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STORIES · THE MAHĀBHĀRATA · Strī
Dhritarashtra and the 100 burned baby birds
Popular
Dhritarashtra asks 'what did I do?' - and Krishna replies with a 50-lifetimes-old bonfire.
Popular telling: after the war Dhritarashtra asks Krishna why he is blind and has lost 100 sons when he knows of no sin. Krishna gives him divine sight and he sees that 50 births earlier he was a hunter/king who had a burning net thrown over a tree holding 100 chicks; the parents were blinded by smoke. The karma waited 50 lives while he accrued merit to be born a king with 100 sons. A Boldsky listicle gives a variant: a tyrant king who plucked out a swan's eyes and killed 100 cygnets, and earlier still the daitya Hamsa son of Arishta Nemi.
Who: Dhritarashtra, Krishna, Gandhari
Bound to
Why Dhritarashtra was born blind: Ambika shut her eyes same-story-other-version
Gandhari's curse: 36 years and the Yadavas die mirror
Where this comes from
- modern-popular · SmartPuja blog, Laws of Karma - Why Dhritarashtra Was Born Blind no chapter/verse cited
- modern-popular · Boldsky, The past lives of characters in Mahabharata disclaims accuracy