Mahabharata Family Tree

today i'm going to show you the family tree of the mahabharata which is the world's longest epic poem and together with the ramayana one of india's most famous ancient stories you may have heard of a collection of hindu scriptures known as the bhagavata gita well the bhagavad-gita is just one small part of the mahabharata taken as a whole the mahabharata is about 10 times the length of the iliad and odyssey combined like the iliad the mahabharata is a story about a war in this case the kurukshetra war which like the trojan war may have been a real historical event however in both cases the stories were greatly embellished over the centuries and eventually made into epic poems which are best classified as legend as i explained in my series on the bible a legend is a sort of mix between history and mythology in a legend some elements are based on the lives of real people and real places but other elements are purely fictional so this leaves room for some debate just like there are jews and christians with differing views on how much of the bible is historical there are also hindus with differing views on how much of the mahabharata is historical but i'm not going to delve into these issues i'm simply going to present the family tree as it is portrayed in the story [Music] this video is part of a large collaboration between over a dozen different history youtubers on the topic of indian history covering everything from the indus valley civilization to the british raj you can find a link to the full playlist for discovery of india in the description so interestingly the setting for the mahabharata is around the same time as the setting for both the iliad and the biblical story of king david all three of these legends began to be written down in the early classical period but are set several hundred years earlier during the transition between the bronze age and the iron age during that transition period stories were transmitted orally only so it makes sense that in all three cases we wound up with history written in the form of legend as opposed to history written in a more straightforward way which was a style that developed much later in the case of the mahabharata the setting is the kingdom of kuru which was one of the many independent kingdoms that existed in north india during the vedic period the vedic period being the time span between the highly urbanized indus valley civilization and the rise of major classical empires like the mauryan empire the story starts with a king of the kuru kingdom named shantanu he was a descendant of the lunar dynasty one of the two main dynasties of rulers that were said to have reigned during the vedic period the other being you guessed it the solar dynasty rama the main character from the other big hindu epic the ramayana as well as the buddha are said to have come from the solar dynasty whereas the main characters in the mahabharata come from the lunar dynasty anyway one day shantanu met a beautiful woman on the banks of the ganges river he didn't know it at the time but she was actually the goddess ganga they married and had a child named deva vrata who was later known as bhisma however many years later king shantanu fell in love with another woman named satyavati the king wanted to marry sativati but her father would not allow it unless shantanu agreed that he would pass his throne to a son from this new marriage instead of his son from his first marriage shantanu felt he could not agree to this and therefore became very sad however bhisma came to learn of the situation and offered to give up his right to the throne in order to please his father and he even took a vow of celibacy to show his seriousness so shantanu married sativati and had two sons the eldest chitrangada became the next king however he died young without any children so his younger brother vichytraviria became the third king on this tree but as fate would have it he died childless as well the queen mother satyavati who was still alive at the time came up with a plan there was an ancient hindu custom called niyoga in which a highly revered man could serve as a surrogate father in cases where another man was unable to have children satyavati had a son from a previous marriage named vyasa who fit this description vyasa agreed to sleep with the king's two widows named ambika and ambalika in order to provide his half-brother vichet raviriya with heirs two sons were therefore produced the eldest three tarastra who was born blind and pandu now before i move on i should point out another important fact about vyasa according to tradition vyasa is the one who composed the entire mahabharata story and dictated it to the god ganesh who wrote it down so vyasa is both the author of the story as well as a character within it as you can see on the chart the royal family splits into two branches at this point the sons of dhritarashtra are called the kauravas and the sons of pandu are called the pandavas and it is these two sets of first cousins the kauravas and the pandavas who are the two sides in the kurukshetra war here's how the conflict began three tarashta and pandu actually had a half-brother named vidura who became sort of the prime minister of the kingdom vidura suggested that pandu ought to become king being that dritarashtra was blind and detrarashtra conceded so pandu became the next king but then a strange event occurred there was a rishi or wise man who had turned himself and his wife into two deer so that they could have sex in that form king pandu not knowing that the deer weren't actually dear shot them with his bow and arrow before dying the wise man put a curse on pandu so that if pandu were to ever have sex he would immediately die because of this pandu gave up his throne and went to live