Ezra Azra--A Most Ancient Story

According to all records, the story entitled “Shakuntala” was first told at least twenty-five centuries ago in India. The name of the original storyteller is unknown. Down the ages, the story has been retold with variations in the tale. Most of the time, the authors are unknown.

The most popular version is the ancient one in which Shakuntala’s illegitimate only child, a son named Bharata, abandoned by his father, a king, before Bharata was born, eventually became the founder of India.

For the longest time, Ancient India was known as Bharata.

Shakuntala was a poor orphan girl who had been sheltered, not adopted, by some kind person. In some versions of the story, this kind person was a deity who themselves was an outcast, and so that deity was intensely sympathetic with outcast Shakuntala’s plight. The name of that deity is unknown.

That deity taught Shakuntala exceptional survival skills which included reading and writing, and bow-and-arrow skills.

Shakuntala grew up to be tall and most beautiful in the care of that deity.

In some of the editions that mention that kind deity, is that they speak of the deity eventually being forgiven and returning to its realm beyond human awareness. The reason for its forgiveness was its kindness to Shakuntala.

At one time when Shakuntala was walking across a field, going about her daily domestic chores, a bachelor king, on an animal hunting sporting outing, met her by sheer chance. He revealed his royal identity to Shakuntala, and used it to lie to her that if she had sex with him there and then, in that open field, he would marry her and make her queen of the nation.

They had sex, there and then in the open field. He left her and lied that he would return.

She gave birth to a son. The rascal king did not return. Shakuntala named her son, Bharata. The word ‘bharata’ in Shakuntala’s language meant ‘forgotten.’

Those were the days when unmarried single Moms were regarded by all people as disgraceful and to be avoided at all costs.

Shakuntala could easily have sold her newborn baby into slavery; nobody would have seen that as an evil in her. It was a common enough thing done.

Shakuntala looked after her child until he was an adult. And then he looked after her. Being the only woman in the nation who could read and write, she earned a living by providing these services to wealthy people. She could successfully compete with the few men who provided these services because since she was a woman, she was paid far less than the men.

Down the ages, the different editions of the story took liberties with details of the story.

For example, while most retellings spare the evil king, at least one has a goddess turn him into an everlasting rat that is eaten and defecated by feral felines once a year.

For example, no retelling mentions Shakuntala’s end. Did she die? Did an almighty deity grant her eternal youth, which she deserved?

The most secular rendition of the story happened during the 1970s in Sri Lanka. Culturally, the nation of Sri Lanka had always been an offshoot of mainland India.

The Tamil Sri Lankans were campaigning for an independent country in the northeastern territory of the island country.

They were campaigning by the name of Tamil Tigers. Their leader was a man named Vellupillai Prabhakaran.

In an attempt to recruit women, Prabhakaran wrote his version of the story of Shakuntala.

In Vellupillai Prabhakaran’s edition, there are no gods, and no king.

The teenager, Shakuntala, is orphaned in a civil war, and joins an Underground Political group of men and women. She is taken prisoner. She leads a revolt from within the prison. She leads her followers to freedom, and soon after that, becomes the leader of the nation-wide Tamil successful revolt for independence.

Unfortunately, since most major countries eventually banned Vellupillai Prabhakaran’s organization as terrorist, possession of any of his rendering of the story was banned.

The Tamil Tigers came to an end in 2009 when all its military leaders, including Vellupillai Prabhakaran, were killed in a military battle in Sri Lanka.

Prabhakaran’s edition of the story has the distinction of being the only edition up to his edition of mentioning Shakuntala’s use of her skill in archery to defend herself against attackers.

This version of the story of Shakuntala is the first attempted after the Tamil Tiger rendition. Some scholars observe that this version could have been in circulation before the time of the Tamil Tigers edition.

Many, many thousands of eons ago, almighty spirit gods lived among people here on Earth. Female and male spirit-gods routinely had out-of-wedlock children with humans. Those times are mentioned in the Judeo-Christian Bible.

While the human parents felt honored to be chosen by almighty and everlasting spirit-gods, it was normal in the human parents to not expect those almighty and everlasting spirit-god parents to have anything to do with helping in the parenting of their children.

Shakuntala was one such child. In her case, such phenomenal events occurred world-wide during the minutes of her birth, that her out-of-wedlock almighty spirit-god father was determined to never abandon his baby to the sole care of mortal persons.

He believed the phenomenal events were predictions of an illustrious destiny for his daughter. Because he wanted to benefit from such a destiny, he decided to be a part of Shakuntala’s daily upbringing.

One phenomenal event that occurred during the minutes of Shakuntala’s birth was the Earth passing through the moon as if the moon were only a ball of rainbow light.

The Nation was poor because it had no rivers or lakes. Its supply of water was from low rainfall, and from wells which people dug. There were no mines of precious metals.

However, within the minutes of Shakuntala’s birth, the Nation became the richest in the world because a country-wide earthquake created a deep river that flowed from mountains at one end of the country, across to the ocean at the opposite coast. The river bed was rich in alluvial gold and diamonds and precious stones throughout its entire length.

Shakuntala never married. Her father taught her and her mother to be musicians. The family traveled to all parts of the country, entertaining and teaching.

Nobody knows what happened eventually to the family. It is assumed that whatever happened was happy because Shakuntala’s father was a god.

An honor accorded to this edition was the comment on it made by Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, President of India.

That President observed that it was the only telling of the story that made no mention of India. He lauded this as indication that, finally, the Sri Lankan nation had achieved cultural independence from India, after countless centuries of willing Second Class standing.