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| children = Uluka and Vrikaasur }} Shakuni ((サンスクリット:शकुनि), lit. ''bird'') also known as Saubala (Sanskrit: सौबल, lit. ''son of Subala'') and Gandhararaja (Sanskrit: गान्धारराज, lit. ''king of Gandhara''), was the prince of Gandhara Kingdom in present-day Gandhara, later to become the King after his father's death and one of the main villains in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. He was the brother of Gandhari and hence Duryodhana's maternal uncle. Portrayed as an extremely intelligent but devious man, Shakuni is often credited as the mastermind behind the Mahabharata war. Shakuni had two sons named Uluka and Vrikaasur. It is believed that Shakuni was the personification of Dvapara Yuga. ==Early days== Shakuni was born in Gandhara in modern-day Afghanistan to King Subala. He was a great devotee of Lord Shiva. There is an folklore which narrates the below story with regards to Shakuni's anger over Hastinapur. But this was a story which has no reference in Mahabharata but was later adopted by many modern writers of Mahabharata. However this fictional folklore has gained its popularity ever since. It is said that in some military campaign of either Bheeshma, Pandu, or Shantanu, Gandhara came under attack from Hastinapur. Hastinapur conquered Gandhar, killed the king Achala Suvala, and imprisoned all the male members of his line, saying that line was full of adharma. This included Shakuni and his 100 brothers (in some accounts, "brothers" is literal, in others it is used to represent other family members in what was common usage at the time). Since all of them were sparsely fed (with one grain of rice each per day) in the prison, the family decided that at least one of them could survive and gave all the rice to Shakuni, the most cunning of them all, so that he could live on to take revenge. Eventually, King Subala, Shakuni's father, bends the knee to make a permanent mark of the injustice. Considered a man of dharma, his family is allowed to live. In some stories, Shakuni carves from the bones of his dead parents dice that will never lose him a game. Shakuni's father's soul is said to have entered the dice and it would roll to whatever number Shakuni wanted. Shakuni was unhappy with his sister Gandhari's marriage to Kaurava prince Dhritarashtra. He was more so ever angry with Bhishma for bringing this proposal as he found it insulting and demeaning, not only because Dhritarashtra was blind, but because of the way the Kurus had destroyed his line years before. He swore to avenge this insult by slowly destroying Bhishma's clan. He achieved this by poisoning the mind of his volatile nephew, and influenced Duryodhana into instigating the war with the Pandavas, which resulted in the destruction of the Kuru line. Thus, he is seen by many as one of the key persons that caused the Kurukshetra War. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shakuni」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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