The Willing Woman: On Epic Women and Will Power 2

Continued from 1

The epic woman from whose son our land gets its name too shows the same independence and determination as Gandhari, Kunti, Draupadi and Sita do. Shakuntala’s marriage is by her own decision. She meets the emperor Dushyanta in her foster father Sage Kanva’s ashram. The two fall in love and decide to become husband and wife according to the ancient customs of Gandharva marriage, which said that a man and a woman in love with each other can wed on their own. Dushyanta goes back after a while, promising he would send for her shortly. Shakuntala waits for Dushyanta’s people to come and take her to his palace. They do not come. She gives birth to her child in the ashram and names him Sarvadamana, Subduer of All. Yet no one comes from Dushyanta. Eventually, when her son is twelve years old, Kanva, her foster father, reminds her it is time for her to hand over her son to his father and let him live in the palace, where he belongs, learning the ways of kings. That is how Shakuntala reaches Dushyanta’s court. [In Kalidasa’s version, it is a pregnant Shakuntala who reaches the court.]

Dushyanta refuses to acknowledge that he had ever met Shakuntala or had any relations with her. He refuses to acknowledge the adolescent she has brought along as his son. He calls Shakuntala a whore and the mother of a bastard child born of shameless lust. He shows no respect even for the clothes she was wearing, in which she had come from an ashram.

At his words, Shakuntala becomes like a snake that has been stepped upon. This is the man she had chosen for herself thirteen years ago. This is the man to whom she had surrendered her body. This is the man who had begotten a child in her and left, promising to send his people to fetch her and then forgotten all about it. And now he is insulting her in the middle of an assembly, in the presence of ministers and noblemen – insulting her in such brute, merciless words.

The young woman who grew up in an ashram does not know what fear is. She does not know what treachery is. She does not know what weakness is. She has received the best possible upbringing: in an atmosphere of love, kindness, truth and fearlessness. She does not care she is standing in the presence of an all-powerful monarch. She does not care his ministers and nobles are listening to her. She lashes out at him, in the only language she knows: the language of truth.

“You know me well, great king,” she tells him, “and yet you shamelessly say you do not, showing total lack of culture.” She reminds him that culture demands that a wife who comes to her husband’s place for the first time needs to honoured, she needs to be offered worship. “You err by not worshipping me as I stand here,” asserts Shakuntala, demanding from her man the obeisance that is every woman’s right by Indian culture. “I deserve to be worshipped. And you do not offer me worship that is my due” – archarhām na archayasi mam.

Incidentally, Shakuntala’s power comes from her knowledge of her rights. Our ancient culture held women at the highest level. Our women did not grow internalising a self image that told her that she was the creation of a lesser God. She was the creation of the same God, maybe even a greater God. She was not a source of sin for man, but of dharma, virtue. It is thrilling to see this powerful self-image in woman after epic woman. All the women we have spoken of so far, be it Gandhari, Kunti, Druapadi, or Sita share the same self-image: an equal to her man. There is no feeling in her that she is the second sex. If anything, she is the first sex. Gandhari never once in her life cringes before her husband Dhritarashtra. Kunti never once feels she is inferior to Pandu. Draupadi knows she is in every way equal to her husbands. And Sita says she will walk not in Rama’s footsteps, but ahead of him, so that she can crush the thorns on his path with her feet and make his journey easier for him. This amazing self-perception of power is not born of arrogance or haughtiness, but of her culturally given status.

We see this same status of women in their husband’s home spoken of by the Vedas. The standard Vedic blessing for a new bride was:


Samrājñī śvashure bhava
Samrājñī śvaśvrām bhava
Nanandari samrājñī bhava
Samrājñī adhi devrshu
[RV 10.85.46] [AV 14.144]


“Be thou an empress to your father-in-law. An empress be though to your mother-in-law. Be thou an empress to your husband’s sister. An empress be though to his younger brother.”

Coming back to Shakuntala, she says Dushyanta needs to worship her for she is his wife come home for the first time.

Shakuntala tells Dushyanta that a wife is not a man’s plaything – she is an equal half of his being, his best friend in the journey of life, the root of his dharma, artha and kama [virtue, wealth and pleasures]. And for a man who wants to cross the ocean of samsara and reach moksha, she is his most powerful ship. She reminds him that woman is the sacred ground where man is reborn as his own son.

Shakuntala tells Dushyanta that she has not come to him for his charity – she does not need any of it. What she demands is justice – what is hers by right. In fact, she does not need even that. She is perfectly willing to go back to the ashram from where she came – she will always be welcome there. She does not care for the comforts of the palace – such things do not tempt her. She needs just one thing: that his child is acknowledged as his. And she warns him: “Ignore me, Dushyanta, and your head shall shatter in a thousand pieces”.

Dushyanta still does not acknowledge her or her son. Instead, he insults her father, the sage Vishwamitra, calling her wanton; and insults her mother, calling her a whore.

Before answering him this time she apologises, for she says what she is going to say is going to hurt him. And then she tells him the difference between a fool and a wise man is that the fool chooses evil where the wise man chooses the good. “Truth,” she tells him, “is superior to a thousand ashwamedha sacrifices; the study of all the Vedas, bathing in every sacred teertha in the world – nay, even these are not equal to truth.” Dushyanta was clearly proving himself to be a fool by choosing lies over the truth.

As she turns around to leave, she tells Dushyanta her son does not need his kingdom. She did not bring him to Dushyanta in the hope of her son inheriting his kingdom. No, he does not require it. For, her son will rule over all the earth bounded by the oceans even without his help.

