Pandu is the son of
the sage Vyasa and queen Ambalika in the Mahabharata, the second of the two
major Hindu epics.
After King Shantanu's son Vichitravirya dies without
successors, Pandu and his brother Dhrtarashtra are born as a desperate effort
to maintain the royal line of King Shantanu.
When Vichitravirya dies, his mother, Satyavati, instructs
her oldest son, Vyasa, to sleep with Vichitravirya's wives, Ambika and her
sister Ambalika, in the hopes of conceiving.
According to legend, when Vyasa arrives in a woman's bed,
she responds irrationally: Ambika hides her eyes, causing her son Dhrtarashtra
to be born blind, and Ambalika becomes pale, leading her son Pandu to be born
with an unusually pale complexion.
Pandu is the ideal candidate to lead due to Dhrtarashtra's
blindness; he marries Kunti and Madri and lives happily as king.
This beautiful period comes to an end one day as he is hunting
in the woods and accidentally kills a deer that is mating.
To his horror, he realizes that the deer is the sage
Kindama, who has assumed this shape for the sake of romantic embraces with his
wife; the sage curses Pandu with his last breath that he will die the instant
he touches his wife in an amorous embrace.
Pandu abdicates the kingdom in favor of his brother
Dhrtarashtra and travels to live as an ascetic in the Himalayas with his wives
since he has no children and the curse forbids him from dying without an heir.
At this point, Kunti informs him of a mantra she learned
from the sage Durvasas years ago, which grants the lady who recites it the
ability to summon any of the gods and produce a son equal in strength to him.
Kunti and Madri had five brave sons, the Pandava brothers,
with Pandu's approval.
They all live happily ever after until Pandu, tempted by the
alluring power of spring, disregards Madri's cautions and embraces her.
Pandu dies as a result of the sage's curse, but his family
line lives on thanks to the power of the mantra.
"Pandurang" means "pale." The deity
Vithoba, whose principal site of devotion is in the holy city of Pandharpur in
Maharashtra, is known by this epithet.
Vithoba is another name for Vithoba.
