ABSTRACT
Strange as it may seem, his marriage with the lovely Ganga, the divinity of the sacred river Ganges, resulted from a curse uttered by one of those terrible saints, so common in Indian poetry, whose irritability of temper seems to have been in direct proportion to the importance of their austerities. The goddess who, on account of a slight indiscretion on her part, was herself under the obligation of assuming the human form, agreed to their proposal, and made choice of Shantanu to be their father. But Pandu wanted more sons, and persuaded Ivunti to communicate the spell to Madri who, greedy of offspring, summoned the twins Acwins to her bed, and gave birth in due course to two sons, Nakula and Sahadeva. These five sons, known as the five Pandavas, are the real heroes of the great war which forms main incident of the "Mahabharata." Both these vows he accomplished in the great war to be subsequently referred to.
