I acquire wisdom, as you put it, from a dying old man?

Arrogant bastard, aren’t you? So is he. You’ll have a great time together. Are you an atheist? He is an atheist, so don’t mention gods or goddesses. If you ask him to explain his lack of belief, he will curse you for a fool. For a dying man, he can be very vocal. You will find him interesting, if he isn’t dead.

I did not say so to the magician, but immediately after I left Pataliputra alone, I was relieved that I did not have to put up with my fellow pedants. But as the waiting for permission to enter Vanga stretched out, I looked back at their banal discussions with some nostalgia, The thought came that maybe visiting this old man might be a welcome diversion. even if it was unlikely to bring the wisdom the magician promised. It would also keep me out of sight of the villagers and the Nanda secret service, who were a constant concern of mine

As your secret service is of my enemies. You learned a lot from the Nandakumaras. Incidentally, how come you haven’t started telling this story with the usual prologue about the generations of ancestors who will be redeemed by the telling of the tale. You did that for the Arthashastra, and that isn’t even fun to read.

Unfortunately, Lord, this really is a godless tale. No merit accrues to the man who tells this tale, and no merit accrues to the one who listens. It makes men of gods and makes the divine epic poem of Aryavarta a lie composed by charlatans. Jaya becomes Ajaya. The Mahabharata becomes the Hinabharata. This tale makes fakers of poets. It reduces events of the mythic past to merely historical events and it makes tales of heroes into tales of error-prone and ignorant rulers. Gods have no place in this story, except to fool the public. It makes the divine Gita the fruit of a trick of linguistic invention.

Aren’t you an atheist? Those are strong words. You must have been deeply affected by the scholar you met.

Hmm, yes. I followed Muladeva through the forest for a few miles. We passed through a park that had once been a cultivated garden. Now it was in ruins, and was being absorbed back into the forest. In the middle of the abandoned park was a spacious cottage built on the riverbank. Muladeva said, "There! That’s where you go." I looked at it for some time. "This doesn’t look promising," I said. Muladeva did not reply. "Are you sure there is somebody in there?" I asked. Muladeva did not reply. I turned -- he had disappeared. There were two sets of footprints on the ground, one set leading up to my feet. The other set ended a few feet behind mine.

I spent some time searching for the charlatan. I was afraid that I had been set up for some kind of ambush. After some fruitless searching for him, I finally went up to the cottage and tried looking in. It looked empty. I knocked. Nobody answered to my knocks. I pushed on the door and it opened --- the bar was lying on the floor and had not been put in the door frame. I shouted, Is there anybody in? I heard a sound and entered a room. An old man, apparently quite sick, lay on a raised divan. I introduced myself and explained that I was hoping to stay for a few days. I said that a magician named Muladeva had brought me here. The old man, snorted. "Is he still interfering? Hasn’t he learned wisdom?" I told the old man that Muladeva thought I would acquire some wisdom from him. He looked pleased. "We disagree on many things," he said. "But, I am flattered that he said that you would gain wisdom from me."

He seemed pleased to have a visitor. "I would be happy," he said, "to talk with you and guide you to the wisdom I possess. I have a story to tell. But, ...". He gasped a little, sighed, and then continued, "I am old, I am dying, and I am tired. So I would rather not spend the time in disputation, however scholarly. I have tried telling my story to the villagers around here, but they get upset. If you will listen to my story, you will acquire what wisdom I possess." I asked him what the story was about. He said, Its about managing a kingdom. It’s about war. It’s about peace. It’s about life, death, marriage, and play. It covers all there is to know of these subjects.

That must have gone over well with you.

Yes, he was quite arrogant. His language and speech and manners showed him to be an educated man, unlike the magician, whose every action exuded a lack of education.

Not the magician who came by today. He made a fool of the priest by recounting the tricks played on Duryodhana in the magic palace built for the Pandavas, while inducing the priest to bet on the disposition of three balls in three cups.

Even if the old man’s story was not entertaining, I figured that it would be a better way to while away my time than to listen to the villagers and their problems, and be constantly watching out for soldiers.. So I agreed to listen to his story. He added, "Please bear with me. I may lose track of what I am saying. If you give me some indication that you understand my story and ask pertinent questions, I will be able to finish the tale." So I helped him tell me the story with appropriate questions.

Is that a hint, my friend Chanakya? So what was the story he told and what questions did you ask him?

Pray do not dignify the vulgar name that your spies have for me. I asked him his name and how he came to be where he was? He replied ...

My spies? Are you saying that I don’t trust your spies?

Oh, yes! Your spies. Not mine. You would be no student of mine if you did not have your own spy service.

The King laughed. Kautilya continued with the old man’s reply.

I am the Vyaasa, the Arranger, and this is the ashram of the Kavi-Sangha, the Society of Poets. I am also the last Vyaasa and when I die, so will the Society of Poets. We were a club of arrogant fools -- during our days of power, we wielded it and changed the world. We made this world and I rue the world we have made.

Do you mean, you are Vyaasa, who split the Vedas into three? Vyaasa, the composer of the Mahabharata? That’s not credible. What do you mean?

Yes, I am Vyaasa, or rather, I am the Vyaasa. The very first Vyaasa arranged for the composition of the Veda. At that time, we called it the story of the Victory, the Jaya, of the Aryans over their enemies. Another Vyaasa split the one Veda into three to make it easier to remember and thus preserved it. The Vyaasas who followed chronicled the rise to power of the Aryans. Now, I am the last Vyaasa. We, I and the Vyaasas who preceded me, were the builders of the Mahabharata. At any time, there is only one Vyaasa to run the affairs of the Society of Poets. After me there will be none, for the Society of Poets is no more.

I am confused. If there were many Vyaasas, why does the world only know a single poet of that name? In any case, why do you call yourself "the" Vyaasa? For if there were many Vyaasas, you are at best one of the many, "a" Vyaasa.

Listen to me, hasty man. "Vyaasa" was a title, the title of the leader of the Society of Poets. The Society of Poets followed up on their creation of the Vedas with the story of the Great Victory, the Maha Jaya, also called the Mahabharata. The Vyaasa lead the effort, and frequently was the prime narrator. But it took many centuries to compose, so more than one Vyaasa played his part. The Mahabharata was composed by Vyaasas, many men, not a single man. And the real tale of the Mahabharata is a tale of the days when the Society of Poets was powerful and the Vyaasa played a role in the affairs of states and rulers. We called it the story of the great triumph of the ideas of the Society. That is why the Vyaasa appears many times, in many roles, and with much power in the Mahabharata. They are not the same person, but they represent the same force, the Society of Poets, that changed Aryavarta and created the society you live in.

Are you still interested in listening to me?

Yes. Tell me more of this powerful Society of Poets and the Vyaasa and how it came to pass that it created our society.

The Vyaasa then told me the story of the Great Victory of the Society of Poets. He told of how the Society of Poets came into being when the great sage Vasistha founded it to organize the codification of the knowledge of the Aryan tribes. Those were the days after the Aryans had overthrown the yoke of the Dramila (called Asuras by the tribes) city-states and managed to cross into the lands watered by the Sarasvati and the Yamuna. The Vedas, arranged by Vasistha, told the story of the Aryan migration, the nature of the lands they had passed through, the knowledge they had gained, and the rituals that sustained the tribe and maintained tribal unity against the Asura states. It told of the origins of the greatest Aryan dynasty of all, the Chandravamsa, Dynasty of the Moon. This lay, initially called Jaya, Victory, but later became known as the three Vedas. The Vedas also incorporated the wisdom of the Dramilas who had thrown their lot in with the Aryans in the settlements along the Sarasvati. As the Aryans settled down as the rulers of a largely Dramila population, new problems rose that necessitated changes from their nomadic existence. The Society of Poets played a key role in resolving these problems and the resulting new Aryan-Dramila culture and their interaction with the aboriginal and the many Suryaputra kings and republics. That was the Maha Jaya, the great victory.

But the Yamuna changed its course frequently -- when it changed direction and headed west to the Ganga, many families crossed it and established ties with existing settlements on the Ganga. Those emigrants intermarried with the citified peoples and were almost lost to Aryavarta. Unlike the Dramilas whose blackness scared the Aryans and whose clever talk disgusted them, the easterners, called Naga by the Aryans, were golden-complexioned poets who charmed the Aryans. The resulting culture was a mix of Aryan, Dramila, and Naga elements.

The Aryans labeled all of the easterners Nagas. But the Nagas constituted two separate cultures -- an urban one that thrived on the revenue generated by taxing the lucrative trade along the Grand Trunk Caravan Trail that lead from the eastern seaboard to Taxila, and a tribal one that produced the goods that moved along this trail. The Aryan takeover of the Taxila and subsequent migrations had disrupted the trade and lead to a marked decrease in the prosperity of the Naga kingdoms.

But most of the tribes stayed on the banks of the Sarasvati. Then the earth moved and the waters of the Sarasvati started diminishing. Tributaries that had been feeding the Sarasvati changed course and now fed the Yamuna. In less than a century the Sarasvati went from a majestic river to a puddle, then finally dried up. It seemed that it was the turn of the rest to migrate.

