The House of Kuruकुरुवंश
Forty generations to a war between cousins
The Kauravas and the Pandavas are not two families. Dhritarashtra and Pandu are brothers, so both "sides" of the war share every generation back to Manu and separate only at the very bottom of the tree — which is the tragedy the epic is about. What follows is that single descent as Ganguli’s Mahabharata gives it: the lunar line to Yayati, the Paurava kings from Puru to Shantanu, and then the four generations in which almost nobody is fathered by the man the genealogy lists as their father.
The lunar line, down to Yayati
Adi Parva 75Ganguli’s Section 75 begins this descent at Manu and Ila. It does not run it back through Brahma, Atri, Soma and Budha the way the Puranas do — so neither does this tree.
- Generation 1ManuमनुWhere Ganguli begins
- Generation 2Ilaइल
- Generation 3Pururavasपुरूरवा
- Generation 4Ayusआयु
- Generation 5Nahushaनहुष
- Generation 6YayatiययातिTwo wives, five sons, five branches
The five sons of Yayati
Adi Parva 75The branch point of the whole lunar dynasty. Yadu’s descendants are the Yadavas — Krishna’s people; Puru’s are the Pauravas, and it is Puru’s line that becomes the Kurus.
The Yadavas descend from him — the house Krishna and Balarama are born into.
Adi Parva 75
The youngest son inherits, and the Kuru line runs through him.
Adi Parva 75
The Paurava kings, Puru to Pratipa
Adi Parva 95Thirty-two reigns. Unlike Valmiki’s Ikshvaku list, which names almost no mothers, Ganguli names a queen at nearly every generation — so they are given here rather than dropped.
- Generation 7PuruपुरुWife: Kausalya
- Generation 8JanamejayaजनमेजयWife: Ananta
Performed three horse-sacrifices and a Visvajit. Not the Janamejaya the epic is recited to.
- Generation 9Prachinwatप्राचीन्वान्Wife: Asmaki
So called for conquering the eastern countries as far as the sunrise.
- Generation 10SanyatiसंयातिWife: Varangi
- Generation 11AhayantiअहंयातिWife: Bhanumati
- Generation 12Sarvabhaumaसार्वभौमWife: Sunanda
- Generation 13Jayatsenaजयत्सेनWife: Susrava
- Generation 14AvacinaअवाचीनWife: Maryada
- Generation 15Arihanअरिहन्Wife: Angi
- Generation 16MahabhaumaमहाभौमWife: Suyajna
- Generation 17AyutanayiअयुतनायीWife: Kama
- Generation 18Akrodhanaअक्रोधनWife: Karambha
- Generation 19DevatithiदेवातिथिWife: Maryada
- Generation 20Arihanअरिहन्Wife: Sudeva
The second king of this name in the list, four generations after the first.
- Generation 21Rikshaऋक्षWife: Jvala
- Generation 22MatinaraमतिनारWife: Sarasvati
- Generation 23TansuतंसुWife: Kalingi
- Generation 24IlinaइलिनWife: Rathantari
Five sons, of whom Dushmanta was the eldest.
- Generation 25Dushmantaदुष्मंतWife: Sakuntala, daughter of Visvamitra
- Generation 26BharataभरतWife: Sunanda of Kasi
The Bharatas, and the epic’s own name — Mahabharata, “the great tale of the Bharatas” — come from him.
- Generation 27Bhumanyuभूमन्युWife: Vijaya
- Generation 28Suhotraसुहोत्रWife: Suvarna
- Generation 29Hastiहस्तीWife: Yasodhara
Founded Hastinapura, the city the whole quarrel is later fought over.
- Generation 30VikunthanaविकुंठनWife: Sudeva
- Generation 31AjamidhaअजमीढFour wives: Raikeyi, Gandhari, Visala, Riksha
Ganguli credits him with two thousand four hundred sons; the dynasty is carried on by Samvarana.
- Generation 32SamvaranaसंवरणWife: Tapati, daughter of Vivasvat
- Generation 33KuruकुरुWife: Subhangi
The dynasty takes its name from him. Every figure below this point is a Kaurava in the strict sense — Pandavas included.
- Generation 34VidurathaविदूरथWife: Supriya
- Generation 35Anasvanअनश्वान्Wife: Amrita
- Generation 36Parikshitपरीक्षित्Wife: Suvasa
An earlier Parikshit, not Abhimanyu’s son who survives the war.
