Week 9 Reading Diary A: The Mahabharata

Shantanu is the king of Hastinapura and he fell in love with a woman over by the river. She turned out to be Ganga the River goddess. Ganga agreed to many her as long as Shantanu never questioned her actions. Red flags are already going up in my head. I wonder why he would even agree to something like that. She gives birth to 8 sons and sacrifices them in the river one by one. Shantanu tries to stop her. This is when Ganga really reveals to him that she is the Goddess of the river. She explains that she is just an incarnation, and her role was to give birth to eight gods. In order to do this she needed to drown them so that they would go to heaven.


Shantanu falls in love with another woman named Satyavati. Obviously Shantanu has aj issue with other women. Bhishma renounces his claim to help his father out and then Shantanu and Sayavati got married. 

Ganga (Top)

Painting by Ravi Varma