There is a famous quote told by someone unknown that loosely means, “If you don’t find anything in Mahabharat, you will not find it anywhere else.” So one can easily say that Mahabharat stories are wholesome stories, and being a novelist myself, what I can describe Mahabharat is that “Mahabharat is a perfect script, without any loopholes.”
During the 2020 lockdown, India witnessed a retelecast of that epic Mahabharat series which was produced by BR Chopra for Doordarshan, some 30 years back and the ratings of that re-telecast were probably higher than what it was when the series was telecasted for the first time. In that series and in most of the beliefs and publications Mahabharat starts with Raja Shantanu and Ganga’s story and ends soon after the battle of Kurukshetra.
But, when I purchased two volumes of Mahabharat from the Gita Press, Gorakhpur for my Gujarati YouTube channel, I found that Mahabharat starts long before the era of Raja Shantanu and ends much much after Kurukshetra yuddh or even after the Swargarohan by Pandavs. While reading the first volume I also realized that there are many stories that are interlinked and eventually they lead us to the story of Raja Shantanu and Ganga.
Hence, I thought why not bring these unknown Mahabharat Stories out through my Gujarati YouTube Channel and also through this blog, so that many more people can get to know about these stories. So, I am going to write the stories of Mahabharat here that are unknown and also those stories that are known to all of us in this blog series. I can only hope that you will appreciate my efforts of bringing out the real, the actual Mahabharat written by Vedvyas ji for people in general. These blogs may be short at times but my try will be to serve one story at a time so you can enjoy these stories properly.
Aadi Parva
नारायणं नमस्कृत्य नरं चैव नरोत्तमम|
देवी सरस्वती व्यासं ततो जयमुदीरयेत||
Meaning: The story of Narayana (Shri Krishna) and his friend Arjun which was brought to us by Devi Saraswati and told by Bhagavan Vyas must be read by one and every one after bowing down to all of them.
So we also first bow down to Narayana, Arjun, Saraswati, and Vedvyas ji and start our first story of Mahabharat.
Ugrashrava – first person who narrated the stories of Mahabharat to normal people
Son of Lomharshan, Ugrashrava was the best storyteller during his time and when he was traveling for a twelve years’ Satsang organized by Kulapti Shaunak in the Naimisharanya, he set next to many rishis and munis. All these rishis first asked Ugrashrava about his wellbeing and then requested him to tell them the story of Mahabharat.
Ugrashrava told the audience that when he went to the Sarpasatra called by Raja Parikshit’s son Janamejaya he heard the strange and sacred stories of Mahabharat from Krishnadwaipayan ji (Maharshi Vedvyas) and his disciple Shri Vaishampayan ji.
Then Ugrashrava remembered Shri Krishna and started narrating the various Mahabharat stories to his audience. We will also read these stories told by Ugrashrava in the coming weeks only here on SiddTalks Blogs.
In the second part of this blog series, we will know how this universe was born, how Maharshi Vedvyas created the story of Mahabharat, how Vedvyas ji used to narrate these stories to his disciples and how Brahma ji encouraged him to put Mahabharat in a written format.
If you can understand Gujarati you can hear this story on my SiddTalks Gujarati YouTube channel by clicking here.
So until next time it’s Aavjo from my side.
Read all the episodes of Mahabharat stories here.
15.02.2022, Tuesday
Ahmedabad
SiddTalks
