Although we get to meet many fascinating characters and several  important incidents related to the main story happen much earlier than  even the first mention of Satyavati, but I would like to start the  analytical part of this blog by first introducing and analyzing the  character of Satyavati. Also it makes sense to start with her for the  simple fact that the element of drama is introduced only when she comes  into the picture. Before she arrives on the scene everything is  happening pretty much the way it was supposed to happen. Ganga descends  on earth and marries Shantanu, she drowns the first seven of her eight  children because it was pre-ordained that they would be relieved from a  miserable life on earth with Ganga’s assistance. But things start to  change the moment Satyavati makes an appearance.

Satyavati is also very important for another reason. Contrary to the  popular perception, Mahabharat is not the story of a war between the  descendents of the great Kuru king Bharat, the Kuru bloodline ended with Bhishma. The generation after Bhishma which is Dhritrashtra and Pandu  are the sons of Sage Vyas who was the son of Satyavati and Sage  Parashar. Hence from the moment Satyavati enters the Kuru household, the Chandravanshi dynasty becomes Satyavati’s dynasty even though the  following generations of the family are called Kurus (see the story of  Chandrama and Tara) but they are not of the Kuru blood and hence  Satyavati is the grand matriarch of this new dynasty that she started.  She was also the mother of Ved Vyas, the author of Mahabharat.

Even though Satyavati is the progenitor of the race of Kurus who are  the primary players as the story progresses but in the epic itself we  don’t get a lot of time with her. The following is her story in brief:

A fisherman called Dashraj came upon a boy and a girl born of a fish  and took them to the king. The king adopted the boy but gave the girl  back to Dashraj who raised her as his own daughter. Satyavati grew to be a beautiful maiden and during a chance encounter with a wandering sage, Satyavati exchanges sexual favors for eternal youth, a fragrance all  her own, unimpaired virginity and an illustrious son all the while  making sure that this encounter remains a secret. Once the act is  consummated both Parashar and Satyavati part ways never to meet again.  Satyavati gives birth immediately and the baby grows to a fully grown  man almost immediately. This man was Ved Vyas, the author of Mahabharat. Before he leaves, he tells his mother that should she ever need him,  all she has to do is to think of him and he would come to her to help  her with whatever she needed.

Years pass and one day Satyavati meets King Shantanu who falls in  love with her and her enchanting fragrance immediately. He goes to talk  to her father Dashraj for her hand in marriage. Dashraj tells him that  he had been waiting for Shantanu as his daughter’s horoscope indicated  that she would marry a king. However there was a condition, Dashraj  would only give Shantanu his daughter if she would be his primary queen  and if her children ascended the throne after him. This proved to be  very problematic for Shantanu because he had already announced Devavrat, his demi god son borne to him by Goddess Ganga, as his heir apparent.  Devavrat was by all means the perfect prince and people looked forward  to the time he would be crowned king. When Shantanu heard Dashraj’s  condition he was heartbroken. Not only could he not dispossess Devavrat  of his rights, in preparation of which he had spent all his life, but he could not deprive his people of a very capable future king. So Shantanu went back home dejected, choosing duty over love.
Devavrat noticed that his father had been very depressed of late and  asked Shantanu’s charioteer about it. On knowing what had happened,  Devavrat without losing any time went to meet with Dashraj where Dashraj reiterates his conditions. Devavrat could not understand why something  as trivial as this had troubled his father so. The dutiful and loving  son that Devavrat was he immediately promised to Dashraj that he was  voluntarily abdicating the throne of Hastinapur in favor of Satyavati’s  as yet unborn children. But there was one problem, Dashraj pointed out,  just like Shantanu was in no position to give up the rights of his son,  Devavrata could not could not give up the rights of his unborn children  on their behalf. What if they wanted to claim the throne after Devavrat? To resolve this matter, Devavrat took the terrible vow of celibacy,  committing himself to the lifelong pledge of forsaking a woman’s love  and his own family. And thus Satyavati was brought into the Kuru  household.

