Janamejaya

Scion-tier (registry-floor) descendant of Arjuna — through Arjuna → Abhimanyu → Parīkṣit → Janamejaya — making him the structural-narrative-frame audience of the entire Mahābhārata. Vyāsa's disciple Vaiśampāyana recites the epic to Janamejaya during the sarpasattra (snake-sacrifice) at Takṣaśīlā that Janamejaya conducts to avenge his father's death by Takṣaka. The narration-during-sacrifice establishes the canonical recursive frame: the war-epic exists as told to the great-grandson of the demigod war-hero, in the Kuru-court of the early kali-yuga, recorded by the sage Vyāsa who is also a character within the war-narrative he composed. Janamejaya Pārikṣita is also independently attested in the older Brahmanic tradition (Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 8.21, Atharvaveda-pariśiṣṭa) as a Vedic ritual-king — making him the cross-corpus link between the post-Vedic ritualized-court tradition and the epic-frame tradition.

Parentage

• Parīkṣit

Children

• Śatānīka

Powers

• Compels serpents to fall into the sacrificial fire

Relations

• spouse: Vapushtama
• father: Parīkṣit
• father of: Śatānīka

Sources

• Mahābhārata (BORI) Ādi Parva 3-58 (the frame-narrative; the entire epic is narrated to Janamejaya); Bhāgavata Purāṇa 1.16-1.19; Viṣṇu Purāṇa 4.21; Atharvaveda-pariśiṣṭa references; Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 8.21 (Janamejaya Pārikṣita as a Vedic-Brahmanic ritual-king)
• Mbh. Ādi Parva 95.85; Bhāgavata Purāṇa 1.16