- Generation 37BhimasenaभीमसेनWife: Kumari
An earlier Bhimasena, not the Pandava.
- Generation 38Pratisravasप्रतिश्रवा
- Generation 39Pratipaप्रतीपWife: Sunanda
Three sons: Devapi, Santanu and Valhika. Devapi took to the forest as a hermit, so Santanu became king.
The house of Shantanu
Adi Parva 95, 100Two marriages, and a vow that empties the line. Satyavati’s father would only give her if her son inherited — so Devavrata renounced the throne and swore celibacy, becoming Bhishma. It is that vow, kept, that leaves the dynasty with no heir two generations later.
Renounced both the throne and marriage so his father could marry Satyavati. He outlives almost everyone in this tree and dies in the war.
Adi Parva 95
Before this marriage she had borne Vyasa to the sage Parashara — which is why, when the line fails, the man called on to continue it is her own son.
Married Ambika and Ambalika and died before fathering an heir. The dynasty stops here, biologically.
Adi Parva 100; Adi Parva (sections not pinned)
Niyoga — the line continued by Vyasa
Adi Parva 106With Vichitravirya dead and Bhishma bound by his vow, Satyavati calls on her first son. Vyasa fathers three children on his half-brother’s widows. Legally these are Vichitravirya’s sons and the succession is unbroken; biologically the Kuru line ended a generation earlier and what follows is Vyasa’s — including the man who composed the poem being read.
She closed her eyes at the sight of Vyasa, and the text makes the child’s blindness follow directly from it.
Adi Parva 106
She turned pale, and the child was pale — Pandu, “the white one”.
Adi Parva 106
The one of the three who was not afraid. Her son is the wisest man in the epic and, being a servant’s child, can never rule.
Adi Parva 106
The house of Dhritarashtra — the Kauravas
Adi Parva 115Gandhari’s pregnancy lasts two years; hearing that Kunti has borne a son first, she strikes her own womb and delivers a ball of flesh. Vyasa has it divided into a hundred and one pieces and kept in pots of clarified butter, and from those the children are born. Duryodhana comes first, braying like an ass, and the brahmanas tell Dhritarashtra to abandon him as the destroyer of his race.
Bound her own eyes on marrying a blind husband.
Ganguli gives the hundred as a number here rather than a list; only Duryodhana is named in the birth section.
Adi Parva 115
Yuyutsu is the only one of Dhritarashtra’s sons who crosses to the Pandava side before the war, and the only one who survives it.
Adi Parva 115
The house of Pandu — the Pandavas
Adi Parva 111, 118, 123, 124Pandu is cursed to die if he ever feels desire, so he fathers no children at all. Kunti has a formula from Durvasa that summons a god at will, and she has already tested it once, before her marriage. Every one of these six is a god’s son.
The curse is laid by the sage Kindama, whom Pandu shoots in the form of a deer — Adi Parva 118.
Before her marriage she tried the formula on Surya and bore Karna, who was born wearing armour and earrings and set adrift on the water. A charioteer and his wife Radha raised him as Vasusena — Adi Parva 111.
Raised outside the family and fights against it. He is the Pandavas’ eldest brother and none of them knows it until he is dead.
Adi Parva 111, 123
Madri got two sons from a single invocation, and Kunti — who had lent her the formula once — declined to lend it again.
Adi Parva 124
Notes on the sources
- Ganguli translates the vulgate — the Calcutta and Bombay editions — not the Poona critical edition. Section numbers here will not always land in the same place in a critical-edition text such as Debroy’s. Where a section is cited, it is Ganguli’s.
- Sections verified against the text: Adi Parva 75, 95, 100, 106, 111, 115, 123 and 124. Chitrangada and Vichitravirya, and Satyavati’s son by Parashara, are cited to the Adi Parva without a section number — they are named there, but the exact section was not pinned, and inventing the precision seemed worse than admitting it.
- Dhritarashtra’s hundred sons are not individually named in the birth section. Ganguli gives Duryodhana as the eldest and Dushala as the single daughter; the rest of the hundred are listed elsewhere in the Adi Parva and are not reproduced here.
- The generation after the Pandavas — Abhimanyu, Parikshit, the five sons of Draupadi, Ghatotkacha — is not yet in this tree. Those births are scattered across several parvas and none of them has been read against the text yet.