Parasara, who was then the Vyaasa, lead the Kavi-Sangha in the task of organizing the migration of the tribes from the shores of the Sarasvati to the lands of the Ganges-Yamuna mesopotamia. Parasara, as the Vyaasa also initiated the task of preserving the Vedas by first splitting it into three for easier and more accurate memorization and transmittal. The new Vedas also partially incorporated the wisdom of the Dramilas who had thrown their lot in with the Aryans in the settlements along the Sarasvati. (Later, Parasara’s son was to complete the task by incorporating Dramila and Naga religious concepts into a fourth Veda).

The Vyaasa, the head of that society, arranged for the resettlement of the people in the lands on the Ganges occupied by their cousins who had left earlier to create Kurukshetra, its capital Hastinapur, and in Panchaladesa. By the time the river had run completely dry, three million people had been resettled in the plain of the Ganges. The Society of Poets and the Vyaasa arranged all that. Having accomplished its goal, the Society, lead by the son of Parasara, decided that the lessons learned from the sojourn on the banks of the Sarasvati should not be forgotten. Parasara determined that the history of the great migration was to be written.

But the resettlement was straining the capacity of the land, so the Society of Poets also counseled and interfered in the affairs of the Kurus, Kings of Hastinapur, the Yadavas of Mathura, and the Pancalas. The relentless expansion of the Aryans into the eastern lands had caused the Naga rulers of Magadha to become cautious and unfriendly. In previous centuries, the urban Naga kingdoms, lead by Magadha, had been slowly expanding west and before the Aryan arrival had finally established a chain of cities along the trade route to the Dramila kingdoms of the Punjab and the Shaiva rulers of Kashmir. Magadha claimed suzerainty over all Naga cities, but could only occasionally enforce it. The Naga rulers of Kosala and Kasi acknowledged Magadhan sovereignty, but were willing to intrigue with the Aryans in an attempt to break away. The Shaiva oligarchy also claimed suzerainty over the cities south of Kashmir all the way to Kasi, but was in no position to enforce their rule either. When Parasara tried to arrange for migration to Kasi and Kosala and to counsel their rulers, Magadha was aroused. The Magadhan aristocracy expelled the Society of Poets and only allowed the establishment of a few heavily taxed and supervised settlements. This was not acceptable to the Aryans. Having failed at to expand beyond Panchaladesa, the Society of Poets recognized the seriousness of the threat of social breakdown, the possible destruction of arable land, and widespread internecine war. The Yadavas, who had been encouraged to migrate along a southerly route were having a difficult time of it since the lands south of their settlement at Mathura were not good grazing or ploughing lands. The Chedi branch of the Yadavas had become tributary to the Magadha and opposed further easterly expansion from Mathura.

The Society of Poets, that is to say, its leader the Vyaasa, initially convinced the Kuru kings to experiment with the laws and mores of their people to avert a social disaster. In the short run, the experiments seemed to succeed, but they also caused disaffection and ill-feeling between the states in Aryavarta. Political factions opposing Kavi-Sangha policies arose. The traditionalists, who had opposed allowing the migration in the first place, tended to oppose the new laws. Among the radicals, too, there were factions with differing ideas. In Hastinapur, the Pandavas and the Kauravas were the leaders of two factions with opposing ideas. The Pandavas tended to favor the newer immigrants, the Kauravas supported the older established residents. Krishna Vaasudeva, the Yadava chieftain, was the Vyaasa when Pandavas and Kauravas split irrevocably. He tried to mediate between them, but failed. The political split within the Kuru kingdom spread to the other kingdoms and the Aryan kings aligned themselves with the two groups. Initially, the Kuru kingdom was partitioned with the approval of the other rulers who hoped that this would avert bloody war. But the radical and democratic Pandava policies threaten the established rulers. Pandava mismanagement of their economy leads to their being expelled. After a brief period of experimenting with other rulers, the Pandavas are invited back. Their return to power is not acceptable to the other half of the Kuru kingdom. A long cold war was the result -- in its last few years, it turned hotter and the resulting battles destroyed what was left of the nomadic Aryans and set the stage for urbanized imperial states. The Pandavas won and put into practice many of the ideas of the Society of Poets. After the war, the Pandavas and the Kavi-Sangha successfully engineer a split in the Magadhan confederacy and splinter the kingdoms to the east. This enables Aryan settlements to be extended further east. The ideas of the Kavi-Sangha survived because Yudhishthira, the Pandava, was also the Vyaasa, and he helped make the ideas of the Society part of the newly re-established Aryavarta polity.

After Yudhishthira’s passing and once its ideas had been institutionalized, the Kavi-Sangha remained powerful, but progressively became conservative and bereft of ideas. The Dynasty of the Moon loses respect, and in time, broke up into many kingdoms. The Dynasties of the Sun, the rulers of the Nagas, had been destroyed or migrated east to the lands beyond the Himalayas. That is why all kings claim to be descendants of the Dynasty of the Moon. Parasara’s project, to write the history of the tribes migration into the Gangetic heartland, conceived as the Maha Jaya, became the Mahabharata and was written as an epic tale of gods and goddesses and wonderful myth.

The old man also explained why the Society of Poets declined and why he, the last Vyaasa, castigated it as arrogant and foolish. Telling me this story took two weeks. During that time, I fed the old man and washed him. He was failing daily, but he was eager to return to telling his tale. The story was strange, but the events in it showed great appreciation of the difficulties of managing a kingdom. I memorized as much of the story as I could. On the last day, after telling me of the decline of the Society of Poets, the old man seemed to run out of steam. He fell asleep in mid-sentence. I waited for some time, but he did not wake up. His forehead was hot, and he seemed very ill. I was also running out of food and he did not have much stored. I got my effects together and went back to the village. I found that the Magadhan troops had been through a few days earlier and had just left. My host was no longer very polite to me. A message inviting me to enter the Vanga capital had just arrived for me and he was holding it out of a sense of obligation, but if the other villagers found out about it he would be in trouble.

I asked my host if he knew of the old man who lived in the ashram. He said that he did, but that nobody had seen him for many years and he had assumed that he had died. The villagers remembered him fondly for he used to tell stories on festival days. I told the host of the dharmashala that the old man was on his death-bed and should probably be brought in to the dharmashala live out his last days. We went back to the ashram. The Vyaasa had died in his sleep. He looked relaxed and comforted. I believe that he lived just to tell his whole tale to me.

This sounds wonderful. This merges realistic education and heterodox tale into one. And I would like to hear more about the Chandravamsa ancestors you conjured up for my coronation many years ago. I would like to hear the complete story.

I will certainly expand and give you the full story told to me by the Vyaasa. But I would repeat that no benefit accrues to the listener. Considering its atheistic nature, there is always the risk of evil. For just as good tales of gods and goddesses arouse the good inherent in the listener, so do tales of arrogant men ignorant of gods arouse the evil also inherent in the listener. Ten generations of ancestors might lose redemption from a single telling of this tale. Gods and goddesses in heaven close their ears at the telling, thus also becoming deaf to the entreaties of their pious worshippers.

Yes, I understand these warnings, Kautilya, my good friend and chief minister. But, I am the King. And your magician told you that you would attain wisdom from the telling. Was that a true prediction? Tell me the story.

Yes, O Great King. I shall tell you the old man’s story. Yes, there was much wisdom in his tale. I had some questions for him. But, it took the old man two weeks to tell me the story. You are busy.

So, how long will it take?

It took the old man almost 350 ghatis to tell me his story. It might take me three times as long for there was much he assumed I knew and I will have to explain those things to you.

I do not have a thousand ghatis. I might be able to spare five ghatis a month -- it will take two hundred months.

Yes, sixteen years. Almost the rest of your life. But once a month should keep it interesting.

What day is it today?

The moon is in the Purvashada-nakshathra in the solar month of Vrischika.

Let us meet on this day every month till the story is told. How much time have we spent today?

About three ghatis. I can finish one story in two more ghatis.

Go ahead.

I feel that much precedes your story. Would you start at the very beginning?

I only know a little beyond what I have already said. But let me recount the legends that I have of the beginnings of the Aryan age. The story begins when the supply of Soma, the miracle drug, runs short and an Aryan tribe sends a band of warriors to investigate.

Don’t harangue me! I just go back and forth from Daksha-shila (the Fortress of the Moon). They say that there is none available.

No essence of the moon from the city of the moon? Didn’t you offer them more bronze shields and iron toys? Did you offer them the pick of the yearlings from this year’s batch?

Ha! They laughed. They said that it had been a bad year and that the entire year’s produce available for sale had been sent east to the land of the Sun-kings. They are getting iron weapons from them, not toys.

I must go on. I have little else for you. Are you certain you do not want this aromatic spice mix instead?

Sell that to the women. The warriors are going to be unhappy when I tell them that they will only have fermented wheat liquor for another year.

The warriors were unhappy. The brothers Puru and Yadu were particularly upset -- soma was a necesssary part of their pre-battle preparations. Without soma, their warriors would be fearful in battle. Fermented cider and fermented wheat simply was not good enough.

Why can’t we grow it? Yadu’s father brought a sample of the plant many years ago.

It was a male plant. It never put out any seeds. We have to send the women if we need to get something intelligent done. However, I think the trader is lying. We should send an expedition to Dakshashila to determine the truth. Then the traders will deal fairly with us.

