The poet of the epic and the father of its two kings, who keeps walking into his own story to tell its people what is coming.
Appears in
The serpent sacrifice — The Mahabharata is first recited at a king's rite of revenge, while snakes fall into the fire for his father's death.
The birth of the Kuru princes — A blind heir, a pale one and a renunciant's vow leave the succession contested before any of the cousins can walk.
Hidimba and Baka — Bhima kills two man-eaters and wins a rakshasi wife, and Kunti offers her own son to a demon to repay a host's kindness.
Draupadi's svayamvara — An archery test won by a supposed dead man in disguise, and a mother's careless word that binds five brothers to one wife.
Ghatotkacha's night — Karna spends the one spear that could kill Arjuna on Bhima's rakshasa son, and Krishna dances on the chariot while the Pandavas weep
The women on the field — Dhritarashtra crushes an iron Bhima, Gandhari's glance scars Yudhishthira, and her grief ends in a curse on Krishna's whole clan.
Yudhishthira's grief — The victor wants to give the kingdom away and live in the forest, and his brothers, his wife, Vyasa and Krishna argue him onto the throne.
The teaching on release — A courtesan who stops hoping, a farmer whose last bullocks hang from a camel, and Vyasa's son who answers his father as an echo.
The death of Bhishma — After fifty-eight nights on arrows Bhishma waits for the northern sun, takes leave of Krishna and rises out of his own body
The child born dead — Abhimanyu's son is born lifeless from Ashvatthama's weapon, and Krishna stakes the truth of his whole life on one child
The horse sacrifice and the golden mongoose — Yudhishthira performs the richest rite in the epic, and a half-golden mongoose says one poor family's barley meal was worth more
The elders go to the forest — Fifteen years after the war the blind king walks out of Hastinapura with his hand on Gandhari's shoulder, and Kunti leads them both
The night the dead came back — Vyasa calls the dead of Kurukshetra out of the Ganga for a single night, and they come without anger, Karna and the Pandavas among them
The death of Krishna — A hunter named Old Age mistakes Krishna for a deer, and soon after Arjuna can barely string Gandiva against herdsmen with sticks
Embodies
Tales within the tale — Nala, Savitri, Shakuntala, Amba: the stories the epic stops to tell its own characters, and why it tells them then
Divine counsel — Krishna advises, drives and arranges, but takes up no weapon — a god who works through others' choices.
Questions to explore
Why does the author of the Mahabharata appear inside it so often?
Vyasa can foresee the war — why does he not prevent it?
