Hastinapura

There is not yet open conflict between them, and the epic deals here with the details of their education and upbringing as they live together in Hastinapura. Here we are introduced to one of the two key protagonists of the story of Ekalavya--Drona.

Among the descendants of King Bharata (after whose name India was called Bharata-varsha, land of the Bharatas) there were two successors to the throne of Hastinapura. Of these, the elder, Dhritarashtra, was blind and gave over the reins of government to his younger brother Pandu.

400-350 B.C.: Panini refers to the joint worship of Vasudeva and Arjuna (4,3,98), and mentions also Yudhisthira (8,3,95), Hastinapura (6,2,101), Andhaka-Vrsnayah (6,2,34), and Mahabharata (6,2,38) (Weber 1852: 176; Hopkins 1901: 385, 390f.; Jaiswal 1981: 64f.; Brockington 1998: 257).

"It is widely believed, even by those who ought to know, that, blessed with [divine vision], Samjaya sat with Dhrtarastra in his chamber in Hastinapura, and from there he could see the happenings on the battlefield, which he related to Dhrtarastra as a sort of running commentary" (p.

And similarly, at 12.39.20, as the brahmins of Hastinapura greet and welcome Yudhisthira as their king, they are "bubbling with sound like honking geese" (hamsavan nedusam...dvijanam) and the Goddess Sarasvati (called Bharati here, significantly) emerges in their midst.

There is nothing in common between Hastinapura and New Delhi, even less between Hastinapura and Ibadan - except the fact that they are inhabited areas located on a continuous scale with megalopolises and conurbations at one end and isolated houses at the other, with huge time and place variables.