The gods interfere here on Shakuntala’s behalf and testify that she is Dushyanta’s wife and Sarvadamana is his son, suggesting he be renamed Bharata now; from his name India gets the name Bharata.

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Perhaps no other story in world literature speaks of the will power of a woman more eloquently than the story of Amba does.

Amba of the Mahabharata was born a princess – one of the three daughters of the king of Kashi. As the girls become nubile and ready to chose their husbands, a swayamvara is arranged for them, and kings and princes from across the land come, to prove their valour and claim their hands. While the swayamvara is in progress, in comes Devavrata Bhishma, a prince who has sworn never to marry. He is unaccompanied and comes all alone riding his chariot. Bhishma challenges the royal assembly of heroic men and claims the princesses for himself in the name of his valour. He leads the princesses into his chariot and challenges the kshatriyas to stop him if they can. Accepting the challenge, they surround Bhishma’s single chariot in a hundred chariots and elephants. In the fierce battle that ensues, Bhishma vanquishes them all with a smile on his face. The princesses are taken to Hastinapura and handed over to his stepmother, Queen Satyavati, so that they could be wedded to Bhishma’s half-brother Vichitravirya.

As the wedding arrangements progress, Amba, the eldest of the three princesses takes a bold decision. She is not going to wed Vichitravirya, unlike her two sisters who are ready to. She approaches Bhishma and confesses that she belongs to another man. She has mentally given herself to King Shalva and he too has accepted her as his wife, unknown to her father. As a righteous Bharata prince, she tells him, it is his duty to let her go too Shalva.

Bheeshma consults his stepmother, his ministers and wise men and sends her to Shalva in honour, accompanied by old brahmanas and her old retainer. Shalva refuses to accept her, telling her she has been had by another man. You are an anyapurva, he tells her repeatedly – a woman who has belonged to another man. Amba tells him Bhishma had carried her away by force and she hadn’t gone to him of her own choice. She has never thought of another man, she has never belonged to another man, she is not an anyapurva but an ananyapurva. Shalva now says he is terrified of Bhishma and cannot have her and asks her to forget him and go wherever she liked. Amba keeps begging the man to whom she had given her heart once and who had reciprocated her love with equal ardour, but Shalva sticks to his stand.

Amba leaves Shalva and thinks things over. Bhishma is certainly to blame for what has happened. Her father too is responsible, for declaring that any man who displays great valour could have her. She herself is responsible – why didn’t she jump out of Bhishma’s chariot and run to the man she loved? She blames Shalva, she blames herself and finally she blames God.

She considers her options. She cannot go back to Bhishma. She cannot go back to her father – she does not want that. Shalva has rejected her. And there is no to her place for her go to. Eventually she goes to an ashram outside the city to spend the night there.

She explains her situation to the ascetics in the ashram and tells them she wants to lead the life of an ascetic from now on. They discourage her, telling such a life is not suitable for her and her staying there will not be appropriate, considering that she is a beautiful, young princess.

In the ashram she meets Hotravahana, once a king and now an ascetic, who reaches there by chance. Hotravahana is Amba’s maternal grandfather. He consoles her and tells her the right person to help her is Parashurama – the great warrior who has spent his life destroying corrupt kshatriyas, but who is now living an ascetic life on the Mahendra mountains. He asks Amba to go to him there. By then Akritavrana, a disciple of Parashurama comes to the ashram, with the message that Parashurama is coming to the ashram the next day to meet Hotravahana, his friend.

Until meeting with Akritavrana, Amba is not sure who exactly should be held ultimately accountable for her tragedy. It is Akritavrana who puts the blame squarely on Bhishma. Amba makes up her mind finally. And from now on nothing on earth, or even beyond, would change her mind.

Amba meets Parashurama and explains her condition. Moved, Parashurama promises help. He is sure Bhishma, his disciple, would listen to him.

As Parashurama goes to Bhishma, Amba clarifies her position. She tells Rama: Slay Bhishma, as Indra slew Vritra. She insists it is the death of Bhishma she wants, nothing else would satisfy her. Perhaps she knew Bhishma better than the sage-warrior did and was sure Bhishma would not listen to his old teacher in this matter.

Rama however goes to Bhishma and asks him to take Amba to himself, since there is no other solution to her problem, adding the threat that unless he did so, he would kill him in battle. Bhishma refuses to have Amba back and challenges his guru in battle. The battle rages for many days, but neither is able to defeat the other. Eventually Bhishma’s mother Ganga and the gods interfere and stop battle. Parashurama admits his failure to fulfil his promise to Amba and asks her to seek Bhishma’s refuge once again. Amba answers, her eyes blazing in rage: On no account will I ever go back to Bhishma. She will now go where she will be able to destroy Bhishma in battle by herself.

Amba is no more the helpless maiden who ran from man after man seeking love, kindness and justice. She is a transformed woman now. She has made up her mind and no power, human or divine, will be able to change it, such is her determination.

She engages in superhuman tapas on the banks of the Yamuna. She gives up food, grows emaciated and dry, her hair grows matted, but she stands motionless with for six months. The Mahabharata tells us the only food she ate those six months was the air.

Following the six months, she enters the waters of the Yamuna and standing there does tapas for another year, fasting throughout.

For the next one year she performs austerities standing on her toes and eating only a single leaf that has fallen by itself.

Possessed by her scorching anger, she continues her tapas for twelve years.

Bhishma’s mother Ganga appears before her and tries to dissuade her from her dark tapas, but Amba’s mind will not be changed.

