“In my beginning is my end.” [1] These words of TS Eliot’s have a certain resonance when one looks at the career of Bhishma in the Mahabharata. Bhisma had a life before his arrival on earth. The story goes that while returning from Brahmaloka, Ganga came upon the eight heavenly Vasu gods who were all in a terrible state. When she enquired, the gods told her that for a minor offence the maharishi Vashistha had put a curse on them. By this curse, they would have to be born as humans.
They pleaded with Ganga to be their mother. She agreed and said that they would be born out of the union between her and Santanu, the son of Prateep, the king of the Kuru dynasty. The gods agreed and they told Ganga that as soon as they were born, she should throw them into the river to die. But Ganga’s condition was that one of them would have to live so that her union with Santanu would not be in vain. (Mbh: Adi parva, adhyaya 91: slokas: 18-19).
Ganga thus married Santanu on the…