How Was It Even Possible For Gandhari To Deliver 101 Children? Here Are Some Theories.

A lot of brave men have achieved and exhibited feats of magnanimous courage and strength in the Mahabharath. They have been garlanded with accolades as well. On the other hand, there’s this woman who had given birth to 101 children, which is an incredible, almost unbelievable for a human being to do.

A mother to 101 children, who had never seen her children’s faces, and eventually came to know of their demise in the war, how did Gandhari survive the physical strain? If we’re at all to believe in the epic, should we simply buy the story that she was given a boon from a deity and leave it at that? It’s interesting how Gandhari, probably the strongest woman, or any human for that matter in the world, remained unsung.

Let’s look at some of the mythological theories and some scientific research that may throw a light upon this remarkable feat achieved by Gandhari.

1. Gandhari gave birth to a lump of flesh

It is said that Kunti, Pandu’s wife and Gandhari, Dhritharasthra’s wife were both expecting at the same time. Kunti gave birth to Yudhisthir but Gandhari had a prolonged pregnancy of two years. Raging with jealousy that Kunti’s son would now be the heir to the throne, Gandhari beat her pregnant belly which resulted in a strange miscarriage.

When she finally delivered, it was just a lump of flesh. Apparently, Vyasa cut hundred pieces of the flesh, immersed them in a pot of ghee and kept them under buried. A year later, each of the buried pieces grew out to be a son.

2. Was it IVF technolgy?

IVF or Vitro fertilization, is a complex technology used in treating fertility and genetic issues for the conception of a child. Vyasa’s procedure of reviving life out of the lump of flesh delivered by Gandhari, is quite similar to the embryo splitting technology and Vitro fertilization.

With the endless scientific wonders and achievements of ancient India which have lost in the sands of time, could it be a possibility that Vyasa had the knowledge of advanced IVF technology that helped him fertilize the foetus outside Gandhari’s womb?

3. The brothers were clones

Some are of the opinion that the technology of cloning was not really unknown to Indians at 3000 BC. Not only is it practically impossible for a woman to give birth to hundred children, it is even more ridiculous in this case because all the brothers were of same age.

A surgeon from the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, B G Matapurkar, who also holds a United States patent on technique of organ regeneration, is of the belief that the Kauravs were cloned by splitting the embryo into 100 parts.

4. They may not have been all her children

In the novel, Prava, by Kannada novelist S L Bhyrappa, an alternative theory has been put forward in order to explain the unearthly phenomenon of a woman giving birth to a hundred children. The theory suggests that Gandhari actually gave birth to only eight of the Kauravs and the rest were fathered by Dhritharastra with several maid-servants of the royal family.

This is probably why only the eldest few brothers were given significance in the epic while the rest being born of servants, were never described with much importance.

5. A philosophical explanation

Certain schools of though do not believe that Gandhari and Dhritharastra had a hundred children. Rather, it is believed that “hundred children” should be considered as a metaphor for something else. Dhritharastra was a blind man not only physically but also blind with ego. Gandhari, too, had blindfolded herself letting emotions get the better of her judgement.

Thus both are a symbol of blind mind and blind intellect. Therefore, the congruence of the two resulted in the breeding of something unholy, unrighteous and disastrous to epic proportion which is symbolized by a hundred sons of questionable morality.

6. Is their anyone else who has delivered so many children in recent times?

Apparently, there is. Valentina Vassilyeva, a wife of a Russian peasant has the record of giving birth to 69 children that included four sets of quadruplets, seven sets of triplets and sixteen pairs of twins. All the children were born in 27 births. However, they were born in a span of forty years between 1725-1765.

Therefore, considering Vassilyeva to be a woman of immense stamina, it is possible to deliver so many children in a lifetime but that does not explain Gandhari’s deliveries because all her children were of the same age.

 

Out of body birth or wombless  birth as been mentioned in several ancient epic texts of India. Mahabharath and Ramayan has several mentions of supra-normal births which may indicate the progress of ancient India in the fields of genetics, fertilization, artificial birth etc during 3000 B.C.

However, if Gandhari had actually given birth to her children, there is hardly any explanation other than out of body fertilization which again, is a study not entirely in the realm of modern science yet.

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