Bharata (Mahabharata)

Map of Epic India.

Bharata is a legendary king in India's ancient history. He was the first to conquer all of Greater India, uniting it into a single entity which was named after him as Bhāratavarṣa. According to some Puranas, the term Bharatvarsha applies to the whole Earth and not just to India.

According to the Mahābhārata, Bharata's empire covered all of the Indian subcontinent, Bactria, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgistan, Turkmenistan, and Persia.

The Republic of India is officially known as Bhārat (in Hindi) Bhārata (in Sanskrit) after Bharata (Monier-Williams: "'king Bharatas's realm' i.e. India").

Bharatvarsha

Bharatavarsha refers to the whole of Bharat. Emperor Bharat was one of the few emperors to rule all of India.

The Vishnu Puranam accounts the extent of Bharatavarsham,

uttaraṃ yatsamudrasya himādreścaiva dakṣiṇam

varṣaṃ tadbhārataṃ nāma bhāratī yatra santatiḥ

उत्तरं यत्समुद्रस्य हिमाद्रेश्चैव दक्षिणम् ।

वर्षं तद् भारतं नाम भारती यत्र संततिः ।।

"The country (varṣam) that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhāratam; there dwell the descendants of Bharata."

Bharatakantham is the region which is contained in Bharatavarsha, comprising of modern South Asia. In the Hindu prayer invocations (Sankalpam), the normal order of geography is

Bharatavarshe (Akhanda Bharatam), Bharatakante (Bharatam),..

(In the land of Bharatavarsha, in Bharatakantha and so on)

Literature

According to the Mahābhārata (Adi Parva), Bharata was the son of King Dushyanta and Shakuntala and thus a descendant of the Lunar Dynasty of the Kshatriya caste. He was originally named Sarvadamana (subduer of all); the Mahābhārata traces the events in his life by which he came to be known as Bharata ("the cherished").

Story of Bharata

Menaka seduces Vishwamitra. Painting by Raja Ravi Varma.

Shakuntala. A painting by Raja Ravi Varma.

Apsaras Menaka had come at the behest of the King of the Gods, Indra, to distract the great sage Vishvamitra from his deep meditations. She succeeded, and bore a child by him. Vishwamitra, angered by the loss of the virtue gained through his many hard years of strict ascetism, distanced himself from the child and mother to return to his work. Realizing that she could not leave the child with him, and having to return to the heavenly realms, Menaka left the newborn Shakuntala on the banks of the Malini River on the peaks of the Himalayas. Shakuntala was found by the Rishi Kanva surrounded and protected by birds (Shakunton in Sanskrit), and so she was named Shakuntala. According to one source, Titwala, a small town near Kalyan in Maharashtra, is believed to be the site of the hermitage where Shakuntala was born.

Shakuntala was brought up by rishi Kanva in his ashram. King Dushyanta encountered Shakuntala while travelling through the forest with his army. Pursuing a male deer wounded by his arrow into the ashram, he saw Shakuntala nursing the deer, her pet, and fell in love with her. He profusely begged her forgiveness for harming the deer and spent some time at the ashram. They fell in love and Dushyanta married Shakuntala there in the ashram. Dushyanta left ashram after some time due to unrest in the capital city.

Time being, Shakuntala gave birth to a child. Kanwa named him as Saravadamana. Surrounded only by wild animals, Sarvadamana grew to be a strong child and made a sport of opening the mouths of tigers and lions and counting their teeth!

Shakuntala reached Dushyanta's palace with her son. Arriving at Dushyanta's court, Shakuntala was hurt and surprised when her husband did not recognize her, nor recollected anything about her. Dushyanta's failure to recognise Shakuntala is in fact a ploy to have his subjects accept her as his true wife, since he had feared rumors might otherwise have arisen as to the propriety of the marriage. After a long course of arguments made by Shakuntala, the king accepted her as his wife. Their child was renamed Bharata.

Young Bharata conquered and ruled the entire continent of India, from sea to Himalaya. His empire was named Bharatavarsha, the land of Bharata.

Equal in valor to Indra, Bharata was a virtuous king. His wife Sunandadevi was chaste and devoted. They had no children. None of the children born to them had survived. They performed a religious sacrifice Maruisoma on the banks of the Ganga in order to get children. In due cot Bharata got a son named Bhimanyu. It is in Bharata's dynasty that, later, righteous men like the Pandavas were born.

Bharata's exploits as a child prince are dramatised in Kalidasa's poetic play The Recognition of Shakuntala.

See also

• Bharata (disambiguation)
• Chakravartin
• Hindu mythology
• Mahābhārata
• Bharatas (tribe)
• History of India
• History of Hinduism

External links

• http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/iml/iml14.htm
• http://catapult.nationalinterest.in/2007/09/21/what-about-bharata/
• http://moralstories.wordpress.com/2006/08/11/bharata-dushyanta-putra/