So a war-band was organized with Puru in charge as Indra the war-chief and the warriors of his clan pledged fidelity as the Maruts, the companions. Yadu is consecrated as Agni, the spy. The expedition could not start till after the first harvest of wheat. The trip down the Spice Road (as it is now called) took two weeks on their best horses. When they arrived the rainy season was just ending in Dakshashila. Yadu entered the city with a few men and came back to report. A formal conclave was held by the warriors.

O! Agni. The truth now. No showing off. What have you have seen? We need to make a good decision.

Indra, Indra, Indra, my brother. You will love this place. It is a glorious city. The women ...

I don’t want to know about the women. I am sure you had a good time. Was I mistaken in sending you?

The women were extraordinary. But I am no fool, brother Indra. We went everywhere. We visited the gardens and the university, the bars and the brothels. Soma is everywhere, like sand and water. There is no shortage of Soma. We asked in the traders’ quarters about smuggling soma out and they laughed. They wanted to keep their heads, they said. The Matriarch of the Confederacy of the Moon controls all the surplus soma. They said, essence of soma is being released in small quantities and only to traders from the east. They did not know why.

We walked around the city freely. There were very few guards. The soma warehouse is in the center of the city, right next to the bath-house. The bath-house is crowded all day and completely deserted at night. There is only one entrance and even that is lightly guarded. The thieves in the city refused to steal soma . There are many other profitable items to steal.

After midnight the city center is dead. Only the brothel quarter is active. It would be child’s play to sneak in at night and carry soma-essence away on our horses. We should not stay around, eh.

Is there no army? Don’t we risk being followed and our homes devastated in revenge?

Ha. These guys? They have no army. They have nothing, man. A few guards, that’s all. They looked foreign. And some of the guards are women! Women rule the place. There were women everywhere -- they walked around as freely as our women.

Are you sure there’s no army?

They have nice scam going. We asked about the army -- we said we wanted to join it. We were shown a building near the western gates called Daksha’s House (the House of the Moon), that the thieves called the armory. I went there. I walked in. Empty. No guards. Not a fly or a crow. In the women’s quarters, I found a few women and eunuchs. It was the only house in the whole town that had a women’s quarter. They weren’t scared, though they were surprised to see me.

I asked them about Daksha. They said that he was the moon and that the city was protected by the moon. Some scam, eh. Somebody’s paying for protection they aren’t getting.

Agni had not told the whole truth. When he visited Daksha’s House, he had come across a girl and had fallen in love with her. Her name was Svaha and she had told him that she was Daksha’s daughter and that the inhabitants of Daksha’s house lived a secluded life from the rest of the city.

Svaha, in turn, had fallen in love with this stranger who had actually talked to her. The other people of the city shunned the residents of Daksha’s House. The stranger seemed to know little about the Fortress of the Moon, but he talked about the world outside Dakshashila that she was not allowed to see. This had been a thrilling experience for Svaha.

Indra’s council accepted Agni’s recommendation. They prepared for a quick raid and a quicker return to their tribal lands. Three days later, they burst into the city at midnight. The soma warehouse was lightly guarded. But to the their surprise, when they tried to leave, their way was blocked by a substantial body of troops. They were all captured and brought in front of the Matriarch of the Western Gates. On her right hand sat the powerful women of the city. On her left, an imposing man in military attire and small number of women and men, including Svaha..

That’s Svaha! What is she doing here?

Oh! Daksha. Your men captured these bandits stealing essence of soma. Is that the charge? Do they know that the penalty is death?

Yes! O Queen. I had just come into town that very day to begin my annual visit to the Four Districts surrounding your great city. My men had barely time to occupy the armory and I had not even had a chance to spend a night in my house, when we received word of thieves ransacking the soma warehouse with horses. We set out and blocked all the gates of the city and managed to capture this band. Each of the men were mounted on a horse carrying bags of soma essence.

They say they are of an Aryan tribe. They protest the embargo on the export of soma to their land. Soma, they say, is needed for their religious rituals. They say that this is the only way for them to get the soma they need.

They are brave men. Since my men captured them, I have power over their fates, not your city ordinances.

You know that we must send all the soma east. It is sad that their tribal rituals cannot be observed. But you are right. During your visit to our house, you have jurisdiction over crimes against the security of the confederacy. So I leave the penalty to you.

Daksha had reprieved the band to obtain information from them about the location of their tribe. They were kept confined separately as his prisoners in Daksha’s House. One by one they succumb to torture and die without revealing the location of the tribe. Svaha pleaded with her father for Yadu’s life, so his interrogation was postponed. Svaha visited Yadu.

If I had known you were an enemy, I would never have talked to you. Now look at me, I am desolate and sad at the fate that awaits you.

Hey! I fell in love with you. And you didn’t tell me that your father was coming back very soon. You told me he was the moon and fooled me. You were so kind and pretty -- I thought you were telling me a fable about being the daughter of the moon. I should have grilled you, not made love to you.

I am so ashamed. I daydream that if I had known what information you were seeking, I would have willingly betrayed my father, my city, and my district. And then I am struck with horror at the thought. I assume that everybody knew why Daksha’s house is shunned. I thought you were so brave not to shun me and to confess love for me.

I don’t understand. Why do these people shun your family?

My father is the brother of the Holika, the High Matriarch of the confederation. That makes him the Daksha, the military leader of the confederacy. If he dies, the confederacy will elect another brother of a matriarch to be Daksha and his matriarch sister will be the Holika. The confederacy consists of twenty-seven districts. The Daksha stays at each of the districts of the confederacy for two weeks at a time. Dakshashila is at the intersection of four districts and is the major source of the confederacy’s wealth and power since it sits on the Spice Road to the lands to the south and east, the lands of the Krishnas and the Gangaputras. So Daksha’s visit to this city lasts eight weeks and is always at the end of the rainy season, for that is when our enemies think of attacking us. They see the caravans that have come here and are waiting for the rains to end before going on.

But to prevent the Daksha from developing ideas of power or of passing on his power to his children, his male descendants are killed at birth and his female descendants and their husbands, lovers, and children are killed when he dies. Also, if the Holika dies, a new Daksha is usually selected -- if so, the old Daksha is cremated with his sister.

That is why my father gave in to my entreaties. I pleaded with him for another year of life for you. He knows that if he dies, you will too. But he does not plan to let you free.

So they are afraid of you? And they are going to kill you sooner or later. Let me free and come with me to my tribe. We don’t have these silly customs.

I can’t do that. My father has taken measures against the two of us trying to escape.

So , that first year, Svaha and Yadu had a child. Daksha had left orders that the child be killed if it was a boy. Svaha convinces the man sent to kill the child to instead deliver the child to a trader with instructions to take the child to Yadu’s tribe. The shaman’s wife raises the child.

This goes on for six years. Yadu and Svaha have six sons, all of whom are delivered to his tribe.

Then one day, an soothsayer visits Dakshashila and is invited to the Holika’s court.

Hail, oh great mother. Your reign has been a great one and promises to be greater still. I am honored to be invited here.

We have heard great stories of your prowess. Are you come to prophesy? Do you have news of my future?

This is dangerous territory. I avoid telling the future of rulers. The truth can be threatening and gain me no reward. A lie that soothes comes back like a viper to destroy a reputation.

You are wise, my sister. But, you will not be required to tell our future. We shall amuse ourselves by hearing the futures of the men of this court.

And so the wise woman looked at the men, felt their foreheads, kneaded their palms, looked in their eyes, asked them the dates of their birth. She told them of their past and she predicted glorious futures for them all. All were astounded and the Matriarch was pleased. The she noticed that her brother had not come forward to hear his future told. She had an idea.

Here is my brother, he is doomed to die after me. If I ask for his fortune, I may know mine.

Ho, Daksha, you have not come forward. Wise woman, will you foretell for this man who has not shown any curiosity?

Sister, spare me this morbid spectacle.

Foretell for him, or I shall be displeased.

So the old woman approached Daksha and felt his palms. A look of puzzlement appeared in her face. She felt his face and his forehead. The puzzlement changed to anger. She shook her head and it appeared that she was going to say something. Then she thought better of it. She peered in his eyes. Then she asked him his date of birth. She mumbled and appeared to be performing some computations. It may have been a look of fear. Then she looked about her and composed herself..

I am sorry, I have nothing to say for him.

But you must.

I cannot.

And that was that. The soothsayer refused to talk, despite the most eloquent pleas. Finally, the Holika dismissed the court and went into her chamber. She asked the soothsayer and her brother to accompany her. "I must get to the bottom of this," she said. "What did you see?" The wise woman said, "What I saw is not possible. I must have made some mistake." "I must know what you saw," said the Holika. "His descendants will establish a great dynasty that will rule the world," the soothsayer said. "In his eyes, I see the end of the rule of the mothers. I see the enslavement of woman, I see wars and famines, I see death rampant. In his hands, I see the seeds of great kings. His forehead is that of a great ancestor, one whose descendants rule. His birthday is that of a god, a god who has twenty-seven mansions." "That’s impossible," the Holika said. "Do you know who he is?" "I did not," said the soothsayer. "But now I do. He is your brother, the Daksha. These things cannot happen." "I do not believe you," the Holika said. "He has only one daughter. And she is unmarried. We shall take care that he has no other descendants."

And so, Daksha is ordered to kill Svaha.

Daksha confronts Svaha and discovers that her children are alive and safe out of his sister’s reach. He is forced to kill Svaha. As she dies, she curses her father -- his descendants would forget him and worship strange gods. Yadu is also killed.

