Three brothers engineered by Satyavati. One blind. One pale. One the wisest person in every room - and never allowed to be king. This is the story of the blind prince - Dhritarashtra and his family. His wife Gandhari who blindfolds herself on the day she marries. For life. Voluntarily.

This is the generation that built the conditions of the Mahabharat that we know.

SOURCES:

• Bibek Debroy: The Mahabharata (10 vols.), Penguin Books India, 2010–2014
• Ramesh Menon: The Mahabharata (retelling)
• Devdutt Pattanaik:Jaya

EPISODE CALLBACKS:

• Niyoga and Vyasa: Ep 7
• Gandhara as political ally:Ep 8
• Durvasa: Ep 6.1 Bonus
• Satyavati as a GOAT matriarch: Ep 7

NEXT EPISODE:

Part 2 of the story. Pandu & Vidura.

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Hastinapur. A tour of the city, the kingdoms radiating outward for hundreds of miles, and the eight kinds of beings who share this world. And at the center: one divine being in a human body, holding all of it together with nothing but a vow and a will.

KEY CONCEPTS & PLACES

Hastinapur: "City of Elephants." Capital of the Kuru kingdom, on the banks of the Ganga in what is now Uttar Pradesh. Archaeological site confirmed by B.B. Lal's Painted Grey Ware findings (1100–800 BCE).

The Eight Beings: Devas (divine beings), Asuras/Daityas/Danavas (cosmic rivals of the Devas), Gandharvas (celestial musicians), Apsaras (celestial dancers), Yakshas (elemental/nature beings), Rakshasas (often translated "demons," but far more complex), Vanaras (forest beings with their own civilization and divine lineage), and Humans.

Vasu: One of thirty-three primary Devas in the Vedic tradition. Bhishma is the eighth Vasu, sent to earth to live out a human life as consequence of a past transgression.

SOURCES CITED THIS EPISODE

• Bibek Debroy — The Mahabharata (unabridged, 10 volumes), Penguin Books India, 2010–2014.
• B.B. Lal — Archaeological excavations at Hastinapur, 1950s. Painted Grey Ware findings confirming the city's historical existence, dated 1100–800 BCE.

CALLBACKS TO PREVIOUS EPISODES

• Menaka and Shakuntala: Episode 4
• Shantanu, Ganga, and Bhishma's origin: Episodes 6 & 7
• The concept of Swarga (Indra's heaven): Episode 6
• The multi-being chandravanshi lineage pattern of the Kuru dynasty: Episodes 2, 4, 6, 7

NEXT EPISODE

Three brothers are born into this world. Dhritarashtra. Pandu. Vidura. Each carrying something different. Each about to inherit all of this.

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Subscribe wherever you listen.

Tell one person please - that is how this show finds its people.

Drop a comment: Which of these beings — the Gandharvas, the Yakshas, the Vanaras — did you grow up hearing stories about?

She started as the girl nobody wanted. She ended as the woman who built a dynasty, saved it twice, and watched it burn anyway. Satyavati is the GOAT matriarch of the Mahabharata.

Also a prince who loved his father so much he gave up marriage, children, and his entire future in one afternoon. Smart? It's your judgement. The cosmos had to invent a new word for what he did. That word was Bhishma.

N asks tough questions and Mom tries to answer them. Why do curses in these stories always land so hard and so fast? Who's running the cosmic score? And what does it mean that karma can apparently be modified, and edited. It evolves, but can never be escaped?

We pick four characters, four scores, including a goat who gets a perfect 10.

Introducing Devavrat Bhishma. The eldest and most senior character of Mahabharat.

The Pitamaha (Grandsire).

A previous life, a karmic debt, and a river goddess with a broken heart to deliver. Shantanu's story starts before he's even born. It ends with a son who arrived carrying the heaviest cosmic score in the dynasty, and became its greatest legend.

He fact-checked the ring story. He wants to know if Yayati literally fell through the sky. And somewhere in the middle, I used the wrong acronym and invented a broadcasting network that doesn't exist. A bonus episode with an eleven-year-old who definitely doesn't listen to this podcast.

Chandravanshi King Yayati gets cursed with instant old age and asks his sons to take it for him. Four say no. One says yes without blinking. His descendants become the Kauravas, the Pandavas, and everything you've heard about the Mahabharata. The oldest son who said no and got cursed for it? His line gives us Krishna.

King Dushyanta proposes in a forest, leaves a ring as a promise, and forgets everything — thanks to a curse Shakuntala never heard about. She walks into his court, with their son and the truth, and the room laughs. Their son Bharat grows up to become a landmark figure in Indian mythology, giving India it’s name.

Urvashi had two conditions. Purarvas said yes before she finished. Pururvas and Urvashi — the most spectacular love story in the Lunar Dynasty, and probably the fastest anyone has ever lost everything over a goat.

A moon god elopes with a goddess. Heaven takes sides. And the baby born from the chaos makes a smart demand. Gods behaving badly, a cosmic war no one expected, and the origin story of the Mahabharata's most dramatic dynasty.