' Smiling in modesty, she said to him, 'Give me, O
best of celestials, a child endued with great strength and largeness of
limbs and capable of humbling the pride of every body.' The god of wind
thereupon begat upon her the child afterwards known as Bhima of mighty
arms and fierce prowess. And upon the birth of that child endued with
extraordinary strength, an incorporeal voice, O Bharata, as before, said,
'This child shall be the foremost of all endued with strength.' I must
tell you, O Bharata, of another wonderful event that occurred after the
birth of Vrikodara (Bhima). While he fell from the lap of his mother upon
the mountain breast, the violence of the fall broke into fragments the
stone upon which he fell without his infant body being injured in the
least. And he fell from his mother's lap because Kunti, frightened by a
tiger, had risen up suddenly, unconscious of the child that lay asleep on
her lap. And as she had risen, the infant, of body hard as the thunderbolt,
falling down upon the mountain breast, broke into a hundred fragments the
rocky mass upon which he fell. And beholding this, Pandu wondered much.
And it so happened that that very day on which Vrikodara was born, was
also, O best of Bharatas, the birthday of Duryodhana who afterwards became
the ruler of the whole earth.'
"After the birth of Vrikodara, Pandu again began to think, 'How am I to
obtain a very superior son who shall achieve world-wide fame? Every thing
in the world dependeth on destiny and exertion.
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