Vyāsa

Vyāsa (“arranger”, “compiler”), fully Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa (“the dark one born on an island”), is the legendary sage to whom Hindu tradition attributes the arrangement of the Veda into four collections, the composition of the The Mahābhārata, the eighteen Purāṇas and — by identification with Bādarāyaṇa — the Brahma Sūtras. He is the archetypal author of Indian tradition. In the Mahābhārata he is also a character: the son of the sage Parāśara and the fisherwoman Satyavatī, born on an island in the Yamunā; at his mother’s request, he fathers Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Pāṇḍu and Vidura with the widowed queens of the Kuru line — becoming the biological grandfather of both the Kauravas and the Pāṇḍavas whose war the epic describes — and appears throughout as a counsellor and seer. Legend says that he dictated the epic to the elephant-headed god Gaṇeśa, who agreed to write it only if Vyāsa never paused; Vyāsa agreed only if Gaṇeśa understood each verse before writing it, and slipped in difficult verses to gain time to compose. The full moon of Āṣāḍha, Guru Pūrṇimā, is celebrated as his birthday and as the day of honouring teachers.