In the previous episode, we had witnessed Sage Utthanga convincing King Janame-Jaya to perform the “Sarpa-Yaaga” successfully. Initially, King Janame-Jaya was looking out for ways and means to come out of his curse, however, Sage Utthanga had other plans for him. He reminded King Janame-Jaya of his father’s death and he motivated him to go behind the perpetrators of this crime. The perpetrator here was none other than Takshaka, the leader of snakes at the “Naaga Lokha”. Thus, Sage Utthanga asks King Janame-Jaya to go ahead with the “Sarpa-Yaaga” so that, all the snakes from the “Naaga Lokha” would automatically fall to death, including Takshaka! With this, the revenge would be complete, and the world would also be free of the wrath and atrocities of the snakes. With this, Sage Utthanga also had his own agenda of seeking vengeance against Takshaka for stealing the Guru Dakshina. It all came together, and now King Janame-Jaya is all set to begin. Let us see what happens next.
As King Janame-Jaya is about to begin thus, we come to the end of this “Upa-Parva” and again, this is one part of the story. This “Upa-Parva” was named as “Poushya Parva”, because King Poushya and his queen were at the forefront of this Upa-Parva. The next Upa-Parva in the list here is the “Pouloma Parva”. This is a short “Upa-Parva” and we should be able to finish this within one or two episodes. Readers should simultaneously remember here that we’re currently discussing the fourth “Upa-Parva” under the main “Aadhi Parva”. We’ve first witnessed the “Anukramanika Parva”, “Parva-Sangraha Parva”, “Poushya Parva”, and now we’re going to start with the “Pouloma Parva”. The scene again shifts to Naimisharanya Kshetra. We’ve seen earlier itself that all these incidents of King Janame-Jaya and the others are being narrated at that place, and there are many sages who had assembled there to listen to all of these, isn’t it? This is where readers should be very careful not to miss the threads. The biggest difficulty with this Mahabharata text is that there would be several threads hanging here and there! Somewhere down the line there would be knots that are tied between them! One such thread that we discussed till now was King Janame-Jaya performing the “Satra Yaaga”, and obtaining the curse of the “Deva-Lokha Dog”. We left it at that point. Subsequently, we witnessed another thread wherein Sage Aayodha-Dhoumya inflicted tough tests on his disciples, in which we had witnessed about Aaruni-Paanchala, Upamanyu and Veda. This Veda graduates and becomes a Guru himself, and Sage Utthanga is his student. This is another thread. From nowhere, this Sage Utthanga comes to meet King Janame-Jaya and advises him to perform the “Sarpa Yaaga”. This is the third thread here. Now we can see the knot being tied between the first, second and the third threads, and this is how King Janame-Jaya is led to perform the Sarpa Yaaga! Thus, readers should follow the threads like this very carefully and take notes.
Now we’re leaving this thread of “Sarpa Yaaga” at this point, and moving into a different thread thus. We go back to Naimishaaranya Kshetra, and now we’re going to see an accord of Sage Bruhu and his background. We’ve already witnessed Sage Shounaka earlier, haven’t we? Sage Shounaka’s father was Sage Sunaka. If we look at the family tree of Sage Sunaka over four to five generations earlier than him, here comes Sage Bruhu. We might have heard this commonly – The “Bruhu Vamsa”. We’re going to witness this exactly. Sage Bruhu’s wife was Pouloma, and this is why, this “Upa Parva” is named as “Pouloma Parva”. Sage Bruhu is Bhagawan Brahma’s “Maanasa Putra”, which means, he was born from Bhagawan Brahma’s intellect. This Bruhu gets married to Pouloma. There is a beautiful story surrounding Pouloma. What is that story? Let’s wait for the next episode to find out! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 