Nalopákhyánam : Story of Nala, an episode of the Mahábhárata: the Sanskrit text, with a copious vocabulary and an improved version of Dean Milman's translation, by Monier Williams.

Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nalopákhyánam : Story of Nala, an episode of the Mahábhárata: the Sanskrit text, with a copious vocabulary and an improved version of Dean Milman's translation, by Monier Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    • • was the son of Santanu, who was the twenty-third in descent from Kuru, a celebrated prince of the Lunar race, himself the ninth king after Bharata, son of Dushyanta and 6akun- tald, from whom India is to this day called Bharata-varsha. Vyasa is thus reputed to be the actual grandfather of the princes whose quarrels and jealousies are narrated in the poem he is said to have arranged; and, from the genealogy, it is evident that although the sons of Dhrita-rashtra are more usually called the descendants of Kuru, the sons of Pandu were really descended from the same race. The royal races of India are said to have diverged into two great lines, called Solar and Lunar. The hero of the Solar line, which commenced in Ikshvaku, was Eama-candrab whose contests with the barbarous tribes of the south of India is described in the Ed^mayana, the more ancient of the two great Epics. The Kurus and Pandavas, as equally descendants of Kuru, belonged to the Lunar line, and probably represented different branches of one tribe of Sanskrit-speak¬ ing immigrants, who arrived in India at different times. According to the Maha-bhd^rata, Pandu, the father of the five Pandavas, after yielding the succession to his blind brother Dhrita-rashtra, retired to the mountains and died. His five boys were then adopted by Dhrita-rashtra and educated with his own large family of a hundred sons. After escaping many dangers from the malevolence of their cousins, they were ultimately permitted to share with them in the sovereignty. Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, and his four brothers ruled at Indra-prastha (the modern Delhi), and Duryodhana with his ninety-nine brothers (usually ^ This Rdma, who is the most celebrated incarnation of Yishnu, must not be confounded with the two inferior Rdmas, Parasu-Rdma and Bala-Rama. See my Sanskrit Dictionary (published at the Clarendon Press) under Rama.