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The Great Epics

Satyavati and the River

The Mahabharata's royal dynasty was reshaped by a woman who began on a fishing boat.

She was pulled out of a fish. Raised by a ferryman. She smelled of the river.

And she ended up controlling the succession of the greatest kingdom in India.

Out of a fish

The Mahabharata gives Satyavati an origin nobody would invent for a queen.

Uparichara Vasu, king of Chedi, was in the forest. And his seed was carried to the Yamuna, where a fish swallowed it.

And the fish was an apsara named Adrika. Under a curse to live in that form.

A fisherman caught her, and cut her open, and found two human infants inside: a boy and a girl.

The boy was taken to the king, and acknowledged.

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