Since Yadu had never returned from the raid, he was still Agni in the eyes of the tribe. The shaman’s wife raises the six children calling them the sons of Agni.

[ The plot here is that six sons of Agni take over Dakshashila and overthrow the tie between the post of Daksha and the mechanism by which the Holika is selected. This establishes the military as a second source of power, with the six sons, collectively called Skanda, in overall charge. The Skanda claim suzerainty over the twenty-seven cities of the Daksha confederacy. They propose that the matriarch of Daksha-shila should always be the Holika, and her military forces always be in charge of the forces of the confederacy. The Skanda coup d’etat succeeds, but the elected Holika escapes to establish a government-in-exile under the protection of the Sindhu confederacy to the south.

As a result of the ascendance of the Skanda sexarchy, Aryan tribes are increasingly invited into the Daksha army. The army commander’s increased prestige and power means that the matriarchy steadily loses power. The surrounding confederacies, specifically, the southern one in the lower Indus Valley, and to the west, the Elam city-state, and the western (Krishna) half of the Daksha confederacy (in modern-day Afghanistan) did not approve of the new arrangement. As a result, wars increased, and the Daksha-shila, now four independent districts dominated by Aryans and claiming suzerainty over the rest of the confederacy became increasing militarized.

The Skanda military formally claimed the right of the old Daksha to run the military for the entire confederacy, and with the increasing power of the army in the new order, established the Chandravamsa (the Dynasty of the Moon) aristocracy.

The Skanda victory initiated a major migration of Aryan tribes into India.. Other cities vied to get Aryan mercenaries into their armies. In Daksha-shila, the Aryans are also welcomed to establish settlements, but the remaining cities do not welcome Aryan settlers into the fertile heartland of country, but restrict them to sparse highlands to the west and north. This brings the Aryans into frequent conflict with the Krishna confederacy occupying the Afghanistan plateau. The Krishnas initially welcome the new settlements to their east, and hire Aryan mercenaries to help them in their conflicts with Elam to the south and west. The Krishnas also aid the Aryan settlers when they come into conflict with Elamite settlements to the south (along the Makran coast and in Gedrosia).

The Dramilas do not make intensive use of the Punjab plains, for apparently superstitious reasons. It is considered holy ground and the one city there, Madhurai (Madh-Urai, the City of Intoxication), was enormously wealthy and was a major center of Dramila culture and pilgrimage. The inability to settle the fallow lands of the Punjab there rankles with the Aryan tribes. Five Aryan tribes had migrated from Parsadesa, attracted by potential jobs as mercenaries and moved with their cows and goats down the passes of the Northwestern Himalayan ranges hoping to receive a welcome from the Sindhus. But their way into the fertile plains of the Punjab was blocked. The Dramilas said they were bound by solemn covenants with each other and with the Shiva kingdom of the northern mountains that the land be left a sanctuary for wild animals, except as needed to maintain Madhurai. Otherwise, they feared that the gods would hunger for human flesh. Wild boar, much prized by the Aryans, were allowed to wander freely. Occasionally, there would be a royal boar hunt, but only one boar was ever killed, and that to much fanfare.

The strict matriarchy of the Dramilas succumbed to the Skanda-led militarization. The government of the Dramila kingdoms remained matriarchical in form, but the military commanders, usually called Mudalali (the Crocodile-man, or the First man) were no longer sacrificed when the matriarch died. Increasingly, the matriarch selected was one acceptable to the Mudalali, usually his unmarried sister or his daughter. The post of Mudalali also tended to be inherited -- this was because a wise Mudalali would ensure that the matriarch would support his choice of heir. In a few generations, the Mudalalis became kings, and considered themselves kings. The matriarch continued to be selected and would be called the Holika, since the Sindhu kings still claimed the right to rule the Daksha-shila through the deposed matriarchy.

One Sindhu king, Hiranyakasipu, the Golden-Robed, in his senility, disowned his heir-apparent, later called Prahlada. Prahlada escaped from his father’s prison and joined the Aryan tribes in their hilly abode. When it became clear to Prahlada that his father would not recover from his madness, and that his own enemies had complete control of Sindh, Prahlada made a pact with the hill tribes. They formed the core of his army, called the Narasingha for their fearsome lion-mane headdresses, and conducted guerrilla war on the Dramila kingdom. The king’s personal guard, lead by his sister, the Holika, consisting of a fearsome brigade of eunuchs known for their cruelty, were utterly destroyed in a great battle. Prahlada’s aunt then visits him, apparently to make peace, but tries to kill him by setting fire to his sleeping quarters. Prahlada escapes, locking her in the burning tent. Hiranyakasipu himself was killed by the Narasinghas who tore him with lion-claws on the doorstep of his bathhouse, thus fulfilling a prophesy that he would be killed by neither man nor beast, neither inside nor outside his house, neither in water nor in air, and neither by hand nor by weapons.

Prahlada gifted the plains of the Punjab to his Narasinghas. He allowed them to call themselves Arya, for he acknowledged their nobility and heroism in his battles. This was the first time that the tribes had used this name for themselves. In exchange, he required that they would be the first line of defense against any further incursions from the Northwest. Ever since then there have always been noble lions in the Punjab.

So the five tribes occupied the Punjab. Why did they move east?

Prahlada’s descendants rued his generosity. Allowing the Aryans to settle there broke the covenant with the Shiva kingdom and with the other Dramila cities. Since the Aryans were generally acknowledged as great warriors, the alliance between Sindh and Aryans was seen as a threat to the other cities. The Shiva kingdom of Kashmir, objected to the settlements. At that time, the Shaivas had become too weak to enforce their objections, so they complained but did nothing. As it happened, time would make it unnecessary for them to do anything.

The cities of Sindh were enormous. They relied on an extensive system of customary taxes to maintain themselves. As the tribes in the Punjab prospered, Prahlada’s descendants tried to tax them and required an annual tribute of the tribes to support the growing Dramila towns.

Compared to the Dramila towns, the Aryan settlements were tiny -- the Dramilas called the Aryans villages "dwarf towns". The Aryans were a big people, but as a joke, they would be called "dwarves". The bitter cry was that the tribes had come as supplicants, asking for three footsteps of land, but had stolen the best earth.

The conflict grew intense when the Indus shifted a hundred miles west in Sind and left the large Dramila cities waterless. The Shaivas would later cite this as divine punishment for breaking the agreement. The dwarf Aryan towns of the Punjab were not affected since they could move easily to the new river banks, but the Sindhu economy foundered. The Sindhu king demanded increased taxes of the Aryans, since they recovered fastest from the ensuing flooding and disorganization. When the Aryans refused to pay the taxes, he demanded that the Aryans leave the Punjab. Many Aryans refused and banded to form an army to protect their settlements.

For a time, it appeared that ousting the Aryans might unite all the kingdoms against the Aryans. But the change in riverbeds had been associated with general flooding and other natural calamities. As a result, none of the Dramila rulers were really ready for a genocidal battle. Some Aryans, expecting the worst went back across the Khyber Pass. Many others, lead by the Bharata tribe, with the permission of the Shaivas migrated upstream along the Sarasvati till they came to the lands we now call Brahma-rishi-desa.

War with the Aryans came too soon for the Sindhus. They could not both rebuild their cities and conduct a war. Their allies did not come to their support. The Aryan bands, calling themselves Vamana-sena (the Army of Dwarves), utterly destroyed the Sindhu forces. Dams and embankments protecting Dramila towns were systematically demolished by the Aryans. Dramila towns in Sind were overrun and the Aryan tribes started settling in the land of Sind. Many Dramilas fled south to the lands of Narmada and the forests beyond, thus giving the name for the Deccan Plateau. The other Dramila cities then realized that they had made a strategic error in not supporting the Sindhus when they needed it.

The result was that Aryan tribes now occupied Sind and Punjab. Daksha-shila was culturally Dramila but dominated by Aryans. An Aryan-ruled band of land separated the Dramila civilization into the western portion centered around Elam and Krishna confederacies, and a south-eastern portion consisting largely of refugees. The city of Madhurai was completely destroyed. Some refugees carrying various symbols of the city established new Madhurais in the east and in the south.

The Aryans did not relish settling in Sind -- most of them wanted no part of the city culture. The land had been farmed heavily and this made it difficult to establish a nomadic, livestock-raising culture. The Aryans who stayed in Sind largely lived by enslaving the population and living on the margins of the ruined towns.

I am Tamil, it is likely that my ancestors were part of that rout. But why is the land of the Sarasvati held in so much greater repute.

The brunt of the battle had been borne by the Aryans in the Punjab. Peace reigned in the region between the Sarasvati and the Drishadvati where the Bharata tribe had settled. Dramilas escaping the carnage of the war sought refuge. Their skills, especially in constructing dams, knowledge of agriculture, architecture, and writing were appreciated. However, the Aryans did not wish to build towns like the ones that the Dramilas had abandoned. Instead, the Aryans established towns and kingdoms along the trade routes that ran to Daksha-shila. These towns prospered by taxing and serving the caravans that passed through. The Dramila scribes played their part in tracking the products that passed through and establishing supportable rates of taxation. The Dramilas also acted as interpreters because of their knowledge of the non-Aryan tribes of the region. As the Aryan settlements prospered, the two communities influenced each other. The Aryan shamans, called rishis, were influenced by the Dramila traditions of formalized ritual and began codifying Aryan practices into poetry. In their turn, the Dramila priests, called brahmins by the Aryans ("brahm" meaning "universal" or "complete" because the priests were given complete decision-making powers when in a trance) started using Aryan poetic forms for their rituals. The land came to be called Brahma-rishi-desa because this was where the rituals of the Dramila brahmins and the Aryan rishis were merged. An Aryan rishi, Vasistha, lead a new effort to rationalize the superstitious beliefs of the tribes. The tribal lays of the Aryans, called the Vedas, were re-arranged into a new literary form. Vasistha established the Kavi-Sangha to systematically rewrite the Veda.

