Hinduism 
Panchkanya
Women of Substance – 8

The original monarch, according to the Vishnu Purana (I.13) and Mahabharata (Shanti Parva 59.94) was Vena who was slain by the Brahmins because of his refusal to obey their dictates. Seeking a successor, they churned his right thigh and produced a short, dark, snub nosed human whom they named nishada and assigned the forest as his dwelling as his appearance was not kingly. It is this deprived nishada race whose fortunes are restored by Satyavati. Long before Mahapadma Nanda established what is known as the first shudra dynasty in the country, Satyavati Daseya (as Bhishma refers to her) accomplished it in Hastinapura. She pays special attention to Vidura, born of Vyasa and Ambika’s low-caste maid, ensuring through Bhishma that he is brought up with the two princes Dhritarashtra and Pandu as their brother to become the undisputed conscience of the throne and the protector of the niyoga-born Pandavas.

The Devi Bhagavata Purana records a very important detail absent in Mahabharata. In VI.24.15   Vyasa laments that immediately after birth he was abandoned by his mother and attributes his survival to chance (in this, too, Kunti parallels Satyavati, both abandoning their pre-marital first-born to fate). Grievously upset by the death of his son Shuka, Vyasa returned to his birthplace in search of his mother, found out from the fishermen that she was now queen and, to be near her, settled on the banks of the Sarasvati. Delighted to hear of the births of his stepbrothers, he refused to beget sons on Vichitravirya’s widows since they were like his daughters and intercourse with wives of others was a grievous sin. Niyoga was permissible only at the instance of the husband (as in Kunti’s case, ordered by Pandu), not of the mother-in-law. Vyasa even told his mother that preserving the dynasty by adopting such heinous means was improper (VI.24.46-48). Satyavati once again displayed her mastery of realpolitik. “Hungry for grandsons”, desperate to propagate her lineage (Pandu inherits this trait), she argued that improper directives of elders ought to be obeyed and such compliance attracted no blame, particularly as it would remove the sorrow of a grieving mother. It is when Bhishma urged Vyasa to obey his mother that he gave in and engaged in what he describes as “this disgusting task” (VI.24.56). Vyasa wonders whether progeny born of adultery, vyabhicharodbhava (VI.25.28) can ever be the source of happiness for him. How prophetic!

Parashara and Shantanu were not Satyavati’s only conquests. There was yet another, which shows what a ravishing beauty she must have been. In Harivamsha (Harivamsha Parva XX.50-73) Bhishma tells Yudhishthira that after Shantanu’s death, during the period of mourning, he received a demand from the usurper of Panchala, Ugrayudha Paurava, to hand over Gandhakali in return for considerable wealth. The ministers did not allow the affronted Bhishma to attack Ugrayudha, invincible because of his dazzling discus, and tried to put him off peacefully. When this failed, at the end of the mourning period Bhishma attacked and killed Ugrayudha whose discus had, in the meantime, lost its power because of his lusting after another’s wife. This incident from Harivamsha helps explain Satyavati’s desperation for heirs, conscious of the greedy eyes of neighbours on the empty throne of Hastinapura. In relentlessly pursuing her ends she reminds us of the earliest queens of the Lunar dynasty: Devayani and Sharmishtha.

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