01Born on an island
He was born on an island in the Yamuna, which is why he is called Dvaipayana, and he was dark, which is why he is Krishna. The Mahabharata tells his birth in the Adi Parva. As the Dvapara Yuga drew to its close, he saw that people of the coming age would not hold the whole Veda in memory. So he divided it into the Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva, and gave each to a disciple: Paila, Vaishampayana, Jaimini and Sumantu. That act gave him the name Veda Vyasa, the one who arranged the Veda.
02The Mahabharata and the Puranas
Vyasa was not a distant author. He was grandfather to the Pandavas and Kauravas, and he appears again and again in the Mahabharata, counselling, consoling, granting Sanjaya the divine sight to describe the war at Kurukshetra. The Adi Parva says he composed the poem and Shri Ganesh wrote it down, on the condition that the pen must never stop. Tradition also gives him the eighteen Mahapuranas and the Brahma Sutras, which Shankaracharya and later acharyas read as the work of Badarayana Vyasa. Vyas Gufa, a cave at Mana village beyond Badrinath, is shown to pilgrims as the place where he dictated the Mahabharata.