The proposed changes were not accepted by some rishis. They felt that the new Vedas were contaminated by brahmin influence and, they felt, did not reflect the warrior traditions of the Aryans. These raja-rishis (as they termed themselves, in contrast to the brahmarishis) went west and inflamed the new Aryan settlements in Punjab and in Sind. Ten kings formed a confederacy to attack the Bharatas and prevent them from adopting changes to the rituals. They miscalculated -- unlike the Dramilas, the Bharatas were not trying to maintain centralized towns while recovering from a natural disaster. The Bharatas, lead by Sudas and Vasistha, won the battle, establishing their supremacy, but also establishing the authority of the modified poetic form of the Veda and the modified rituals associated with the new religion. In rewriting the Vedas, the Kavi-Sangha verbally supported old democratic traditions of nomadic life. The Bharata oligarchy increasingly asserted new regal prerogatives, but continued to give lip service to the notion that rulers and warriors served the people. The king commanded respect and was honored, but except during war, he did not command obedience. He was no longer considered the Indra, but considered the representative of the divine Indra. The brahmarishis claimed honors from the rulers and the people.

The Bharatas successfully maintained and extended their kingdom a little east. The people of the east were different from the Dramilas. They were, of course, non-Aryan, but their languages, their appearance, and their attitudes towards migrants was quite different, at least initially. There were Eastern kingdoms on the Ganga as well as downstream. A great imperial confederacy was centered around Magadha. The region upstream to and beyond the Ganga to the Himalayan foothills had not been settled significantly by the Easterners because the river and the land were considered unstable. Also, the valley of Kashmir was settled by the mountain tribes, that called themselves the Shaiva tribes ruled by the Shiva family, and they resisted any Aryan advance into the areas they controlled. The Shaivas disapproved of the Aryan settlements but had been powerless to stop it outside the areas immediately adjacent to themselves.

Before the Shaivas could do anything about rolling back the Aryan advance, a crisis hit. One year, the rains were significantly greater than usual. The result was a greater than usual silt build-up along the banks of the Yamuna, upstream before it entered Bharata territory. This resulted in floods in Kashmir and prevented them from initiating expeditions to oust the Aryans. But the next year, spring was warmer and came earlier. Earthquakes in Kashmir kept the Shaivas busy, but landslides upstream of the Yamuna caused it to shift its flow. Instead of flowing west to the Sarasvati, it now flowed east a number of miles past it, paralleling the Ganga and merged with the Ganga hundreds of miles downstream. The Sarasvati itself did not change its path but the flow decreased significantly. As a result, a significant part of the Aryan population migrated east and south past the still skittish Yamuna and settled on the western bank of the Ganga. This branch of the Bharatas, called the Kurus, drove out the Naga rulers of the major trade center of Naga-puram. They renamed the city Hastinapur. This was the first wave of Aryan immigration into Hastinapur.

In the meantime, the Aryans in Sind and Punjab were progressively destroying the civilization they had inherited. The changes in river flow had made farming difficult. The flooding had destroyed much of the Aryan cattle. The Aryan destruction of the dams and the irrigation systems had made the cities non-livable. The loss of Dramila builders and technicians made it difficult to fix the damage. As a result, when a second group of Aryans migrated out from the lands to the west of the Krishnas, they were not welcomed, but directed to continue their migration to the east. When these migrants entered Brahmarishidesha, they continued east to Hastinapur where they were initially welcomed. However, as time passed conflicts between the migrants of the first wave and those of the second increased.

Now that you have told me the prehistory, I understand what set the stage for conflict. But you said that initially the Kuru kings welcomed their cousins and even did as the Society of Poets counseled them. What happened to cause conflict.

It is said that the Aryan tribes that left Parsadesa left under a cloud. The Aryans were an accursed people. Wherever they went in their nomadic migrations, they found that other peoples had occupied the good lands before them. Even though the remaining lands were not extremely poor, the Aryans constantly felt jealous. In Parsadesa, they encountered Dramilas for the first time in the city of Elam. The Elamites were willing to let the Aryans settle in the plateaus north east of their cities. Many of the Aryan tribes were willing to accept this compromise, but five tribes decided to continue east to India. They said that they preferred to try and break the curse to living with it. However, when they crossed the mountainous passes, they found one Dramila state governed by Aryans warring with other Dramila states, and in Sind, an even larger Elam. So initially they settled in the mountain country. After the fall of the Dramila kingdoms, they started migrating into the Punjab but were encouraged to continue east to avoid the difficult conditions in the Punjab.

The Aryan curse is endemic to being nomads. The claim is that the Asuras, the elder brothers of the Devas, are the forefathers of the settled communities, while the Devas are the progenitors of nomadic communities. Settled communities necessarily die when the land fails; nomadic communities are immortal for they move on to better lands. But when a nomadic community and a settled community encounter each other, the nomads must force the settlers to share their wealth, by trickery, by trade, or by triumph. Thus, at all times, the worshippers of the Devas, the true gods, are the newcomers and have to seize the wealth of the previous settlers (their "older brothers") out of their wealth. The Aryans of Parsadesa broke this law by compromising with the Dramilas of Elam, thus honoring the elder brother and denying the Devas their right. In due course, they became worshippers of the Asuras. The five dissident tribes honored the Devas by not accepting the Elam dispensation. They left, taking their curse with them.

I do not know if this story of a curse is true. It is certainly the case that as these five tribes moved through the land they dispossessed the earlier inhabitants. So when the second wave of immigrants came to Hastinapur, there was much tension. In those days, Pratipa was king in Hastinapur., and for many generations before, the eldest son had inherited the throne. Rumors spread that the second wave of migrants were fated to dispossess the first. Pratipa’s eldest son, Devapi, the heir-apparent, disappeared in the forest. Thus his younger brother Santanu became king. On Santanu’s ascension, the rumor was spread that since the younger son had become king, the terms of the curse for that generation had been met. The Society of Poets helped Santanu consolidate his rule --- in exchange, he listened to its counsel and was converted to its cause. He was the first foolish man to accept the ideas of the Society of Poets. That set the stage for the rest of the story.

Is this the same Santanu, the husband of the goddess Ganga and the father of Bhishma? He is celebrated as a great and wise king -- why do you call him foolish, O Vyaasa.

His foolishness was not his own -- it was shared with the Vyaasa. The Society was now powerful and large. The Vyaasa was full of arrogance at his own power. This is where the true story of the Mahabharata war begins -- with the story of the foolish King, Santanu.

As Magadha regained its strength, the king, actually the elected war-lord of the Magadhan confederacy, began to threaten the Yadavas. Initially, the Yadavas tried to ensure good relations through marriage. As a result, the buffer kingdom of Chedi was formed, ruled by a Yadava prince who acknowledged Magadhan suzerainty. Since Chedi’s rulers were Yadava, they also aspired to rule Mathura. However, the Yadavas were not ruled by kings and did not wish one. The nobleman who presided over the assembly of nobles was conventionally called King, but he did not have royal powers. In that sense, the Yadavas governed themselves like Magadha. So, the Chedi king could not directly attain his goal. But the war-lord of Mathura had supreme powers during wartime. When Mathura became predominantly Yadava, a relative of Chedi, by name Ugrasena, with some pretense to the kingship of Mathura was installed as King of Mathura and treated as the leader of the Yadavas by Magadha and Chedi. Ugrasena’s son, Kamsa, took the post of warlord. Normally, Dramila custom required that Ugrasena’s sister’s son be the heir-apparent. But, Ugrasena’s sister only had a daughter Devaki who was the second wife of Vasudeva, a poor Yadava prince. Nobody else would marry her because her son would be the natural heir-apparent and that would bring them in conflict with Kamsa. Vasudeva was considered a weakling and Kamsa felt he could deal with Devaki and Vasudeva without any opposition and would be able to inherit from his father. Kamsa had agreed that when he came to power, he would accept the overlordship of Chedi and therefore Magadha. The Chedi king had another plot in mind which made him willing to work under the Magadhan king, Jarasandha. His infant son, Sisupala, was betrothed to the Magadhan princess and would marry her when they came of age. The Chedi king hoped that this would allow Sisupala to claim the king-ship of Magadha when Jarasandha died.

Vasudeva had two sons, Balarama by his first wife Rohini, and Krishna by Devaki. In fear of Kamsa, they arranged that both their sons would be raised as cowherds and farmers rather than as potential challengers of Kamsa for the king-ship of Mathura. Despite this, Kamsa plotted to kill Krishna, but only succeeded in making the boy aware that he would ultimately have to fight Kamsa. Balarama, being older, helped Krishna escape some of the plots. But the repeated attempts on his life enabled Krishna to recognize that he could not lead a life of a cowherd but would inevitably clash with Kamsa.

