Mahabharat is all about the fight between deserving & undeserving, wanting Hastinapur's throne.
In today's epi, Shantanu's 1st son Devvrat, sacrificed his rights for his father's happiness.
Greed & sacrifice, have been key factors of this epic.
Mahabharat teaches us what not to do.
Krishna vaani, has always been one of the main attraction here.
Parents should concentrate on building up character of their child, not future. Ganga's upbringing resulted in her great son, to be known as Bhishm in future.
As a son, he did exactly what his ancestor Puru did, a long time back, for HIS father Yayathi. For Puru, this turned out well, for he then became the King of the Kuru dynasty. But for Devavrat Bheeshma, this pledge allowed the cursed heredity to take control of the throne as well as himself!
Prince Devavrat as well as the guardian Bheeshma both pledged their loyalty to the person of the King and not actually to the throne of Hastinapur. Whatever he did was to appease the then King, and not always in favour of the Rajya.
This misplaced loyalty cost him his ideals, his verity and most of all, the peace of his mind as his notions of loyalty kept drowning him in the ocean of mistakes.
OK Beeshma was a loyal son fine but what was wrong with Shantanu
Which father will marry a woman who demands that his elder sons rights are taken away?
How selfish Shantanu was no one bothered?
By the way this happened later too, Ashoka had a very bad chief wife. She was actually a maid who woved Ashoka Maurya and married him
Ashokas successor was his son Kunala, he was very capable
So his wife gets jealous and writes a mail with Ashokas sign that remove your eyes and give to messenger
Kunal is in court as governor when he receives letter of Ashoka, he takes knife removes his eyes and gives to messenger and leaves the kingdom/province with his wife
Every few centuries you read such stories of cruel step mothers demands and fathers keeping quiet
Although to be fair Ashoka had no idea his fav wife did something like that for long
How lucky a father must be to have sons like Beeshma and Kunal so obedient and respecting fathers commands
Edited by myviewprem - 3 years agoAs per epic demand is kept by satyawati's father and shantanu actually gave up the alliance but he become sad after it which is a human nature refusing the alliance is shantanu's duty as a father and king which he did but bhishm take the matter in his hand without shantanu's knowledge and take 2 big oath after which shantanu gave boon to bhishm and as a king it was his duty to give a heir to the kingdom as bhishm gave up the throne as for satyawati she is always soft towards bhishm as per epic so she is not a bad step mom so marrying to her is also not a wrong decision till pandu's exile bhishm has always upperhand in ruling the kingdom abduction of princess of kashi ,stick to his oath and alliance with gandhari all decision is taking by bhishm willingly satyawati never forced him like they show in star mahabharat.