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Adi Parva · Episode 2 · Chapters 62–69
A king who remembers his forest marriage perfectly well says he does not, until a voice from the sky names his son Bharata.
The boy who gave India one of its names was very nearly disowned by his own father.
Vaishampayana tells this story to Janamejaya as part of his family history, and it opens on Dushyanta, a Paurava king whose reign the text paints as almost too good: no thieves, no hunger, no disease, rain when it was needed. Dushyanta went hunting with a huge retinue through a dry forest, and in pursuit of game he rode on alone into a different country. It was green and full of birdsong, and on the bank of the river Malini stood the hermitage of the sage Kanva, loud with the chanting of the Vedas. Dushyanta left his army at the edge of the grove, set aside his royal insignia, and walked in to pay his respects.
Kanva was out gathering fruit. The king called out, and a young woman in an ascetic's dress came out, welcomed him properly with a seat and water for his feet, and asked what he needed. This was Shakuntala.
He was taken with her at once and asked who she was. Kanva's daughter, she said. The king objected that Kanva was a celibate sage, so she told him the story as she had heard it. The sage Vishvamitra had been practising austerities so fierce that Indra feared for his throne and sent the apsara Menaka to distract him. Menaka was afraid of Vishvamitra's temper, but she went, the wind blew her garment loose, and the sage fell for her. Their child was born by the Malini and left there. Birds, shakunta, sheltered the baby from the beasts of the forest, and Kanva found her among them and named her Shakuntala. In the text's own definition, three men count as a father: the one who begets you, the one who saves your life, and the one whose food you eat.
Dushyanta asked her to marry him on the spot, by the gandharva rite: a marriage by mutual desire, made in private, without family or priests. He offered her gold and his whole kingdom, and listed the eight forms of marriage to show that this one was lawful for a kshatriya. Shakuntala asked him to wait for her father, who would give her away. When he pressed, she agreed on one condition, and she made him swear to it. Her son must be his heir, the yuvaraja. He promised without a second thought. He also promised to take her to his city, and as he left he said, more than once, that he would send a full army to bring her home.
Kanva came back and knew what had happened by his inner sight. He was not angry. The gandharva rite is the best one for a kshatriya, he told her, and her son would rule the whole earth. Given a boon, Shakuntala asked that the Pauravas stay righteous and never fall from their kingdom.
No army came. The text says the boy was born when three full years had passed, and he grew up in the hermitage so strong that at six he was tying tigers, lions and elephants to the trees and riding them. The ascetics named him Sarvadamana, the one who tames everything. Kanva decided it was time, and sent mother and son to the king's city with his pupils.
Shakuntala stood before Dushyanta in his court and reminded him of his promise. Make our son your heir, she said. The text is precise about his reply, and it is the hardest line in the story: he remembered perfectly well, and he said he did not remember. Who are you, he asked, you wicked ascetic? Go or stay as you please.
The lost ring and the sage's curse that wipe her from his memory belong to Kalidasa's later play, not to the epic, which gives Dushyanta no excuse of that kind.
Shakuntala's answer is one of the great speeches in the epic. She told him that he thought himself alone with his lie, but the sun, the moon, the wind, the earth, the day and the night, and the witness in his own heart all saw what he was doing. She told him what a wife is, half of a man and his best friend, and what a son is, the self born a second time. She asked him to let the boy hold him. When the king answered by insulting her, calling her mother a loose woman and her father a man greedy for status, and the boy too large for his age to be believed, she did not crumble. You see a mustard seed of fault in others, she told him, and miss the bel fruit of your own. Nothing is higher than truth. If you prefer a lie, I will go, and my son will rule the earth without you. Then she turned to leave.
A voice spoke from the sky, in front of his priests and ministers. The son belongs to the father, it said; the mother is only the vessel. Shakuntala has told the truth. Support your son, bharasva, and because you must support him at our word, let his name be Bharata.
Dushyanta was suddenly delighted. He said he had known all along that the boy was his, but if he had accepted the child on the mother's word alone, people would have doubted the boy forever. He embraced his son, honoured Shakuntala as his chief queen, spoke to her gently, and said he had forgiven her harsh words.
The epic lets that explanation stand without endorsing it. What it insists on is the result. Bharata became a world-ruling king, Kanva officiated at his horse sacrifice, and from him came the name of the lineage. The Kurus and the Pandavas are Bharatas, and the poem about their war is the Mahabharata. The name runs back to the day a woman stood in a hostile court and would not let a king deny the truth.
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