At this stage there are two versions of her story told. According to one, she continuous her tapas, until she forces Shiva to appear before her by the power of her austerities. According to the other, she dies and is reborn again as a woman, a princess of the Vatsa country, and continuous her tapas in that life too until she forces Shiva to appear before her.

Shiva asks her what she wants and she places her demand before Shiva: she wants to kill Bhishma in battle. When Shiva grants her wish, she asks him how she can kill Bhishma in battle since she is woman. Shiva assures her it will happen in her next life time.

Amba has no interest left in life. She has a single aim before her: Bhishma’s death at her hands. Amba lights a huge pyre and enters it, seeking her next birth. As she does so and as fire begins to consume her body, her lips give expression to her one consuming purpose: bhīṣmavadhāya, for the death of Bhishma.

After a lifetime of tapas as Amba and another as the princess of Vatsa, she is born as a princess once again – as Shikhandini, the daughter of Drupada of Panchala. It will be years before she achieves her purpose. In the meantime she will have a sex change and become a man, and learn archery from her father’s enemy Drona, the greatest teacher of the day, and become a mighty warrior in her/his own right.

I have often wondered if the real reason why Bhishma refuses to take up weapons against Shikhandi is not his respect for Amba and her will and determination.

O0O

The list of women in ancient Indian literature who show immense will power as displayed by Amba, Shakuntala, Sita, Draupadi, Kunti, and Gandhari is long and for obvious reasons we cannot discuss them all here.

“Frailty, thy name is woman,” said the bard of the west. It is a statement that our authors from that remote time certainly would not endorse. They did not see women as weak and helpless beings. Instead, they saw them as shaktis, embodiments of power and determination. In the classical period, the perception would change and celebrated authors like Kalidasa would paint women – frequently these same women – in much softer colours. Thus Kalidasa’s genteel Shakuntala is not the tough Shakuntala of the Mahabharata. Many later versions of the Ramayana would make Sita weak and almost a shadow figure. A time would come when a woman would be appreciated for her weakness, in the name of delicateness, rather than for her strength. But such certainly are not the women who inhabit our epic land. The sage-poets who composed those unsurpassed works of literature did not see women as ‘dolls’, but as full human beings made of blood and flesh. Each one of our epic women has a will of her own, and is a person in her own right.

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Women, Gender and Power in Bheel Mahabharata 2

Part of a paper presented by the author at the national seminar on Mahabharata organized by National Manuscripts Mission and the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Government of India at India International Centre, New Delhi in February 2007.


Continued from Part 1.


Lesser women than Kunti, Draupadi and Ganga too are no less independent and sufficient to themselves in the Bheel Bharath. Take the Naga king Vasuki’s daughter Hirapath for instance. Arjuna goes to her land in search of virgin gold which he requires for use in a sacrifice the Pandavas are conducting so that their father Pandu, reborn as a dog after his sinful death, may get absolution from sin. The snakes guarding the palace grounds bite him and he dies. It is then that Hirapath sees him and falls in love with him. To revive him, Hirapath gets magical substances from her father who initially tries to deceive her by giving her poison in place of ambrosia. Hirapath is no lovelorn helpless lass. She knows her father and suspects he might do exactly this. She tries out the contents of the bottle her father has sent her on a donkey and the donkey dies instantly. A furious Hirapath now threatens her father Vasuki with a curse – unless she is given ambrosia instantly, she would curse and reduce Vasuki’s land to ashes. Her father complies instantly. However, competent woman that she is, she knows that Arjuna might leave her the instant he is brought back to life to complete whatever his mission is without giving a thought to her. So she takes the independent decision to marry him – on her own, with the knowledge that her father does not approve of her decision. He asks her maids to fetch everything needed for the wedding and conducts the marriage on her own with the dead Arjuna, and he is brought back to life by her immediately after the wedding with the help of the ambrosia and other magical substances obtained from her father. On finding out that Arjuna is in search of virgin gold, she procures it for him.

Interestingly, one of the substances the sacrifice requires is a man sold by a woman. Bhima obtains such a man from a prostitute in Kamrup.

The gender switch in the famous story of the Yakshaprashna also speaks of the changed gender perception of the Bheel Bharath. While in Vyasa’s Mahabharata the man testing the Pandava brothers is a male, a yaksha, here it is a female, the jal-jogani, a water sorceress. It is no more a man testing another man, but a woman testing a man. And appropriately, it is not a test of cerebral matters men are so preoccupied with that the test is in, but in matters of the heart – in love, acceptance and commitment.

It is in the context of the senetaro sacrifice that the Pandavas conduct to save their father Pandu who has been reborn as a dog because of his sin that we come across the jal-jogani. One of the samagris, ingredients, required for the sacrifice is virgin water. Nakula volunteers to fetch it. He reaches the tank where virgin water is and gathers it in his pot and then the jal-jogani speaks, demanding that he cannot carry her, a virgin, away just like that, he must first marry her. [She is both a water sorceress and the water in the tank in which she lives. She is a virgin and since the water is she herself, the water too is virgin.] Nakula excuses himself saying he has no time for it right then, he is too busy with the sacrifice and has to take the water immediately to Hastinapur for the sacrifice. The jal-jogani asks him to look at her and pour the water back into the tank. As their eyes meet, Nakula faints and falls down. He dies there.

