Mahabharata – 152

by

Sankar Mukherjee

and

Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
               Aadivamsavatarana Parva

5.     

Married life of Ganga & Santanu

Santanu whose passions were under control, enjoyed the full  pleasure of the company of a celestial damsel as his wife.And adhering to his promise,he refrained from asking her anything.Santanu, was extremly happy with her conduct, beauty & attention to his comforts. And the goddess Ganga also, being the river assuming a magnificent human form with celestial beauty, lived happily as the celestial woman of a wife of Santanu. Santanu did not know the real identity of the celestial woman. And she satisfied the king by her attractiveness and affection, by her craftiness & love, by her music and dance and became herself happy. The king was so delighted with his beautiful wife that months, seasons,& years passed  by. Santanu was however not conscious of the great passage of time.

And the king, while thus enjoying himself with his wife, had eight children born to him one by one,who in beauty were like divinities. But, those children, one after another, as soon as they were born, were thrown into the river by his wife  saying ----- This is for your good.

The king was very unhappy with his wife for such behaviour. But he was unable to speak a single word about it lest his wife might leave him.

 When the eighth child was born and his wife laughed in pleasure,

The king with  sorrowful heart & wishing to  save it from annihilation, addressed her and said -- kill it not! Who are you and whose wife? Why do you kill your own children? Slaying your sons, the burden of your sins would be great! Ganga replied, oh you! desirous of offspring I shall not slay this child of yours. Now according to our agreement earlier, the period of my stay with you is at an end.

The celestial woman of In other words Santanu’s wife smiled & said that Santanu had violated the agreement of marriage. Hence she vanished from the eye carrying the eighth child in her arms never to return. Was she real or a fleeting vision? Santanu was overwhelmed with grief.

  Marriage or cohabitation with celestial woman is a recurrent motif in the Mahabharata & the Puranas.The celestial women are as it were la belle dame sans mercy. Urvashi left Pururava & the latter was in great distress. The raven was surely hoarse & cried – Oh never more! The cruel Menoka left the new born Shakuntala to be protected by the birds. Does it necessarily mean that the heavenly damsels have no human heart? Do they have no locality or a name? But in a dream as it were Ganga explained herself before Santanu.