Yayati
Hindu · mortal · mythic · mortal
This is the point at which the two halves of the Mahabharata become one family. Devayani's son Yadu founds the Yadava line, which is Krishna's; Sharmishtha's son Puru founds the line that becomes the Kurus. The corpus held Krishna and the Kurus, and no fact that made them relatives. The story is also the tradition's clearest statement about desire — a king who takes his son's youth and, in the fuller telling, finds at the end of another thousand years that appetite is not satisfied by feeding it — and the record stops at what the citation supports.
Parentage
Children
Domains
- kingship
Relations
- spouse: Devayani
- spouse: Sharmishtha
- cursed by: Shukra
Sources
- Reference treatments of Yayati, of Devayani and Sharmishtha, and of the curse.