It is Bhima who comes now with a pot in hand, to look for Nakula and to fetch water. Bhima too gives the excuse of not having time and he too falls down and dies. Sahadeva who comes now sees the dead bodies floating in the water. The jal-jogani appears and tells him the same fate awaits him if he tried to take her, the virgin water, away without marrying her. When Sahadeva gives the excuse of not having time, the jal-jogani asks him to give a promise to marry her afterwards and Sahadeva does so. She brings Bhima and Nakula back to life and allows Sahadeva to carry the virgin water away with him.

The jal-jogani of the Bheel Bharath is another empowered woman. She is proactive and assertive. Instead of passively allowing men to have her, she demands her rights. Before a man can have her, he must marry her, commit himself to her. It is only to such a man she would give herself. And she is not for anybody’s taking – until she gives herself to a man, she is not his. And she is strong enough to turn to stone any man who tries to force himself upon her, to have his way with her against her wishes. The jal-jogani, a minor character in the Bheel epic, behaves as Kali Satyavati, a major character, does in her encounter with Parashara in the Mahabharata.

Indra’s wife Indrani is another empowered woman in the Bheel Bharath who is fiercely independent and sufficient unto herself. Unlike Indrani in mainstream mythology, she would not be dominated by her man. To her, devotion to her husband means something entirely different from blind obedience to his wishes. She is a person in herself, authentic, with full autonomy, and does not find the meaning of her existence in her unquestioning service to Indra. If Indra does not treat her with the dignity she deserves, with the honour Indra owes her as an equal human being, she would walk away from him, as a modern woman would do and choose to live on her own, or with whomsoever she chooses. It is important to her that her man commands her respect because of his dignity, courage and honour.

The Anushasana Parva of Vyasa’s Mahabharata tells us the story of Oghavati and her husband Sudarshana . Oghavati was the daughter of King Oghavan and Sudarshana was the son of Agni, the fire god, and Princess Sudarshanaa. Having taken a vow that he would conquer death while leading the family way of life, one day Sudarshana tells his wife that she should never do anything against the wishes of their guests. “Give our guests whatever makes them happy; even if you have to give yourself to them to make them happy, do so without a second thought,” he tells Oghavati and she agrees to obey his least wish, including this. One day a guest comes to their home, a Brahmin, while Sudarshana is away. Oghavati receives him, offers him ritual offerings and asks him what else she can do for him, what else he desires. And he Brahmin tells her he wants her, it is her body that he desires. Oghavati tries to persuade the Brahmin to ask for something else but he refuses and sticks to his demand. The princess blushes in shame and embarrassment but eventually yields to his demand so that she obeys her husband and her husband does not fall from his vow, from his dharma. The Brahmin takes Oghavati inside the house, to her bed, and it is then that Sudarshana returns after collecting samit, kindling for ritual fire, from the jungle. Not finding Oghavati waiting for him as she always did, he calls out her name repeatedly. She does not answer for she is ashamed of herself; she has been polluted by the Brahmin – she has become his ucchishta, his ‘left-over’, that is how Oghavati puts it to herself.

It is interesting to note the difference in Indrani’s behaviour under similar circumstances in the Bheel Bharath. Indra boasts to a group of sages that his wife is a perfect sati and she would do anything he wishes. He invites them home so that they can have proof for this. The sages come and they start misbehaving with Indrani. One of them winks at her sexually, another rubs against her foot with his foot, and a third pinches her at her waist. Indrani will not have any of this. She shouts at the sages and threatens them with dire consequences unless they behaved. Indra interferes and tries to pacify Indrani – she is proving herself to be short of being a true sati and he is losing his honour. She does not care. His attempts enrage her. “From where the hell did you get such rotten guests,” she asks him. “One winks at me, another caresses my foot with his foot and a third pinches me at my tender waist, making it bleed. These guys are rogues and I won’t put up with their shamelessness. What do they think they are doing? Do they think that a woman’s body is something for them to etch their artwork on?” When Indra does not stand up for her and begs her to put up with the behaviour of the sages, she walks away from their home, leaving Indra forever.

She goes and offers herself to the Kauravas as a wife but they dread Indra and refuse her. She then goes to the Pandavas and offers herself as the wife to one of them, and they too refuse her out of fear for Indra. Eventually the twelve-year old Abhimanyu takes her home and makes her his. An infuriated Indra offers a fight through Vayu, the lord of winds, and Abhimanyu beats him in a fierce encounter. Indra runs away in terror from Abhimanyu. In the last scene of this episode, we find Indrani in the arms of Abhimanyu in a tight embrace of love and the two of them swinging together merrily on a swing.

Let’s take yet another woman now – Uttara, young Abhimanyu’s wife. If Abhimanyu is an unsurpassed young hero in the Mahabharata, his heroism is several times multiplied in the Bheel epic. The Mahabharata war in the Bheel epic is essentially a battle between him on the Pandava side all alone against the Kauravas [who are seventy-eight in number and not a hundred], though on the last day of the war he is assisted by Bhima. [Arjuna is lying dead in Patala where he had gone to fetch rhinoceros skin for making shields for the war, though he would be revived later and reach Hastinapura after the war is over.]

The Uttara of the Mahabharata, however, is no match for Abhimanyu – in fact, we know hardly anything about her as a person in Vyasa’s epic. She is a mere shadow figure there. In the Bheel Bharath, though, she is a magnificent woman, splendorous in her womanliness. Like all other women in the Bheel epic, she is proactive and does not wait for life to come to her but goes out and meets it on the way. Her marriage is a splendid event described in great details. After her marriage, she is left behind with her parents, as per the traditional custom, until her gauna can take place when she would go to her husband’s place for the first time.