As I have mentioned before, pretty much every character in MB is an  embodiment of either an emotion or an issue and the same holds true for  Satyavati as well. Of the many things that Satyavati personifies,  ambition would have to be her defining characteristic. Her life was  spent in the single minded pursuit of being the mother of emperors. But  to understand what fueled Satyavati’s ambition it is crucial to  understand her true origin.

Vyas ascribes a very strange birth to Satyavati, she was found in the belly of a fish by Dashraj. It’s said that once on a hunting trip, the  King Uparicara Vasu fell asleep and had a nocturnal emission when he  dreamed of his wife. He collected this emission on a leaf and sent it to his wife through an eagle. The eagle was attacked by another eagle and  the package dropped in a river where a fish called Adrika swallowed it.  Adrika was a celestial nymph who had been cursed by a sage to become a  fish. A few months later the head of a fisherman tribe called Dashraj  caught this fish and when he cut open her belly he found 2 human babies  inside, a boy and girl. He took both the children to the king and while  the king kept the boy he gave the girl back to Dashraj. This girl grew  up to be Satyavati. The second king to whom Dashraj goes, although not  named, was possibly Uparicara Vasu, the king whose semen had made the  fish pregnant and thus Satyavati, although she grew up amongst  fisherfolks was actually of a celestial and royal birth, a princess  disowned by her father.

Although the MB states the above as the story of Satyavati’s birth  but a far simpler, believable and more sensible explanation is also  available. The reader should bear in mind that Vyas / MB hints at what  might have happened but the truth maybe a little embellished. It is not  uncommon in Hindu mythology to use animals to refer to human conditions  and our own instincts. It is likely that Adrika was not a nymph turned  fish but a fisherwoman who caught king Vasu’s fancy while he was out  hunting and was missing his wife (a possibility hinted to us by Vyas  when he tells us how Shantanu fell for Satyavati). He may have spent  some time with this fisherwoman but did not marry her. The fisherwoman  got pregnant and the cutting open of the fish to find the children was  probably a sad reference to the girl dying in childbirth. So the “nymph  turned to fish” was Vyas’s own way of turning a girl into a fish in the  story he wrote and he makes a very explicit hint to us for that too, the same thing is done towards beginning of the epic when The Earth takes  up the form of a cow to plead with Vishnu to come to her rescue and  towards the end of the epic when Dharmraj takes up the form of a dog to  test Yuddhishthir’s sense of righteousness.

This fisherwoman may have been related to Dashraj as a sister, a  niece or a daughter or maybe just a girl from his tribe. A second  possibility is that Adrika was a woman who Vasu had an affair with and  then abandoned. She may have tried to commit suicide by drowning but was saved by Dashraj, while on the deathbed she may have revealed to  Dashraj who the father of her children was. And like the fish in the  original story, maybe he had to cut her open in order to save the babies in her womb. At any rate Dashraj knew about the parentage of the  children and when they were born he took them to the king and reminded  him of his responsibility towards the children. As a kshatriya, the king had use for a son but a daughter was of no value to him and hence  Satyavati while of a royal birth is denied her rights to a royal life  and thrown at the mercy of an uncertain fate. This explains why Dashraj  puts up the difficult conditions of marriage for Shantanu when he asked  for Satyavati’s hand in marriage. Dashraj did not want history to repeat itself with Satyavati again, he did not want her to be used and then  discarded again like her mother had been. Similarly he wanted to protect the rights of the children born to Satyavati, he did not want them to  be abandoned again the way Satyavati had been.

Even though she did not grow up in palaces but it is possible that  she knew about her origins. And it’s this knowledge of what was denied  to her that motivates her actions to the end of her story. She was born a princess and was determined to die an empress. She had made up her mind that she would be the mother to kings and emperors and nothing would  come in her way of getting back what was rightfully hers and she was  cruelly denied. No means would be too low, no method too despicable. Why should she owe anything to the society and conform to its hollow moral  standards when these hypocritical morals did not defend her and her  mother. And it is from here that we find her making dubious choices in  what seems to be a futile attempt at fighting her destiny.

