Who is Vyasa?

The storyteller inside his own story

Vyasa is the sage who composed the Mahabharata. Tradition also says he arranged the Vedas into four, which is how he earned the name Veda Vyasa, "the one who arranged." He was born on a river island to Satyavati and the sage Parashara, and was dark-skinned, so his first name was Krishna Dvaipayana: the dark one born on an island.

What makes him unusual is that he is not only the author. He is also a member of the family he writes about.

The grandfather of both sides

When Satyavati’s royal sons died without heirs, she asked Vyasa to father children with the widowed princesses. He became the father of blind Dhritarashtra, pale Pandu, and wise Vidura. That makes him the grandfather of both the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Throughout the story he steps in at key moments: comforting, warning, and giving advice that people do not always take.

How the story reaches us

Our telling opens the way the epic itself does. A storyteller named Sauti arrives at a gathering of sages in the Naimisha forest and recites what he heard at a great snake sacrifice, where Vyasa’s student Vaishampayana told the story to King Janamejaya. A well-loved later tradition adds that the god Ganesha wrote it down as Vyasa spoke, on the condition that Vyasa never pause.

Vyasa lives to see the war he foresaw, and the end of the generation that fought it.