In the meantime Abhimanyu, whom the Bheels know as Balo Emmant, Child Courage, accepts the war with the Kauravas all on his own in the distant land of Hastinapura and Uttara in her heart feels the dread that Abhimanyu does not feel. She sees dreams in which she senses the events to come and is restless to go and meet him. Her fear is not that he would die in the war, but that he would die a virgin, which is unacceptable and a great sin. In her dream she sees that people have come from Hastinapura to take her to Abhimanyu and jolted out of her sleep, she realizes this is true.

She breathlessly urges her parents to hurry and complete the rituals so she could go immediately. She realizes the danger her young husband is in and wants to take with her an amarkuppi, containing the magical nectar that brings the dead back to life, and gets it from her mother. Fate though is against her on this night and she forgets to take the amarkuppi with her as she hurriedly leaves for Hastinapura, jumping onto the back of the camel that travels at the speed of the wind so that she could reach there before dawn when the war would begin. En route she remembers her mistake, sends her escort to fetch the amarkuppi, and Krishna, who wants Abhimanyu dead because he is in fact a demon reborn as Subhadra’s son, makes him forget it and instead of the nectar of immortality, it is a bottle of kerosene oil that he fetches. There is no more time to lose, so Uttara hurries to Hastinapur without the amarkuppi and what she sees there is Abhimanyu leaving for the war. She runs after him, calls out to him again and again, begging him to turn around and look at her just once, but the brave Abhimanyu, whose heart longs for her dearly, knows it is not right for him to turn around and look at her then and forces himself to move on ignoring her pleas. His eyes shed tears of blood for her.

On the Kaurava side all the seventy-eight brothers would die in the war. On the Pandava side, the only death would be of her husband Abhimanyu with whom she hasn’t spent a single moment alone. Fate was against the poor girl. As was Krishna, who treacherously kills Abhimanyu while the youth is resting in the middle of the war.

Subhadra, Krishna’s sister, comes to us as another woman of substance in the Bheel Bharath. True her ‘womanly curiosity’ gets her into trouble when she opens a casket Krishna has specifically forbidden her to open and the demon Iko Danav, trapped inside the casket by Krishna, escapes from it, enters her through her mouth and she becomes pregnant. It is Iko Danav that grows up as Abhimanyu in her womb. But apart from this one incident that is so characteristic of female characters in folklore traditions across the world, we find Subhadra as a highly competent woman throughout. When the Pandavas allow Abhimanyu to accept the war with the Kauravas all alone, she has the courage to walk straight into the Pandava assembly and upbraid the Pandava brothers for their shameless cowardice and meanness in allowing her young child to face the war all alone.

Finally, a quick look at two female characters who appear in the Bheel Bharath for just one instant: Ambika and Ambalika, who have no names there, so brief is their appearance. In the Bheel Bharath, they are ‘the widows of Chitrangada and Vichitravirya’. After the death of their husbands, one day they approach their mother-in-law and ask her what they should do to obtain children and she advises them to walk naked before Gangeya in the rising sun. They do so and that is how they beget Dhritarashtra and Pandu. Even these two female figures that appear so briefly show themselves different from their selves in the Mahabharata. Here they are more independent, and their pregnancies are not forced on them by others but are results of their own initiatives and a fulfilment of their own natural desires. It is interesting that while following their heart, they seek the advice of their mother-in-law and in the moments of their encounter with Gangeya, they do not lose their womanly shame. One of them covers her eyes in embarrassment, resulting in the birth of a blind child, Dhritarashtra, and the other hides her private parts with her hand and her child is born impotent.

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A letter from a collection of articles and letters from Manushi published under the title In Search of Answers, says: “The ideals, ethics and morality heaped on women since time immemorial are suffocating and killing. The adjectives used to praise us have become oppressive. Calling us loving, they have locked us in the closed room of culture, calling us gentle, they have reflected us in a mirror of helplessness, calling us kind, they have tied us in cowardice, they have handcuffed us with modesty and chained our feet with loyalty, so that far from running, we have not been able even to walk.” Well, the women of the tribal land of Bheel Bharath are certainly not locked in, they are not helpless, they are not cowards, nor are they handcuffed or chained.

In her fascinating work Women who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola Estes says wildlife and wild woman are both endangered species. “Over time, we have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back and overbuilt. For long periods it has been mismanaged like the wildlife and the wildlands. For several thousand years, as soon and as often as we turn our backs, it is relegated to the poorest land in the psyche. The spiritual lands of Wild Woman have, throughout history, been plundered or burnt, dens bulldozed, and natural cycles forced into unnatural rhythms to please others.”

What we see in the Bheel Bharath is perhaps a bit of the spiritual lands of the Wild Woman that have refused to be plundered or burnt, dens that have resisted bulldozing, and natural cycles that have survived against attempts to force them into unnatural rhythms to please others.

Speaking of the Wild Woman archetype, Estes says: “Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s words sound like they were written to describe the women of the Bheel Bharath.

~*~

Note: All translations from Sanskrit are by the author. ‘Mahabharata’ always refers to Vyasa’s Mahabharata. When the Bheel version is referred to, it is mentioned as Bheel Bharath [the ‘th’ in Bharath pronounced as the ‘th’ in katha, a story].

Five Angry Women: 5

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Draupadi

I am least known by my own name. People call me Yajnaseni, Draupadi, Panchali, Parshati…but I am Krishnaa, the dark princess born to my father through the blessings of the sacrificial fire, along with my twin, Dhrishtadyumna. Born-of-fire, they called me and I had lived with fire inside me till the day I chose a youth for my man.