Not all the Yadavas had maintained their connection with the Society of Poets, but the clan of Vasudeva had. It became apparent to Vasudeva that Mathura needed to maintain good relations with the migrating Bharatas if it was to survive Magadha’s and Chedi’s designs. He made sure that his son, Krishna, was raised as a member of the Society of Poets. Since Kamsa was watching Balarama closely, Balarama was raised to be more of a farmer. Later Krishna would become one of the most meddlesome Vyaasas that the Society of Poets was to see.

Across the river from Mathura, stretching northeast to the Ganga and beyond was the kingdom of Panchala. From Panchala’s standpoint, the troubles in Hastinapur did not bode well. Undoubtedly, if the migrants were not welcomed by the Kurus, they would move on to Panchala. So Panchala shared that concern with the Yadavas. In addition, since both Mathura and Pancala were upstream from Magadha and Magadha was big, while Mathura was small, the king of Panchala wanted to maintain good relations with his Yadava neighbor, so that they could cooperate if attacked.

At one stage, migrants had come to the Kuru-Panchala border lead by Drona, the son of Bharadwaja a famous Aryan rishi and contemporary of Vasistha. They had requested entry, offering friendship in exchange. But the Panchala king, Drupada, had refused in arrogant terms, denying his need to make friends with landless nomads. Drona smarted at the insult since he and Drupada had been childhood friends when Drupada’s father had welcomed Bharadwaja to his kingdom to teach his sons the art of archery and charioteering. The immigrants had hoped to settle in the city of Abhichhatra on the Ganges and restore it to its previous role as a rest-stop on the Grand Trunk trade route. But now they dispersed among the Kurus of Hastinapur and spread ill-will against Panchala. This made it even more important for Drupada to maintain good relations with the Yadavas.

I see here an explanation for the sides that formed to battle in the war.

Yes, the strategic situation prefigures the sides taken by the participants in the war.

At the time of this story Santanu is king of Hastinapur. The population was swollen with new migrants. The Ganga was threatening to silt up, much as the Yamuna had. If it had not been for the new population, it would have been easy to move the villages and towns (except for Hastinapur itself) to the new banks. This was no longer feasible and Santanu began the practice of building dams upstream to control the Ganga. The result of this was that the water reaching Hastinapur had lost some force, but was therefore depositing more silt. It became necessary to construct levees to control the Ganga. Santanu’s interest in these engineering projects for controlling the Ganga resulted in him being called the Husband of the Ganga.

Parasara, the Vyaasa at the time of this story, was concerned by the problems caused by the increase in the population and with the threat of repeated floods. He talked to Santanu about it.

O Vyaasa, what did the sage Parasara counsel the king.

Yes, I will tell you in his own words the counsel that Parasara gave to King Santanu.

In the past, the Society of Poets had not been involved in attempting to solve such problems. But Parasara was actively interested in finding a solution. But he recognized that the situation was fraught with uncertainty and any solution might not succeed. Too little was known about such problems. Parasara argued that the long-term problem was a large and growing population. Clearly, the river’s course could not be changed. Even if it could be changed, the population would grow and settle on its banks again and it would only be a matter of a little time before the problem recurred. A long-term solution was needed. A smaller, stable population could continue to use the long-established approach of moving when the river overflowed. But there was no consensus in the Society on how to control the population. Parasara suggested that the right approach to such problems was experimental -- that is to say, a social policy experiment had to be performed with the people of Hastinapur as its subjects. If the policy succeeded, it could be applied elsewhere in Aryavarta.

Santanu liked the idea. He proposed that the simple direct way to control population was to legislate it. He proposed an appropriate royal decree. This violated the Society of Poets principle that the king would reign, not rule. Parasara argued that what was being proposed was experimental and that the urgency of the crisis justified the deviation from principle.

"Every couple can only have one male and one female child to replace each one of them. Thus the population will be stable. If a child dies, a couple can have another one to replace the one they lost. If a couple wants more than two children, they must persuade somebody else to give up their right to have a child. Children that are conceived that do not fit with this edict are to be aborted or killed as soon as they are born."

I am amazed that such an edict was passed. Did the people of Hastinapur not rise up and overthrow the King?

Of course not. The Society of Poets knew that population control had always been part of the lives of the people. Up to then, this culling had been done by the river, now it was being done by the state. As the saying goes:

To ruling monarchs let no trace
Of common nature cling;

For what is vice in other men,
Is virtue in a king

Santanu’s unusual rulings were accepted in a land that had seen many floods and famines in recent years. But Santanu’s own family suffered first from the edict.

How is that, O Vyaasa? Why was Santanu the first to suffer from the edict?

This is the story of Santanu's first son, Devavrata, known to history as Bhishma. Santanu had only one queen -- his edict made it unacceptable for most men to marry more than one wife, and Santanu wanted to establish the universal applicability of his edict.

Every year, as Devavrata grew up, his father and mother would have another child, hoping for a daughter. But unfortunately, they were sons. Sadly, she gave them up to the king, who had them killed. Devavrata did not understand what bothered his mother, but by the age of seven or eight, he knew that she was unhappy.

One day when Devavrata was about eight, he was playing on the banks of the Ganges with his bow and arrows. His mother who had just given birth to another son came to him and embraced him. "Dev," she said, "I have to leave you. I am unbearably unhappy here. " Devavrata hugged her and replied, "I’ll make you happy, mother. Tell me, why are you so sad?"

His mother cried, "I grieve for my children, your brothers. Your father’s laws are cruel and unjust."

"I’ll change the laws," announced Devavrata. "I’ll ask my father to change his laws."

His mother hugged him and smiled ruefully. "You are a good son, Dev. Here, take this medallion. Keep it in my memory. Be a good son to your father. And, remember, change the law when you can."

Later than evening, Devavrata approached his father. "Father," he said, "Mother is extremely upset over your law. She cries all the time. Please repeal it."

Santanu patted his son’s head and smiled. "I feel its cruelty every day," he said. "But it is a necessary law and I will not change it. I cannot make exceptions to it for the sake of the queen."

Devavrata pleaded, but his father smiled patronizingly and refused. Devavrata returned to his mother’s rooms to discover the place in an uproar and all the maids clustered by the riverside. His mother could be seen walking towards the deepest part of the river. Devavrata shouted for her and it seemed to him that she waved back. He tried to go in himself, but the attendants held him back. His mother kept walking. Her head went under the water and then it seemed to him that she bobbed up and seemed to shout for help. He took up his bow, tied string and rope to the end and shot them out over the water. He could not reach her. She, like most residents of the palace, including himself had never learned to swim. She never returned. Boats were sent out to search for her and strong swimmers criss-crossed the river. Her body turned up many days later.

The king announced a month of mourning for his wife. But despite this event, he would not repeal his laws. Devavrata could not accept the loss of his mother and was shocked with the inaction of his father. His mother had told him to be a good son to his father and he felt bound by her wishes.

It became commonly known that Santanu’s wife had committed suicide in protest against the population control edict. The people venerated her as a goddess.

So Devavrata grows up mourning his mother’s death? What happens next?

When the subjects of a king are dissatisfied with his acts, their dissatisfaction is easily known to the spies of his enemies. And as the wise say, "A neighboring king is always an enemy; a king’s only friends are the enemies of his enemies."

The disaffection in the kingdom encouraged border raids and attacks from surrounding kings. But the hidden hand of the Society of Poets (and their power in the kingdoms to the south) kept Hastinapur relatively safe. However, the Society of Poets did not have much power among the northern kings. A surprise raid by the king of Salva in the northeast caused much havoc and threatened damage to the dams. Devavrata was fifteen at this time. He was visiting the area and was attacked by the raiders and made a prisoner. He succeeded in remaining incognito, and managed to escape with the support of members of the Society of Poets in the Salvan force.

Instead of returning, he collected a group of Hastinapur soldiers and created a guerrilla force that harassed the Salvan army. The Salvan army was forced to retreat without its spoils. Devavrata returned a hero and Santanu made him crown prince as a reward.

Devavrata’s increased prestige and power lead him to oppose the Society of Poet’s experiment in social policy as a failure. But he was challenged by the proponents of the experiments in the Society of Poets to come up with an alternative.

Devavrata proposed a permanent set of dams across the Ganges to manage the silting and the floods. This required a permanent engineering and administrative establishment to manage the large-scale construction work. The diminished risk of flooding would increase the population capacity of the plains. He estimated that Hastinapur could support a population many times its then population. Increases in previous years had been dramatic but nowhere near the estimates he made. In addition, he proposed that the population be controlled by encouraging emigration. Devavrata’s proposal was approved but the population-control edict was not revoked, pending the successful construction of the dams.

At the age of sixteen, Devavrata took over the administration of the kingdom. He succeeded in building the proposed dams. The resulting ability to control the floods and to distribute the waters of the Ganges effectively via irrigation canals vastly increased Hastinapur’s wealth and productive capacity. His success in controlling the Ganga is attributed to his goddess mother.

So that’s why Santanu’s wife was considered the goddess Ganga and why Bhishma was called Gangaputra. Was the edict repealed then?