It is said that Satyavati, while bewitchingly beautiful, had an awful fish smell about her. Due to this one of her names was Matsya-gandha  (she who smells of fish, Matsya means fish). The fish stench marred any  prospects of her finding a husband outside of her fishermen’s tribe and a king was completely out of the question. But as we would see later fate bends before the iron willed Satyavati and provides her a solution,  walking this path however was not going to be easy at all.

Once when Satyavati was sitting by the bank of the river Kalindi,  waiting for passengers to ferry across the river, she met with sage  Parashar. Parashar asked her to ferry him to the other bank. While they  were midstream, Parashar overcome with lust for Satyavati, expressed his desire to make love to her. At first Satyavati is scared and tries to  refuse the sage. Using arguments like it did not suit a sage like him  give in to this base desire and that he should not covet a lowly  fishergirl. But Parashar could not be persuaded. Next she tries  deception and logic, telling him that if they were to make love mid  stream there was the danger of the boat capsizing and requested Parashar to be patient till they reach the other shore. She hoped that once they reach the other bank Parashar would come to his senses and not hassle  her anymore. However when they touched a small river island, Parashar  seized her hand again. Once again Satyavati tried to dissuade Parashar  by telling him that her father or other people from her tribe could see  her from the other bank, they did not have any privacy. To her surprise, Parashar drew a thick cover of fog around the island. Satyavati still  tries to get out of this by saying that it does not befit a sage like  him to give in to this animal lust in the middle of the day, maybe they  should wait for the night, again she tries to buy time, hoping that  Parashar would heed to his own better judgment as the hours passed and  maybe he would let her go without putting a curse on her. Again to her  surprise, Parashar made it as dark as night to fulfill the condition she had laid before him. In this moment a change came over Satyavati. She  was not afraid of the sage anymore or what he had proposed for them to  do. She displays an exceptional presence of mind in turning a horrific  situation into an opportunity for herself. Her mother may have been a  victim, but she wouldn’t be. What lay before her was an opportunity to  get what she wanted and man who could make it happen. She now started  putting forth demands of increasingly ambitious nature. With shocking  frankness she tells Parashar that intercourse ought to be enjoyable for  both parties and since she smelt like a fish this could not possibly be a pleasant experience for Parashar and she would feel very inhibited too. Instantly Parashar transformed her fish smell to a sweet flowery-musky  smell that could be felt for a Yojan (8-9 miles). Matsyagandha had now  transformed into Yojanagandha (she whose fragrance can be felt for a  Yojan).  She also asked for eternal youth and unwithering beauty.

As Parashar tried reaching out to her again she put forth yet another demand “What will happen to me o mighty sage after you have left? How  could I hope to find a husband for myself having known a man before  marriage?” To this Parashar promised she would regain her virginity  after they were done. Did she have any other apprehensions, he asked.  Yes, said Satyavati. What would happen to her child, in case she gets  pregnant. (And as anyone who has seen the Hindi movies, mistakes like  this always result in pregnancy) Her fears were genuine, Parashar agreed and once again told her that a son would be born to her through this  union but she need not fear the future of this child or her own. The boy would grow up to be a very famous sage and would bring her great glory. This boy we later find out was Krishna-Dwaipayan (the dark child born  on an island) also known to the world as Ved Vyas. He compiled the Vedas and is the author of Mahabharat. So through this single rendezvous,  Satyavati managed to turn her entire life around. She got rid of the  burden that the fish stench was, which greatly improved her prospects  for marriage, no one knew about what had happened, and also just in case the newly acquired sweet fragrance did not help her find a royal  husband she had an insurance policy in the form of a son who the world  would come to revere as a great sage. But more importantly Satyavati  learned that perhaps life had not short changed her so much. That she  could wield her own special kind of power and get what she wanted. Sure  it seems unpalatable to use sex to get what you want but was it worse  than being a victim like her mother was? If men can get from women what  they want shouldn’t a woman also hope to get atleast something out of  this? Or could she use it to her advantage. From where she was, sex was  probably just that, a means to an end. We see that Satyavati would later continue to have this attitude about sex when we come to Ambika and  Ambalika.

