The story of Kunti is fascinating and as expected Kamala's version devotes many pages to the historic meet between mother and son! Vachana Bharata is as usual crisp in dealing with this emotion packed meeting!
But before narrating the story of the meeting, I searched the
web library and share with you a few interesting sites. The many questions that come to our mind are raised in them.
Especially :
- Why did Kunti not speak up about Karna when the society seemed to accept children of unwed mothers?
- How could Kunti and Gandhari let the rivalry between the cousins develop and escalate? It was probably easier to control them as they were still young.
Here is also a version which deals with the story very differently!
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| Hinduism
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Bheel
Mahabharata:
Kunti and the Birth of the Sun God’s Child
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| by Satya
Chaitanya |
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The
tribal Bheels have a Mahabharata version of their own, episodes of which are
narrated or sung during their festivals, usually accompanied by music and
sometimes with dance – a captivating version that never fails to thrill, one of
the secrets of its allure being its truly enchanting folktale-like quality. This
article tries to understand an episode from it, on its own and in relation to
Vyasa’s epic.
The
seven-sages are engaged in tapas. As the tapas progresses, Shiva and Shakti come
to know about it and think what to do. They take the form of eagles. Shakti
circles the windy sky and flies down on to the trident stuck on the ground at
the dhooni. Pierced by the trident, the eagle dies on it. After completing
twelve years of tapas, the seven-rishis wake up in the thirteenth year and they
bewail their karma, for what has happened is inauspicious. They throw magical
substances on the dead eagle. From the skeleton of the eagle is born Gandhari
and from its flesh and blood, Kunti. The two children begin growing up fast at
the dhooni.
 One
morning, finding that their stock of water is over, Kunti takes a pot and goes
to fetch water. There she bathes in the lake, removing her outer clothes and
wearing just her undergarments and after her bath bows to the sun covering
herself in a thin shawl. The sun is enamored by her beauty and she is struck by
his arrows of rays. The rays enter her belly and Kunti conceives. The pregnancy
grows instantly and soon the child comes out breaking open her skull. Kunti
takes the baby and kissing him, tells him that she had no right to give birth to
him since she is a virgin and now she can’t take him to the dhooni for that will
taint the holy place.
She
takes the baby to Gakalgarh and digging a pit in a rubbish heap, places the
child in it and gives him her blessings and asks him to come to her aid if the
enemy wakes up. It is a perfectly beautiful baby, and he smiles at his mother.
Her eyes are full of tears. Standing on one foot, she prays to the sun, endorses
the baby to him saying it is his and he must watch over it. She picks up a large
stone and covers the pit with it, asking mother earth to look after the baby.
She tells mother earth: “I’m free now and you are bound.” Kunti now walks back
to the dhooni, on the way taking a purificatory bath and filling water in the
pot.
~*~
Kunti
is one of the most prodigious women in the epic of Mahabharata filled with
unforgettable women. She has an impressive lineage there. She is the daughter of
the Yadava Shoorasena and can thus trace her ancestry to such mighty emperors as
Puroorava, Yayati and Nahusha, rulers of perhaps India’s largest ever empires,
made at a time India was an empire-builder. Puroorava’s story has inspired
countless generations of poets to compose immortal classics. So great was
Nahusha’s fame as a ruler and so mighty was he as a monarch that when a
temporary substitute was needed in Indra’s place in heaven, it was Nahusha who
was requested to take over and he remained the ruler of the gods until Indra was
able to return. In more historical terms, it has been claimed that Nahusha’s
empire spread right up to Egypt in the west. The legendary Yayati was no less
great as an emperor. It is the blood of such mighty emperors that runs through
Kunti’s veins. And as Shoorasena’s daughter, she is Vasudeva’s sister and
Krishna’s maternal aunt.
If
such is her family background in the Mahabharata, the Bheel Bharata takes it to
still greater heights. In the epic of the Bheels, we do not have to quote the
names of her ancestors to establish the nobility of her birth – for here she is
Shakti herself. Shakti takes the form of an eagle and it is from the blood and
flesh of this eagle that Kunti is born.
And
for those who are familiar with Kunti’s nature in Vyasa’s epic, this should come
as no surprise. For there, if she is not Shakti herself born as a woman, she
lives her life as an embodiment of Shakti.
As
one reads the Bheel Bharata, one is amazed by the directness with which the
tribal mind perceives the truth. It is as though a door has been left open
exclusively for them to walk into the innermost secrets of the Mahabharata,
secrets that the more sophisticated minds often fail to perceive and if they
perceive, it takes them long journeys to reach there.
Kunti
in the Mahabharata is a woman who battled all alone against the might of what
was perhaps the mightiest empire of her time. Fought and won, for eventually it
is her blood that inherits the throne of Hastinapura – her Yadava blood.
Pareekshit who inherits the throne from Yudhishthira is Abhimanyu’s son – and
Abhimanyu is the son of Arjuna and Subhadra, both of them of Yadava blood, since
one is Kunti’s son and the other her niece. The Bharata empire, at the end of
the Mahabharata, through Kunti, goes to the Yadava blood. Yadu, the ancestor of
the Yadavas, disinherited by his father Yayati though he was his eldest son,
claims the empire back through Kunti.
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The full article can be read from the link above. Worth a read!
The links below illustrates the amount of thought bestowed and research done on Kunti. The teachings of Kunti
http://vedabase.net/tqk/en is compiled here. The only intriguing part is that there is no mention of Karna in the introduction.
Kunti's meeting with Karna has inspired poems:
http://www.parabaas.com/translation/database/translations/poems/RT_Karnakunti.html
http://www.jatland.com/home/Kunti
Jat gotras descended from Kunti
The descendants of kunti are known as
Kaunteya or
Kuntal, which is a Jat gotra.
[1] The Jat clans originated from Kunti are:
And a few more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunti
http://www.hindupedia.com/en/Kunti
http://www.heritagewiki.org/index.php?title=Kunti
http://ssubbanna.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/01/the-three-women-in-mahabharata-2-of-3-kunti.htm
And just for fun!
Kunti : Japanese restaurant in Kuta in Bali, Indonesia.
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