Yes, now you know why the Mahabharata made Devavrata’s mother the goddess. But, no, the edict was not repealed -- the success of the irrigation projects that Devavrata had initiated would take many years to establish. Until they succeeded, the Society of Poets did not want to repeal it. But Devavrata as administrator was lax in enforcing it. This made him extremely popular.

In the normal course of events, he would have become King when his father died and he would have declared the experiment over. However, that was not to be.

Ten years after his wife's death, Santanu fell in love with Satyavati, a fisher-woman from an adjacent kingdom. At that time, Devavrata was still young and he was yet to become the popular heir-apparent. Santanu and Satyavati have an illegitimate son, Krishna Dvaipaayana, whom Santanu does not acknowledge as he would otherwise have to kill the child. Parasara, the Vyaasa at that time, is asked to raise the child as his own son by a crying Satyavati and a shame-faced Santanu. He agrees.

Satyavati wanted Santanu to marry her. Santanu vowed that he could not live without Satyavati, but he could not marry her without having to kill her future sons. Satyavati threatened to break their relationship and the King was disconsolate.

Devavrata noticed his father’s depression and asked him about it. He did not get a straight answer, but was able to determine by questioning his father’s servants that his father visited Satyavati regularly. He makes a visit to Satyavati himself. When he discovered what the problem was, he offered to give up his own right to have a son to his father Santanu. But Satyavati was not satisfied. She wanted her son to be king after Santanu. Devavrata gives up his right to kingship. Satyavati was still not satisfied. "After all," she said, "the laws of the nation can be changed. You can have children, legitimate or illegitimate, who might contest the throne." Devavrata vowed celibacy.

Ah-ha! So it is not too different from the original.

You could say so.

Santanu married Satyavati. When the terms of his marriage were made public, both Santanu and Satyavati were reviled.

Some years after this, Devavrata persuaded the Society of Poets and the king that the edict had caused much more harm than good and that his flood control measures had worked.

The edit was finally revoked. Santanu tried to recover his people's affection by repealing it "in memory of his dead first wife". This made the people worship her even more and she was considered an incarnation of the goddess Ganga. Her son Devavrata’s ability to control the floods on the Ganges was attributed to their relationship and he was attributed with divine powers by the people.

Devavrata’s popularity does not improve Santanu’s standing with his subjects -- they continue to despise him and his wife. His subjects believed that he repealed his own edict to placate Satyavati who did not want her future children killed. However, the repeal eliminated a major source of disaffection in the kingdom.

By now the story of Devavrata’s vow is commonly known and considered a terrible injustice. He was called Bhishma (the Awesome) in recognition of the awfulness of his vow. Satyavati did not like it at all -- she felt that the name was a continuing reproach to her.

What of Satyavati’s first son who was being raised by Parasara?

Santanu still could not recognize his first son by Satyavati. However, both Devavrata and his half-brother became members of SoP and stayed good friends. Satyavati's son went on to become the Vyaasa. He had some of his father’s faults, especially his desire to do good by fiat and short-sightedness in understanding the needs of the people.

Satyavati had two more sons, Chitrangada and Vicitravirya. Chitrangada was made crown prince. Santanu dies when the princes were still young; Bhishma became regent as well as being in charge of the government. Satyavati, as Queen-Mother, exercised considerable power as well. When the princes reached their adolescence, Bhishma and Satyavati decided to find wives for them and made more enemies for the kingdom in the process. These enemies would be the cause of Bhishma’s death many years later.

Though Bhishma and Satyavati got along well with each other, their followers did not. Them administration is frequent in turmoil as a result of petty quarrels. Chitrangada was too young to have a say in the governing of the kingdom. Before reaching puberty, he dies of a wasting illness. Satyavati’s spies report to her, The people blame you for the troubles of the kingdom. Bhishma, they say, should declare himself the king. The kingdom’s borders are assailed by our neighbors who think that Hastinapur is ruled by a weak woman, regent to a young prince.

Satyavati then said to Bhishma, Let us plan now for the next generation. Vicitravirya should be married and have a heir as soon as he is able. Bhishma assented, Our people will revel in the celebrations and praise the generosity of the Kuru clan.

Vicitravirya is too young to win a wife for himself. The King of Kasi had three daughters , just attaining the age when marriage was thinkable. An emissary was sent to Kasiraja with a message - Satyavati, Queen-Mother of the Kurus, looks on your daughters with favor and would welcome them into the Kuru clan as daughters-in-law.

Kasiraja is distraught. Are my daughters to marry that dotard Bhishma, the idiot who vowed celibacy? And am I to risk the displeasure of Magadha by publicly making an alliance with these western invaders? My daughters will choose for themselves. And he proclaimed the date for a great swayamvara for his three daughters.

Bhishma and Satyavati were angered by this action. This is an insult to the Kurus, said Satyavati. It would not have happened if Santanu were alive. Bhishma decides to go to the swayamvara on behalf of his step-brother.

Salvakumar, heir-apparent to the throne of Salva, a neighboring kingdom, arrives in Kasi for the swayamvara. He pays a visit to the King’s family. In a moment of privacy, he tells Amba, the oldest of the three princesses, Do you remember when your mother visited my clan ten years ago. We played tag with each other and teased each other. I have not forgotten you. Amba replies, Yes, I remember you as being big and strong, like the brother I wished for but never had.

Choose me tomorrow for I love you more than life, said Salvakumar. Amba smiled shyly, My heart leaps with joy that I will be able to choose you in public tomorrow as I choose you now in my heart.

When Bhishma enters the arena of the Choosing, there is a buzz of comment. Why is this old man here? Salvakumar loudly comments, Can a celibate monk seek wives? He must know at least two other ways to pleasure, why does he seek a woman? Bhishma ignores the comments, but his anger is aroused. He does not reveal his reasons for being there.

The princesses appear at the entrance to the hall. There is a pause as the young suitors prepare

themselves. Bhishma rushes to the entrance and hustles the princesses out the door while her attendants look on astonished. Before the assembly can react, he has the princesses in his chariot and is leaving. Bhishma fights off the gatekeepers of the palace and escapes.

Kasiraja and Salvakumar give chase. Kasiraja comes within range of Bhishma’s bow -- his weapons are destroyed and his chariot wheels broken. Bhishma wheels around and says - as the father of these girls you will be related to the Kurus. I therefore spare you further pain. Bhishma leaves but Salvakumar challenges him to battle. Salvakumar is a callow child in comparison to the older Bhishma. He is easily defeated, but will not give up. As Bhishma prepares a killing stroke, Amba screams, Raja, do not kill him -- this act will not enhance your prestige. He is a young child not a mature warrior. Bhishma thereupon knocks Salvakumar senseless and drives off unchallenged to Hastinapur.

Bhishma then welcomes the princesses to the kingdom. You have been selected to be the wives of my brother, Vicitravirya. Ambika and Ambalika are relieved. Amba remonstrates - In my heart I had chosen Salvakumar. I would have been married to him today if you had not abducted me. If your brother compounds the error by marrying me, it will be an immoral act. It would be rape if he ever consummated the marriage.

Bhishma admires Amba’s courage. You are a brave woman, worthy of the warriors of Kasi. Go to Salva in honor with an entourage. But Salvakumar, still smarting from his defeat, rejects Amba. Bhishma spared my life because you begged him for it. You said that I was a young child not a mature warrior. I do not accept another man’s rejects. Return to Bhishma and ask him to make amends to you.

Amba then goes to her father. Kasiraja says, You have been fairly won by a man I detest. I cannot battle him now for he is too strong and I am weak. Nor can I acknowledge this bond between our kingdoms that he has imposed on us by marrying your sisters to his brothers. If I take you back, it will be seen as a sign of acceptance and Magadha will be on my back. But the day will come when I shall destroy his kingdom. Go back to him - you are a sign of my weakness and humiliation.

In a great ceremony, Ambika and Ambalika are married to Vicitravirya. Kasiraja returns all the presents and invitations sent to him. Satyavati reassures the princesses, Your father will come around when he has grand-children. In the meantime, you are not yet adults. Play as children.

However, Kasiraja and Salvakumar were not the greatest enemies to develop for Bhishma out of this episode.

Yes, for Amba was magically reborn as Sikhandin with a boon that she would be the cause of Bhishma’s death.

A silly tale. The truth was much sadder.

Amba returns to Bhishma. See what you have done to me. I am friendless and unprotected. My father has rejected me and Salvakumar smarts from his defeat. Bhishma is touched by Amba's distress and offered her his protection. He gives his mother’s old, now abandoned, riverside palace. Amba keeps herself busy restoring it to its former glory.

Satyavati was not pleased. Amba was a potential threat to Bhishma’s vow and her son’s ascendancy to the throne. She called Bhishma. "Devavrata," she began. She always called him Devavrata -- since his mother’s death nobody had called him Dev, and Satyavati would not call him Bhishma. She said, "Amba should not be here under your protection. Yes, I understand that you are responsible for what has happened to her. But a respectable girl would not allow herself to be subject to the innuendoes and rumors that are going around. If she cannot marry anybody because of Salva’s rejection, she should go join a nunnery."

Bhishma remonstrated with Satyavati, but she was adamant. Finally he said, "If you can persuade her to become a nun, so be it."

Some days later, Satyavati told Bhishma, "A most holy woman from the monastery of Shiva in the south has come by on her way to the Himalayas. They say she has received magical boons from Shiva -- she has the third eye and sees all and knows all. I have talked to her and she is quite pious and I found her very persuasive. She has offered to spend some time with Amba."

