5.BIRTH OF BHARAT

It is said that India's original name bhaarat comes from the name of this ruler whos name was bharat. His story Starts from the interesting story of birth of his mother SHAKUNTALA .There was a royal sage named vishwamitra who was busy in his austerities and since he was becoming very powerful with the boons he received Indra became afraid and asked one of the apsras named menka who was very beautiful to go and disturb him so that he might be ddistracted of his penance . Menka afraid of the anger of the sage said that the sage might burn her with anger so she asked indra to ask ask marut the god of wind to rob her of her clothes when she is playing with the sage and so he did .When the sage saw her in this state he was in love with her and spent a long time with her.Then she gave birth to shakuntala who was left near river malini who was nurtured by sage kanva .When king dushmanta one of the greatest of the time went to the forest for hunting and on the way went to meet sage kanva who was not there at his place he saw shakuntala ask asked her to marry him . Although she said that he should wait for the sage to come but the king insisted them to have Gandharva marriage(a type of hidden marriage which was valid for kshatrias, the warrior class).They married accordingly . Then dushmanta left her and said that he would be sending people to take him to the kingdom with great pomp and show as she was the royal mistress and as asked by shakuntala he granted her the boon that her son would be the next king . Bharat was born of this union but since the king did not send anyone to take shakuntala she was sent by sage kanva to the king with some of the acquaintances where the king rejected to recognise her.Feeling insulted she returned back to kanva cursing the king but as she retreated there was a voice from the sky of no visible form describing a child  as a part of the father himself taking the birth from his wife and asked the king to call his kin back and the same was done by the king .He pacified shakuntala by saying that as he thought that his subjects would have suspected her purity and would have believed that the king accepted her due to some pressure therefore he did not accept her then but wanted to accept her now.By the time passed bharat bacame a great ruler and today's India is said to be named after him.