Reading Diary A (Shantanu, his wives, and their children)

Narayan's Mahabharata
Pages: 1 - 39

• The woman that Shantanu, king of Hastinapura, married was the human incarnation of the Ganges river. *Possible story: his thoughts when she drowned the babies without telling him the reason why.
• The babies, who are incarnations of the eight gods, are being drowned because they stole the divine cow of the sage Vashistha. *Possible story
• Bhishma is the eighth child that she took into the river with her and brought back later, back to the king.
• Shantanu falls in love again. *Possible story: him falling for these women (comedic)
• He falls in love with a woman named Satyavati. She is a fisherman's daughter.
• She has two sons with him: Chitrangada and Vichitravirya
• The first son dies soon after his reign but the second son is still alive. 
• Bhishma then rules for a while and seizes the three daughters of the neighboring kingdom when they were having their ceremony for obtaining a husband. 
• One of them, Amba, is let go because she told Bhishma that she promised herself to another king. 
• He however rejects her because she was in another man's home and now Bhishma is basically on her hit-list. *Possible story
• Vichitravirya dies too, though. 
• Satyavati's son that she had with Parashara, named Vyasa, is then asked to bear children with the widows of Vichitravirya since Bhishma won't due to his circumstances. 
• Three children are born, two with flaws (blind Dhritarashatra and pale Pandu) and one without (the one that came from the maid, Vidura).
• Pandu dies while making love with Madri because he was cursed. Madri climbs on to the funeral pyre with him too. *Possible story
• Pandu has five sons: Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva (the Pandavas) and his brother Dhritarashtra has one hundred (the Kauravas).
• Dhritashatra makes Yudhisthira his heir. 
• The Pandavas are much more popular with the people.

Interesting depiction of the Pandavas

Source: DeviantArt