Kunti Recounts the Story of Vyushitashva and Bhadra
To prove that Pandu can father children despite his curse, Kunti recounts an ancient tale: the righteous King Vyushitashva died, leaving his wife Bhadra desolate. Then a voice from his corpse promised her sons — and delivered.
Kunti began her story not with a miracle, but with a king’s glory.
“In ancient times,” she said, “there was a king by the name of Vyushitashva.” He was a Puru king, extremely righteous. At a great sacrifice he performed, the gods themselves attended. Indra was intoxicated with soma juice; the Brahmanas were satisfied with their fees. Afterward, Vyushitashva’s radiance surpassed everything on earth, “even beyond the sun, after dew has fallen.”
He became a universal monarch, conquering all directions. A verse was sung about him: “Vyushitashva has conquered the entire earth till the boundaries of the ocean. He protects all the varnas (social orders), just as a father protects his own sons.”
He had a beloved wife, Bhadra, the daughter of Kakshivat. Her beauty was unparalleled. “It has been heard that they desired each other a lot,” Kunti said, “and addicted by desire for her, he became a victim of consumption.” The king who had conquered continents was felled by his own passion. “After some time, he went away like the setting sun.”
His wife was shattered. Kunti recounted Bhadra’s lament in detail — a catalog of a widow’s grief. “A woman without sons lives a life of misery, if she lives without her husband… Without her husband, it is better for a woman to be dead… Please take me with you.” Bhadra blamed herself for sins from a past life, vowed to lie on a bed of kusha grass, and begged the corpse of her husband to show himself to her. She embraced the body and wept.
Then the miracle happened.
An invisible voice addressed her from the air. “O Bhadra! O sweet-smiling one! Arise and leave. I will give you a boon. I will father offspring on you.” The voice gave precise instructions: after her ritual bath following her season, on the eighth or fourteenth lunar day, he would lie with her on her own bed.
Bhadra, “devoted to her husband and wished to obtain sons,” did exactly as instructed.
“The queen gave birth to sons through the corpse,” Kunti concluded. Seven sons: the three Shalvas and the four Madras. Conceived not by a living man, but by the enduring will of a dead king.
Kunti turned the story back to Pandu. The parallel was exact. “O bull of the Bharata lineage! You too will be able to have sons on me, through the powers of yoga your mind possesses.”
The curse said his body could not unite with a woman. Kunti’s story proposed a different path: the power of a disciplined mind, of yoga, could accomplish what physical union could not. Vyushitashva’s corpse had fathered sons. Pandu, alive and steeped in ascetic power, could do the same.