Satyavatī
Sign in to saveAlso known as Matsyagangā
Satyavati (, ; also spelled Satyawati) is a character in the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata. She was the queen of the Kuru kingdom, married to king Shantanu of Hastinapura, and is a great-grandmother of the Pandava and Kaurava princes. She is also the mother of the seer Vyasa, author of the epic. Her story appears in the Mahabharata, the Harivamsa, and the Devi Bhagavata Purana.
Key facts
- Character.info hdr
- Personal Information
- Character.image
- Ravi Varma-Shantanu and Satyavati.jpg
- Character.alt
- 67
- Character.caption
- Shantanu with Satyavati, a painting by Raja Ravi Varma
- Character.spouse
- Shantanu
- Character.name
- Satyavati
- Character.home
- Hastinapura
via Wikipedia infobox
~16 min read
Encyclopedic overview
10 sectionsContents
- Literary sources and names
- Birth and early life
- Seduction by Parashara and birth of Vyasa
- Marriage with Shantanu
- Birth of children and grandchildren
- Last days
- Assessment
- Notes
- References
- See also
Satyavati (, ; also spelled Satyawati) is a character in the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata. She was the queen of the Kuru kingdom, married to king Shantanu of Hastinapura, and is a great-grandmother of the Pandava and Kaurava princes. She is also the mother of the seer Vyasa, author of the epic. Her story appears in the Mahabharata, the Harivamsa, and the Devi Bhagavata Purana.
Satyavati is the daughter of a fisherman chieftain, Dasharaja and was brought up as a commoner on the banks of the river Yamuna. Another legend says that she is the biological daughter of the Chedi king Uparichara Vasu (Vasu) and a cursed apsara (celestial nymph), who was turned into a fish called Adrika. Due to the smell emanating from her body, she was known as Matsyagandha ("She who smells like fish"), and helped her father, Dasharaja, in his job as ferryman and fisherman.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Satyavatī” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.