in exile with his two wives kunti and madri thus dritrastra became king in the end anyway but while in exile kunti prayed to the gods for help with their help she was able to bear three children and madhuri a set of twins both without activating pandu's curse thus were born the five pandavas the eldest yudhisthira was the son of yama the god of dharma and of justice bhima the strongest was the son of vayu the god of wind arjuna the most skilled was the son of indra lord of heaven and the god of thunder lightning and rain he's the closest thing in hinduism to the greek god zeus finally we have the twins nakula and sahadeva they were the sons of madri with the ashvins who were the twin gods of medicine meanwhile the blind king dritarashtra together with his wife gandari who always wore a blindfold in order to experience life like her husband had 100 sons who became known as the kauravas the eldest being duryodhana eventually the pandavas returned from exile and a rivalry started up between the two sets of cousins over who should be the heir to the throne der yodena the eldest of drishtarashtra or yudhisthira eldest son of pandu now in most portrayals of the mahabharata the pandavas are thought of as being the good guys and the karavas as the bad guys in reality though it's a bit more complex because as with any good literature most of the characters have both flaws as well as strengths but basically arjuna is usually seen as being the main protagonist of the story and der yodana as the main antagonist anyhow the tension builds and eventually things culminate in a full out war fought near a city named kurukshetra hence the name of the war being the kurukshetra war at this point let me introduce another main character krishna krishna was originally a neutral party in the conflict being a noble from a totally different kingdom the yadava kingdom however he had two important connections to the pandava side first of all his father was the brother of kunti making him first cousin to the pandavas in addition to this arjuna married his sister subadra making him arjuna's brother-in-law but the most important thing to know about krishna is that he is actually one of the ten avatars of the god vishnu most people know the word avatar as being the icon you use to represent yourself in video games or online forums or as an alien hybrid like in the movie avatar both of these uses are related to the original meaning of the word which was when a god became incarnated or born into the body of a human or animal so basically krishna was visnu in the flesh now visnu is not just any god there are a lot of gods in hinduism but there are three who are sometimes said to be the most important brahma vishnu and shiva the creator the preserver and the destroyer sometimes called the hindu trinity now like other religions hinduism can be divided into various different sects the largest sect vaishnavism sees visnu as being the supreme being whereas shaivism the second largest sect primarily associated with south india sees shiva being the main god so for a lot of hindus krishna is really really important anyway like i said krishna and his compatriots were originally neutral he initially tried to broker a piece but when that failed he offered the following deal one side would get his army and the other side would get him but as a non-combatant arjuna got to choose first and he chose krishna appointing him as his charioteer duryodhana was pleased with this thinking that he by far got the better side of the deal when the battle was about to begin arjuna became very distressed because he did not want to have to kill his close relatives what comes next is the famous conversation between arjuna and krishna that forms the section of the mahabharata known as the bhagavad-gita one of the most revered set of verses in the hindu religion and basically a summary of hinduism's main ideas after the famous conversation between arjuna and krishna the battles go ahead and last for 18 days one of the main people that arjuna has to fight against is a man named karna who is a close ally of duryodhana but there's a major plot twist the pandavas don't know it but karna is actually their brother the mahabharata includes karna's backstory where we find out that kunti had a child by surya before she married pandu but she gives him up and he is raised by adopted parents in the court of dritarashtra now this video is just about the family tree so i won't go into all the details of what happened during the 18 days of war like i said at the beginning the mahabharata is a really long story and therefore i've had to leave out a lot of the various plot points but let me tell you how the story ends as you might have guessed the pandavas end up victorious karna duryodhana and all of the kauravas except one die in battle the eldest pandava yudhisthira is crowned king and goes on to have a nice long reign later in life he abdicates and passes the throne to arjuna's grandson parikshit and then the line of kuru kings continue through him the way the mahabharata is written it is actually parikh sheet's son who is being told the whole story and the person telling the story is another one of vyasa's sons if you'd like a copy of this chart to use as a wallpaper i'll leave a link to it in the description and be sure to check out the other videos in the discovery of india playlist right before this one is a video by the archaeology channel digging with raven on the indus valley civilization and directly after this one is a video by history and headlines about alexander the great's invasion of india thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: UsefulCharts

Views: 1,943,774

Keywords: bhagavad gita family tree

Id: -vg-5zkw6H4

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020