Sarala Mahabharata: Gandharasena, Ganga's dice, bones of the palms

Variant

The oldest written telling I found of the bone-dice is Odia, not Sanskrit.

In Sarala Das's Odia Mahabharata, as retold: gambler Gandharasena wins the goddess Ganga's favour after 15 years of austerities; she gives divine dice and tells him that after death his son should make two dice sticks from the bones of his right palm and thirty cubes from the left. He instructs Sakuni to win the Pandavas' trust, strip Yudhisthira of everything, humiliate Draupadi, and cause war, then die at Sahadeva's hand.

Who: Shakuni, Gandharasena, Ganga, Draupadi

Bound to

Shakuni's dice from his father's bones same-story-other-version

Śakuni's plan: Dhṛtarāṣṭra agrees to the dice match mirror

Places: Odisha

Where this comes from

regional-literary · Sarala Mahabharata blog, The revenge of the dead: the special dice of Sakuni

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