Fate forced me to garland and accept for a husband the man whose hands had dealt the greatest blow of disgrace to my father: Prince Arjuna.

But of course, I did not know who he was then. I had lost my heart to that adorable brahmin youth whose archery seemed pure magic as he shot down the target set up to put the greatest masters to test and stood defending my father as scores of kshatriya princes thirsted for his blood for humiliating them by giving his daughter away to a Brahmin and advanced on him.

I had irrevocably fallen in love with the proud bearing of that body, the perfect handsomeness of those sinewy limbs, the fearless look of a conqueror in those eyes. Did I pose to wonder how a Brahmin could ever possess what is rare even among the best of kshatriyas? I do not remember so.

Seeing him standing with the bow raised in his hand, with an arrow set on it, I had remembered my sworn enemy, Prince Arjuna of the Bharatas. It was he who had tied my father with ropes and thrown him at the feet of his master, Acharya Drona. And from the day I was old enough to know what humiliation was, every breath I had taken had only one purpose: avenge my father’s ignominy.

I was declared veeryashulka, a bride to be won by courage, on my own insistence. Cursed to be born as I was a woman, I wanted a man who would have my revenge on my behalf.

Crushed by the blow when I realized who that archer brahmin youth to whom I had given myself really was, I bowed before the inevitable. I mercilessly snubbed out the fire I was born with, the fire I grew up with, the fire my days and nights were filled with, and vowed to be an ideal wife to my husband.

But before the flowers of the garland I had put round his neck had faded, I was shocked to learn that fate had not finished with me – a monstrosity the like of which had fallen on no other Aryan princess awaited me in the humble hut of a pot-maker to which my master and his brothers took me.

Ah Fate, sweet Fate! You made me one of the great satis of this land. And how did you do that? By making me the wife of five brothers!

I was to be the common wife of the five Pandava princes.

Of course they had a beautiful arrangement. So that the brothers did not quarrel over me among themselves, I was to be wife to them by turns!

The Pandava princes were willing to go to any extent in such matters, but they would not go against a sentence spoken by their mother, albeit inadvertently! After all, they belong to the family of Prince Bheeshma who vowed to protect the throne of the Bharatas to his last breath and yet would not break his other vow not to marry even when the very line of the Bharatas faced extinction.

Protecting the letter of the vow gives you great honor – and the spirit of it can go where it pleased. The common people, and the common-minded among the so-called nobles, appreciate adamancy highly. Adamancy, not understanding. Of course, adamancy should wear the mask of adherence to truth.

Have you ever heard of five princes sharing a wife? Maybe, such things are practiced among the uncivilized. But among the Aryans? Among princes? Among the members of the most respected royal family in Aryavarta? The Pandavas would do that but they would not fall so low as to go against a word spoken inadvertently by their mother.

It is perhaps all right with them – after all, they were men. But what about me, a woman, who has to make her own body available to different men so that they may have their pleasure with it, so that they may use her body for begetting children for themselves? Don’t her feelings at being subjected to this gruesome ordeal matter at all? Is she not a person, not a human being? Doesn’t a woman have any right over her own body? Is she just a thing to be used?

But of course, strange, unbelievable things have always happened in the Bharata family. It was one of the ancestors of the Bharatas, Emperor Yayati, who had exchanged his old age with the youth of one of his sons so that the father may continue to satiate his unappeased lust. It was this same emperor who gave away his daughter – Madhavi was her name – to be sold to the highest bidding king for sexual use in exchange for a few hundred horses. Eventually one after the other she had to be sold to three kings and then, when even with that the required number of horses could not be obtained, to a rishi. It was also in the same line that King Dushyanta refused to recognize the wife he had wedded according to the customs of Gandharva and called her foul names as she stood before him claiming to be accepted by him. Didn’t King Nahusha lust for Shachi, wife of Indra, not being content with Indra’s throne and the pleasure of all the apsaras of his court? Didn’t Emperor Shantanu who in his old age lusted for a fisher girl in her early bloom of youth belong to the same family? And wasn’t it in the same family that princes Dhritarashtra and Pandu were produced by niyoga? And was a single one of my five husbands the son of his father?

So because of a mother’s words that they must share the alms they had got among themselves, I became a woman to be shared among five brothers. And this despite that the great sage Vyasa himself could not find any argument in support of it except that the gods had decreed it so in my case, that my karma demanded it.

Perhaps there is some truth in what they say: that the daughter of Drupada was born to cause the massacre of the kshatriyas in their multitudes.

Even if this were so, I must say that I must disown any responsibility for it. For I had snubbed off the fire in my heart the day I garlanded the brahmin youth in my swayamvara hall.

If the destiny of millions of men – millions of men who died in the greatest war this land saw – rekindled it, if destiny forced the hands of a star-crossed woman to urge her men to take weapons in self-defence as any human being should do, if it forced her to urge her men to claim what was theirs by right as any kshatriya should do, and to avenge the mortifying ignominies heaped upon their wedded wife as any man should do, she is not to blame for the disastrous outcomes.

At the end of a game of dice that cousins played against cousins, the eldest of my husbands lost his wealth, his kingdom, himself, his brothers and me, his wife. The wicked Duryodhana had played the game with loaded dice.

The beauty of Princess Krishnaa of the Panchalas was fire that set the hearts of countless princes aflame. And among the princes who had thirsted her most lustily were the princes Duryodhana and Dushshasana. Time had come for them to have their revenge. My husbands had lost me to them and they claimed I was their servant, their maid, their slave, their property and they could do with me what they pleased.

