Wonder how Gandhari gave birth to 100 children ?
Image source: Cover page of Devdutt Pattanaik’s Jaya.
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Birth of Gandhari’s children
Gandhari was angry on learning that Kunti had become a mother before her. She had conceived much earlier but mysteriously her pregnancy continued for two years. She could wait no more and so she took a terrible decision: to force the child out of her womb.
Gandhari ordered her maids to get an iron bar. ‘Now strike me on my belly with it,’ she ordered.
The maids hesitated.
‘Do it,’ shouted Gandhari.
With great reluctance, the maids did as they were told, and struck the queen on her belly. ‘Again. Strike me again. Again and again,’ said Gandhari.
The maids kept striking her until Gandhari’s womb quivered and pushed out a ball of flesh, cold as iron.
‘Does it cry? Is it a boy or girl?’ asked Gandhari. When told what she had delivered, Gandhari wailed. Fate was indeed cruel.
She sent for the sage Vyasa.
‘You told me that I would be the mother of a hundred sons. Where are they?’ she asked.
Feeling sorry for Gandhari, Vyasa instructed Gandhari’s maid to break the ball of flesh into a hundred pieces and put them in jars full of ghee.
They would incubate over a year and transform into sons, he told Gandhari.
‘Can I have a daughter too?’ asked Gandhari, softly.
Vyasa smiled and told the maids to divide the ball of flesh into a hundred and one pieces.
Thus were born the hundred sons and the one daughter of Gandhari and Dhritarashtra. Collectively, the sons were called the Kauravas.
The first among them was Duryodhana.
When his pot was broken, on the day when Kunti gave birth to Bhima, the palace dogs wailed. ‘He will bring misfortune,’ advised Vidura to Dhritarashtra, ‘Let us get rid of him, brother.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Gandhari clinging firmly to the newborn. ‘No one will harm this son of mine. He is my firstborn, my favourite.’
Her second son was named Dusshasana.
The daughter was named Dusshala. She was married to Jayadhrata, king of Sindhu.
During his wife’s long pregnancy, Dhritarashtra had taken for his pleasure a maid. She bore him a son called Yuyutsu. Like Vidura, he was an extremely capable man, but was not qualified for sitting on the throne.