When Vichitravirya passed away without leaving any heirs, the Kuru  family faced the terrible prospect of extinction and this would  seriously jeopardize the state of security of Hastinapur and its people. At first Satyavati implored Bhishma to do what was right and marry his  widowed sisters in law. Bhishma refused this staunchly and repeatedly,  he had after all taken a vow and the man was his word. Under no  circumstances would he revoke his oath. At this point Satyavati reveals  to Bhishma a secret she had held in her bosom all her life, she had a  third son. A very renowned son whom everyone respected. Satyavati,  without a trace of shame or guilt and once again with shocking frankness tells Bhishma of her pre marital encounter with Rishi Parashar. Maybe  Vyas could be called upon to do that which Bhishma could not be  persuaded for.

At this point it is important to note that Satyavati is in a similar  position that Kunti finds herself in later in the epic. But unlike  Kunti, she displays a rare courage to own up to a mistake that she had  made before marriage that could salvage their situation now and secure  the future of Hastinapur for atleast one more generation. Without any  hesitation she accepts the son she had abandoned many years ago. Kunti  on the other hand can not find this courage within herself even when her husband assures her his complete support. When they had started living  in the forest, Pandu, desperate for sons and unable to have them  requested Kunti to produce heirs for him through levirate. Kunti refuses this offer completely, in desperation, Pandu requests her with folded  hands to tell him if she had had any children at all even the ones born  to her before they got married would be acceptable to him as long as he  could call them their own but Kunti does not acknowledge the existence  of Karna even when her husbands blood line is coming to an end. Karna  could have been a solution to their problem but Kunti would much rather  live with the guilt of turning down her husband’s earnest request and  the fate of the child she had abandoned rather than live with the shame  of people knowing her pre marital dalliance.
Satyavati’s is a story of hope and ambition. While her actions cannot be condoned or admired but we can definitely understand her aspirations.  She is a pre cursor to many other well loved characters of Mahabharat  who will not only dare to dream but will have the fire in their belly to actually do something to change their fate in life. Like Karna she knew that the circumstances that she had grown in were not the once she  should have been in. Like Draupadi she would not take lying down the  injustice heaped upon her by a society that rarely takes cognizance of  the helpless. Like Duryodhan she would not give up what was hers without a fight.

So what happened with Satyavati’s ambition in the end? Was it all a  futile attempt like trying to capture sun’s rays within the palms of  one’s hand? Did she become the matriarch of emperors like she wanted to? After all, all of her descendants died. Only the 5 Pandavs and  Parikshit, the unborn child of Uttara and Abhimanyu, survived the war  and the Pandavs were not her descendants, they were the children of  Kunti and various Gods. Ironically Bhishma, whom she had displaced to  make her own son the king, outlived 4 generations of her progeny. So did all her actions go in vain?

The core message of Mahabharat and Gita is mindful actions. This core idea is visited again and again as we analyze the actions and inactions of various characters. The idea that we must act towards what we want  and leave the result to a higher power forms the very foundations of the Gita (I will elaborate on this theme later when I narrate the story of  Krishna and Sudama). If we keep on the path of action we will eventually see the fruit of our actions. So did the higher power or Krishna decide to not heed to the dispossessed princess’s actions? Did her bloodline  extinguish?

Perhaps not.

Maybe God did not give Satyavati what she wanted the way she wanted  it but Vyas gives us the hint that her efforts did not go in vain. At  the beginning of Satyavati’s story we are told that she had a twin  brother. This brother went on to establish his own very successful  dynasty. Many generations later a princess from this dynasty gave birth  to the sole surviving heir of the Kuru throne called Parikshit, and  Satyavati’s blood came back into the Kuru/Pandav dynasty again through  this princess. This Princess was Uttara and the name of the kingdom she  belonged to: Matsya, the Kingdom of the Fish!