Vyāsa

Vyāsa, “the arranger”, is the name tradition gives to Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana, the dark-skinned sage born on an island in the Yamunā to the fisherwoman Satyavatī and the sage Parāśara. He is said to have divided the one Veda into four, and to have composed the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas. Later tradition also identifies him with Bādarāyaṇa, author of the Brahma Sūtras.

He is unusual among authors in appearing in his own book. In the Mahābhārata he is the grandfather of both families whose war it tells, the Kauravas and the Pāṇḍavas; he advises them, grieves over them, and gives the bard Sañjaya the sight to describe the battle to the blind king Dhṛtarāṣṭra. The Bhagavad Gītā is that description. The epic says he taught it to his disciples, and that it was first recited at a sacrifice held by Janamejaya, a descendant of the Pāṇḍavas.

Historians read the Mahābhārata as the work of many hands over many centuries, perhaps from the fourth century BCE to the fourth century CE, and Vyāsa as the figure in whom that tradition names its authority. For the tradition itself he is the type of the sage who orders revealed knowledge for an age that can no longer hold it whole. His son Śuka, born free of attachment, is in the epic the model of the one who leaves the world entirely; Vyāsa, who stays in it, is the one who remembers and teaches.