The Sage Vyasa

He wrote a story about a war. The men who fought in that war were his own grandsons.

He wrote the epic. He also lived inside it, as one of its characters. And the families that the story follows from beginning to end were his own grandchildren.

That man was Vyasa.

Vyasa had three sons: Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura. Their children were the ones who fought each other in the greatest war of the Hindu epic world. On one side stood the Pandava family, the descendants of Pandu. On the other stood the Kaurava family, the descendants of Dhritarashtra. It was a tragic civil war. And the man who sat down to write the whole story was the grandfather of both sides.

We do not know what he felt as he wrote. We know that he wrote.

"Vyasa" is not the name he was born with. It is a title in Sanskrit, meaning "the divider" or "the compiler". Tradition says he took the whole body of sacred knowledge of his age and divided it into four great streams: the Rig Veda, the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda. For that reason people call him Veda Vyasa. Tradition also credits him with compiling many of the Puranas and with writing the Brahma Sutras.

But none of these works is what sets his story apart. What sets it apart is the Mahabharata, and the way it came to be. The Mahabharata is an ancient Indian epic, composed in Sanskrit.

According to the Adi Parva, the opening book of the Mahabharata, Vyasa decided to set the epic down. Then he realized that the story in his mind was too large and too fast for him to write himself. The god Brahma told him to go to Ganesha, the god of wisdom, and ask him to be the scribe.

Ganesha agreed, but he set a rule: Vyasa must not stop or pause at any point while reciting.

Vyasa nodded. But he made a rule of his own: Ganesha had to understand the full meaning of every verse before he wrote it down.

That was the beginning of the strangest partnership the Hindu tradition tells of.

Vyasa was clever. Whenever he needed more time to compose, he recited verses that were deliberately difficult, with many layers of meaning. Even Ganesha had to pause and think over them. In that short silence, Vyasa prepared what he would recite next. The Hindu tradition holds that this is why the Mahabharata has so many hard passages. Those passages are not a fault of the writer. They are the marks of a contest of wits between a man and a god.

Vyasa sat there, reciting the story of the war of his own grandchildren. He recited about his son Dhritarashtra. He recited about his son Pandu. He recited about children who grew up to be enemies of one another, about decisions that could never be taken back, about the deaths of people who carried his blood.

He knew how it would end. And he still told it.

No one else in the history of literature has done it in this way. Not because others lacked talent, but because no one else had such a story to write.

For this, people set aside one day each year to remember him. Guru Purnima is held on the full moon day of the month of Ashadha in the Hindu calendar. It is also called Vyasa Purnima, because tradition holds that this is the day he was born. Students in countries that follow Hindu culture go to their teachers to show their thanks. Vyasa is regarded as the first teacher, the one who passed on the wisdom of an entire age through its sacred texts.

But people remember him for more than those books.

Vyasa sat outside the story to write it. But his heart was inside, with everyone he loved and with every decision he could not change.

People say that only love can look straight at suffering without turning away.

And Vyasa did not turn away.