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The Tales in Mahābharata
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reason of this variety is obvious. These heroes and the related characters play important roles in the principal parrative. The epic-poets, therefore, would naturally try to make the characters interesting by narrating different birth-stories in connection with them and trying thereby to emphasise and explain their characteristic peculiaritics. The birth-stories of these characters occupy two sub-parvans of considerable length : the Adivamśāvatarana-parvan and the Sambhava-parvan.
The former sub-parvan, after a summary of the events mainly from Ādip181 (Adhyāya 55) and a regular pbalaśruti (adhyāya 56), begins in Adhyāya 57 with the story of King Vasu Uparicara. The name, translated literally, means 'the luminous wanderer above' - most probably suggesting the sun. The story of Vasu Uparicara is divided into two parts: the first narrates his institution of the worship of Sakradhvaja, the second contains a myth leading to the birth of Satyavati — the arch queen-nother of the Kuru-heroes and the mother of Sage Vyāsa, the traditional author of the epic.
In the first part, 182 Indra himself appears before the king performing penance, instructs him to stay in the country of Cedi, gives him a vaijayanti garland to make him unconquerable and also gives him a bamboo-pole.183 After a year, the king 'made the stick enter the earth'184 in order to perform Indra's worship. Since then, the kings every year perform the ceremony of digging the stick into earth just as Vasu did and take it out the next day. Significant also is the remark that, in this ceremony, lord Sankara is also worshipped in a comic form which he took of his own accord out of affection for the great king Vasu.185 Indra was pleased. He granted the boon that the persons and kings and kingdoms celebrating this Indra-festival will be rich and happy.
The ceremony of making the stick enter the earth is symbolic of the mating of the divine pair Dyāvā-prthivi Performed in connection with Indra, the god of rains, the ceremony is nothing but a fertility rite, 186 and Indra's promise of richness and happiness for the performers of this ceremony is well justified. But more important is the reference to the worship of the comic form of Sankara. It is probable that the Indra-dhvaja festival was originally a ritualised form of the fertility rites and since mating is symbolised in the image of linga - the form in which Sankara is worshipped - Sarkara was attached to the festival. This part of the story definitely shows that the image of linga symbolising the act of procreation is the link bringing Indra and Sankara together. This little description of the details of Indra-dhvaja festival strongly
181 Adi P. vide above p. 20, last section of Ch.I. 182 Adip. 57. 1-27. 183 AdiP. 57.17. Cf. yaştim ca vainavim etc. 184 Adip. 51.18. Cf. tasyah...... bhumau...... pravesam kārayāmāsa.... 185 Cf, bhagavān pujyate cătra hásya-rupena sankaraḥ /
svayam eva grhitena vasoh prityä mahātmanaḥ ll AdiP. 57.21. 186 For Indra and fertility rites again, see above discussion in Ch.11.ii, under Rşyassnga-episode,
S.T. 16
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