Nala, Savitri, Shakuntala, Amba: the stories the epic stops to tell its own characters, and why it tells them then
Where it is argued
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 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 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 story of Amba — Bhishma explains why he will not fight Shikhandi and, in telling Amba's story, names the one way he can fall
Nala and Damayanti — A sage consoles a king who lost everything at dice with the story of another who did, and then teaches him the dice.
Savitri and Satyavan — A princess marries a man fated to die within the year, follows Death into the forest, and talks him out of her husband
Who embodies it
Vyasa — 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.