Bhishma responded, "So be it." And Bhishma went to Amba and told her that she should act as host to the holy lady. Amba was not particularly pleased, but she agreed.

Some days later, when Bhishma and Satyavati were meeting to discuss plans for Vichitravirya’s coronation, one of Satyavati’s maids came running up. "Mistress," she gasped, "The holy nun has just left the kingdom vowing never to return. She says that she is being made a fool of."

Satyavati asked, "Why, what happened?"

The maid said, "I do not know. However, the rumor is that Princess Amba mocked her at lunch today. She cast doubts on her powers and the holy woman was most distressed."

Satyavati said, "Fetch me one of the princesses’ personal attendants. I wish to know what happened." She turned to Bhishma and said, "Devavrata, do you see the kind of person she is? No respect for her elders, for learned people, or for the religions."

Amba’s personal maid came in. Satyavati asked her, "What has the princess done to offend the holy nun?"

The maid giggled. "Oh, great lady, Amba and the holy lady spent the morning together and my mistress invited her to stay for lunch. As they were entering the lunch pavilion together, the nun shouted loudly, ‘Shoo. Get away.’ We were surprised and the princess asked her what had happened. She said that with her inner eye she had seen a dog approach the holy Shiva linga in the inner temple of Shiva’s cave in the Himalayas and that it was about to lift its leg. The monks and priests who should be around the temple were asleep. So she had to use her voice to scare the dog off. We were all quite impressed, until ..."

"Until what," said Satyavati. "It sounds like an impressive demonstration of her powers. Ah, Devavrata, we should send somebody to fetch her back."

The maid stammered, "The princess arranged for lunch to be served. But while all the rest of the visitors had our curry served on the plate, the nun’s curry was served under a heap of rice. Not seeing any curry, she asked, ‘Where’s my curry?’ And the princess remarked, ‘Your third eye can see a temple in the Himalayas, why can’t you see where the curry is?’ The holy mother was quite upset at this and left without eating her lunch."

Satyavati was not amused. "We cannot have such behavior," she said. "Devavrata, you must talk to her."

Bhishma did not reply.

Satyavati looked at Bhishma. "Devavrata!" she threatened, "Stop that! Listen to me!"

Bhishma looked like he was about to have a fit. His cheeks were distended and his upper body was quivering. He was trying hard not to giggle. "Yes, mother," he managed finally. "I will talk to the princess."

Amba was not awed by Bhishma. Bhishma’s discussion with her on this matter lead nowhere. Together they ended up laughing at the nun’s discomfiture.

It was almost fifteen years since Bhishma’s famous vow. The vow had changed Devavrata into Bhishma -- he avoided activities that might arouse sexual desires in him. He had immersed himself in state-craft, warfare, and civil construction. Life had become a serious affair. Since his father’s death and his regency, his responsibilities had increased. He was anxious to allay his step-mother’s worries about potential threats to her sons.

Amba brought Devavrata back to life. The boy inside was still twenty -- not much older than Amba herself. When Bhishma visited Amba, he cast off the cares of state and found it possible to play games. When he left, he put his external visage back on and became Bhishma. As Bhishma, he felt guilty for what he had done to Amba. He recognized the danger of their growing relationship but did not wish to put an end to it.

Amba recognized what was happening too. But she wanted it to continue and grow. She had begun to love Devavrata. Salva’s rejection had rankled in the beginning, but her resilience and strength of character had sufficed to cope with it. And she had never really known Salva very well -- she had met him once when visiting her cousin in Magadha. He was handsome, they had talked for a few minutes, and it had been an instant crush for both. She recognized that Bhishma’s visits to her could cause comment. She persuaded Bhishma to visit her occasionally in public, but to make his other visits secretly.

Satyavati was worried, but she was confident that Bhishma would not violate his vow. In any case, she arranged for spies to watch over Amba. Amba realized that she was being spied upon, and suspected Satyavati, but could not do anything. She wanted to love and be loved by Devavrata.

On one of Bhishma’s public visits, she arranged a trip to the countryside. Satyavati’s spies could not follow them without revealing themselves. Since Bhishma’s public visits had been very open and nothing had been visibly going on, they do not report the anomaly to Satyavati. In the privacy of their riverside camp, Amba persuaded Devavrata to marry her in the Gandharva fashion (i.e., to become lovers). As a token of his love, he gave her the medallion that his mother had given him.

Once Bhishma had violated his vow, he could not control the facade that he had cultivated over many years. He feared to visit Amba, lest his feelings for her become apparent to observers and be reported to his step-mother. However, when he was not with Amba, he wished to be with her. And, when he was with her, the need to avoid detection overwhelmed him. When Amba arranged other private retreats, he went along -- happy to be with her, but filled with guilt. He frequently visited Amba in disguise.

Satyavati’s spies finally reported on Amba’s private retreats with Bhishma as well as the visits from an unknown male. Satyavati did not suspect that the visitor was Bhishma. She was initially concerned for Amba’s reputation as well as the reputation of the palace. She talked to Bhishma about it, who promised to talk to Amba. The lovers try to be more careful -- initially, the visits decrease in frequency, then start up again and they become careless. Again Satyavati talked to Bhishma, but after this is repeated a number of times, she decided to talk to Amba herself.

Bhishma would report to Amba on Satyavati’s concerns. Despite his openness to Amba, these repeated talks changed the relationship of the lovers. Bhishma saw it as a problem to be dealt with; Amba felt spied upon and became increasingly paranoid. She felt unable to trust her attendants and repeatedly changed them. In addition, Bhishma’s responsibilities had not decreased. Vicitravirya was still weak and his coronation had been postponed. Bhishma had to make frequent trips to oversee the management of the kingdom and on these trips Amba could not come along. As a result Amba was frequently lonely. Amba had also been secluded from most public activities -- her existence was a minor embarrassment to the state. She was the princess of Kasi, but neither her father nor her erstwhile fiancé acknowledged her existence. She was unable to contact her relatives without causing them trouble. Befriending her in Hastinapur could earn the friend the enmity of Satyavati, the Queen-Mother. So, she was friendless and felt imprisoned.

After one of Bhishma’s trips outside the city, he is unable to visit Amba for many days. During his absence, Satyavati visited Amba. She talked to Amba about virtue, and about reputation. Amba tried to reassure her that nothing untoward was going on. Amba found the visit threatening. For days thereafter, she went over the details of Satyavati’s visit and convinced herself that she had been threatened. When Bhishma finally visited her, he appeared distracted. After this, he was again absent for many days. Amba became convinced that, at Satyavati’s insistence, Bhishma was trying to break off the relationship. In the meantime, Bhishma was being overwhelmed by the need to help his sickly step-brother and king-to-be to a complete understanding of the situation in the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Amba did not realize that she was pregnant. She had been repeatedly changing her attendants and did not have anybody she trusted near her. Her pregnancy contributed to her feelings of distress -- her symptoms lead her to suspect that she is being poisoned.

Paranoid, spied upon, friendless, convinced that she has been abandoned, and is being poisoned, Amba decided to escape. She arranged to visit Bhishma’s riverside cottage and while there, set out on her own into the woods. Many days later she was found by Jaina nuns who took her into their care. There she gave birth to a son, Sikhandin. She spent time talking to the nuns about their practices and their beliefs. They press her to give up thoughts of revenge and to raise her child with them. But she was unable to accept the Jain doctrine of non-violence -- she had been hurt by a man and she desired revenge on him. After her convalescence and when she felt ready to move on with her child, she left the nunnery and entered the service of the Pancala queen. Her son was raised as a companion of the Pancala prince Drupada.

Bhishma was disconsolate. Amba could not be found. He discovered that Satyavati had visited Amba during his absence and suspected the worst -- that Satyavati had discovered his violation of his vow and had arranged to deal with Amba. He was unable to confront Satyavati about this since he felt guilty about having broken his vow. He thought that Amba was dead and that Satyavati had arranged it.

Amba raised Sikhandin to hate Bhishma. She told him that she had been wronged by Bhishma, that Bhishma and Satyavati had imprisoned and may have killed his father Devavrata. Sikhandin vowed to his mother that he would take revenge on Bhishma.

As time passed, Sikhandin realized that he would never be a warrior of the same caliber as Bhishma. As a retainer of the Pancalas, he received some military training, but not at the same level as the prince or the other nobles of his rank. Since his father was not known, he was teased by his companions who occasionally called him "Sikhandin the bastard." In the beginning, he fought, but he could not win against better-trained fighters. He blamed Bhishma for this as well.

The Pancalas had traditionally been allied to the Kurus of Hastinapur and Sikhandin and his mother owed allegiance to the Pancalas. He could find no cause to seek battle with Bhishma. This desire for revenge could not even be publicly expressed. As a result, he grew up nursing his secret hate for Bhishma.

Amba died young. On her deathbed, she gave Devavrata’s medallion to Sikhandin, and told him that if his father were still alive he would recognize the medallion.

[ Aside: Fifty years later, in the great war, an aged Sikhandin will duel an older Bhishma. Bhishma will defeat Sikhandin. After he kills Sikhandin, he will recognize the medallion and realize that this is his son. In disgust and sorrow, he will be distracted and will be killed by Arjuna. The battle is described in Part 8, Chapter 6.]