I was in that monthly state when women do not meet men but stay in the inner apartments reserved for them and I was wearing but a single piece of cloth. In my utter agony I even spoke of this and begged to be left along but I was dragged mercilessly to the court, to the middle of the assembly hall, Dushshasana pulling me by my lose hair, clothes half slipping out of my body, my naked flesh revealed to the ogling eyes of the assembled princes and elders. Those princes were my husband’s cousins, and those elders were my elders. When I fell on my knees and turned to each and every one of those in power in that assembly, Dushshasana kicked me by his foot, pulled me up and not content with what was revealed, tried to pull every thread that offered cover to my body. He would have his own sister in-law stark naked in the assembly. Not a voice was raised against this most brute act by a single man in that august assembly of the Bharatas.

That fire in my heart, that fire in my soul that I had smothered, was rekindled and it demanded blood. I took a vow. That my loose hair shall be tied again only after it had been bathed in the blood of the man who had dared to do this sinister deed.

Blood flowed like rivers in the fields of Kurukshetra. Blood has to flow when for long strength has refused to stand up against wickedness.

My men had been crushed. They had been crushed by a kind of wickedness they couldn’t deal with because their values had become a load on their shoulders. Reverence for the people who imposed that wickedness on them had rendered them impotent.

Their weakness was the weakness of truth, of honesty, of consideration for others, and truth, honesty and consideration for others should not become weaknesses to anyone. They should become strengths, instead. The weakness of goodness before the vileness of unashamed evil had to be wiped out. And I, as their wife, their sahadharmini, endeavored to do that.

Death danced its naked tandava as never before. Hundreds of thousands perished every day in the eighteen-day war. Brothers killed brothers, fathers killed sons, uncles butchered nephews and nephews slew uncles, masters and disciples did away with each other. And strangers massacred strangers. The wails of mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and children rent the skies.

Are you satisfied now, Krishnaa – they ask me.

It was not I who wanted a war. It was not I who caused the war. Whenever righteousness suffers and unrighteousness arrogantly raises its all-devouring ugly head, the lord incarnates himself on this earth to protect the righteous and destroy the wicked – so said Krishna to my Arjuna in the battlefield.

Blood shall flow whenever evil tramples upon goodness. Blood shall flow whenever evil usurps the throne of goodness. And blood shall flow whenever insolent might brazenly profanes the inviolable sanctity of womanhood.

Blood had to flow in Kurukshetra.

O0O

Five Angry Women: 4

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Kunti

The woman who fought against Fate, the courageous widow who stood alone and faced the might of an empire which wanted to crush her and her children, a woman who commanded the gods themselves to do her bidding…so they speak of me. But am I all these? Am I any of these? How much of this is true, and how much false?

I, Pritha, the daughter of Devameedha Shoorasena of the Vrishnis, the woman known by the name of Kunti because she was adopted by King Kuntibhoja, have a unique position among the women of the Bharatas.

For all the might of the Bharatas, generations had passed since a princess had chosen a Bharata prince happily in a proper swayamvara and come to live in the Hastinapura palace with the tremulous excitement of a new bride. Emperor Shantanu had two wives – no one knows exactly who his first wife really was. They say she was the river goddess Ganga, that she had one day walked up from the river and years later, after the birth of her eighth child, walked back into the river. Strange is the story of the love and life of this woman and the emperor.

And then, in his old age, Grandmother Satyavati had come to live as his empress in Hastinapuira. But it was as the most hated woman in all of Hastinapura that she had stepped into the palace. She was of low birth and her arrival had a precondition – that her would-be firstborn son by the emperor shall inherit the throne of Hastinapura. And Hastinapura, which I have seen only divided into myriad groups of warring interests, rose up for once in unison, bound by a common hatred for her. That it was the emperor who wanted her and not otherwise did not bother the men who hated her. That poor woman of lowly birth had not come to the Bharatas as a happy bride.

Nor had the two princesses of Kashi, mothers of my husband Pandu and his brother. They were seized, along with their sister Amba, from their swayamvara hall, by prince Bheeshma while the whole assembly stood terror-struck before his might. And it was not to be his wives that he had captured them but to be the wives of his half-brother, still a boy, and incapable of winning a wife for himself. No kshatriya princess loves to marry a man who cannot win a wife for himself – that the two princesses later came to adore the young prince they married is another matter.

How Gandhari came to Hastinapura is well-known. Had she not come, it would have been death and destruction to her father and her people. The adored daughter of an indulgent father, a young woman who loved to spend all her time in music and dance that were unique to her people, does not marry a blind man happily – and Dhritarashtra had even been denied the right to the throne.

It was as though the Bharatas had a perverse fascination for the idea of getting unwilling mothers for their future princes. For, when Madri was brought here later, it was not again according to her wishes.

So I was the first princess in a long time to happily choose a Bharata prince for her man and come to Hastinapura with joy in her heart, dreams in her eyes, and her prince’s hand in her hand.

But the joy was short lived. I soon discovered that Uncle Bheeshma was not too happy to have me for a bride for his younger nephew. For, not long after I arrived in Hastinapura I had a sapatni. Uncle Bheeshma had got another wife for Pandu the reason for which, to this day, eludes me. Sometimes I believe it is just that Prince Bheeshma believed it was for him to choose a bride for his nephew and ward and the prince had no right to acquire one for himself by himself. For certainly it was not a common custom among the Bharatas to wed more than one wife – in the previous twenty-odd generations there had been only two or three kings who had married more than once princess. Besides, the family of the Bharatas had just recovered with the greatest difficulty and with recourse to an antiquated custom from the disastrous results of a young prince marrying more than one princess at a time – prince Vichitraveerya had to pay the price of that error with his life and that had threatened to end the Bharata dynasty. There was no reason for Uncle Bheeshma to be eager to get a second bride for Pandu.

