Shakuntula

Warning! This page contains spoilers for *The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities: New Stories About Mythic Heroes*. Enter at your own risk.

## Biological Information

### Parents

Vishwamitra (biological father)Menaka (mother)
Kanva (foster father)

## Appearance

### Appears in

*Aru Shah and the Song of Death**The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities: New Stories About Mythic Heroes*
*Beware the Grove of True Love*

**Shakuntula** is a character that appears in *Beware the Grove of True Love*. She is the wife of Dushyanta and the mother of Bharata, who goes on to be one of the greatest kings of all time. Her story is told in the Grove of True Love, when the Pandava sisters are on an errand for Urvashi.

## History

### Childhood

Shakuntula was born to the renowned sage Vishwamitra and the apsara Menaka. However since Menaka was an apsara, she had to go back to heaven and Vishwamitra eventually had to leave her to continue his penance. The sage Kanva found the baby and raised her as his own.

### Meeting with Dushyanta

One day, when King Dushyanta of Hastinapur was in the woods with his army for hunting, he met Shakuntula. They fell in love with each other immediately. Dushyanta took her as his wife and gifted her his ring, saying that she would be his queen when she chooses to visit him.

### Durvasa's Curse

As Shakuntula was sitting near her hut, Sage Durvasa decided to pay her a visit. Lost in the thoughts, Shakuntula failed to acknowledge the sage. Enraged by her act od disrespect, he cursed her that the person she was thinking of shall forget her. When Shakuntula saw the sage, she begged him for forgiveness, when he finally calmed down and said that her curse shall be broken only if she showed him a personal token.

### In Hastinapur

On the way to the capital, Shakuntula stopped by a river to wash her hands, when the ring given to her by Dushyanta slips her finger and falls into the waters. After confronting Dushyanta, she realises she doesn't have a ring, so the king does not seem to recall her and sends her away.

### Aftermath

After a few years, Dushyanta having found the ring he had gifted his beloved, immediately ventures into the forest where Shakuntula lives and finds her with a baby boy. He realises that the boy is his son and they reunite together.

## The Pandava Quintet

### *Aru Shah and the Song of Death*

In the DMV, Aru, Brynne and Aiden followed Sage Durvasa through a golden divinity-only gate. On going through the door, Aru saw that inside a row of glass display cases, there were statues that appeared to be alive. Among them was the statue of a beautiful woman sitting on the ground and weeping. A metal plaque at the bottom of the case read SHAKUNTULA.

### *Beware the Grove of True Love*

When Aru, Mini and Brynne venture into the Grove of True Love, they experience Shakuntula's story in "pages". But after Shakuntula comes home forgotten by the king, the pandava sisters are tasked to find the ring and return it. They make a deal with the river guardian to give them the ring, in exchange with a shiny candy wrapper Mini has. The snake (river guardian) happily agrees and offers them a load of shiny objects, including the ring, enabling them to fix the story.

## Appearance

In *Beware of the Grove of True Love*, Shakuntula is described as a beautiful young woman with nut-brown skin.

## Etymolgy

* Shakuntula, in sanskrit, translates to "birds". She was named so because she was raised by many birds in the forest.

## Trivia

* The story of Shakuntula is told in the Mahabharata and written into various plays, the most famous one being *Abignana-Shakuntalam* by Kalidas.
* In many versions of the story, the ring is bought back to Dushyanta by a fisherman who claimed to find it while cutting a fish open.
* Shakuntula is the ancestor of the Kuru Dynasty, the dynasty which the Pandavas were born into.