So that was it – uncle Bheeshma did not like the idea of Pandu getting a wife for himself; he believed it was for him to get a bride for young Pandu. He wanted me, the self-chosen wife of Pandu, to be denigrated to where he thought I belonged – a woman of secondary importance to Pandu and to the Palace.

But just as I was lucky in Pandu, I was lucky in Madri. Instead of becoming a competitor for Pandu’s love, a rival, she became a younger sister to me. She was my opposite in most respects. I was worldly-wise, matured, perhaps a bit too matured for my age, with hardly any sentimentality about me. I had the spirit of a much older woman in me: the violent events into the middle of which I was born – Mathura was in great turmoil in those days – and the tragic happening that shook my life even before I was fully out of girlhood – perhaps because of these. Whereas Madri had an ephemeral, ethereal quality about her. She was not concerned with anything in the world, no violent passions stormed about in her heart, calculations and machinations for position and possessions were entirely foreign to her nature. The only time I ever saw her in a state of passionate assertion about anything was in the last moments of her life – after she had decided to enter the funeral pyre of Pandu. No one could dissuade her from that.

How have the Bharatas treated me, come to them to be their king’s queen and the mother of their future king?

When I came to Hastinapura it was as the queen of the reigning king Pandu but when I came back from Shatashringa after the death of my king, I had suddenly become an ordinary woman whom no one wanted to see.

Questions were raised as to the parentage of the five children I had brought with me. By the men who had usurped my husband’s throne in his absence I was told that there was no Bharata blood in my children or in Madri’s children and as such they could not be treated as Bharata princes. Of course it was no surprise that they did so – prince Dhritarashtra’s greed for power was notoriously well-known and he had powerful coterie of people who supported him as it often happens when an unrightfull man claims to be the rightful heir to a throne. When I said that in that case neither my deceased husband nor Prince Dhritarashtra had any Bharata blood in them, I was abused in the meanest possible language – I, their queen, the queen of their dead king, was abused like a woman of the street. And all I was demanding was my children’s right to their father’s throne and all I said about Pandu and Dhritarashtra was the bare truth – they were sons born to the princesses of Kashi and their father was the sage Vyasa who was certainly not a Bharata. Where was Bharata blood in the veins of Pandu and Prince Dhritarashtra then? Surprisingly, even the man who was reputedly justice embodied turned against my children. He who had vowed to stand by the throne of Hastinapura until his last breath deserted its rightful heirs and stood watching as it passed into unlawful hands. Uncle Bheeshma protected Prince Dhritarashtra and his children.

Silence is abetment where speech is called for. Inaction is abetment where action is called for.

As to my children, they were not even given the most fundamental right of ordinary citizens: the right to exist, the right to live. My Bheema was poisoned and the hands that did this murderous deed went scot-free. Later our home was set fire to and a hundred other felonies befell us and the offenders were never castigated.

A woman of iron will, they call me. I tell you, you would be that, too, if you had five darling children to look after, children born to be rulers of men and states and yet condemned by fate to beg for alms to fill their stomach, children whose very life was in danger every moment as their existence was a threat to those who were clinging desperately to a usurped throne against popular wish and will.

A woman who took her fate in her hands, they call me. I wish I hadn’t, I wish no one would, if by that all you get is what I got – endless years of grief and agony as fate in a fury tossed my children from one wicked situation to another, forcing me and them to hide from all civilization for our physical survival and to wander through forests infested with deadly animals and inhabited by deadlier brutes and savages, looking for subsistence in fruits and roots and the animals of the wild.

A woman who commands the gods themselves with the power of her mantras, they call me. And yet those mantras did not come to my aid when I wanted to save my king from his curse. The poor, poor man longed for a touch, a mere touch of mine, all those grief-filled years in Shatashringa and I, his wedded wife, could not appease that simplest of desires of an accursed man. Pritha, the woman who commanded the gods, had to stand a forced witness to the cruel agony of her husband when he longed for what was every man’s by birth by the very laws of nature, longed for what is not denied even to base animals, and had to see him finally perishing a victim to his longing. The power of my mantras did not fetch the gods to my aid when my children were denied their right to the throne, when they were banished to Varanavata, when their house was set fire to, when they, after their escape, were forced to wander like fugitives from law amid lurking dangers. Nor did it come to her aid when she wanted to protect her firstborn from battle with his own brothers and faced death through it. That is Pritha’s power over the gods for you.

Oh, yes, it came to her aid on other occasions. When she was but an ignorant girl and wanted to try out the power of a mantra given her by a rishi, it came to her in the form of a pregnancy to make her an unwed mother of a child whose father she couldn’t produce before the world. She was forced to do that most accursed act of her life – float down a river her firstborn, so that King Kuntibhoja, who had adopted her as a child, who loved her more dearly than he loved his own soul, would not have to hang his head in shame.

It did not come to her aid when her firstborn son, who was to the world Karna, the son of Radha – he was an equal to the noblest of princes in birth and superior to every one of them in nobility and velour – was treated like a common cur, for his crime of wanting to match his skill in weapons with his brothers and cousins. Lowborn, they called him. Son of a driver, fit only to drive their vehicles, they ridiculed. They – statesmen and teachers who had grown old with age, who should have recognized worth wherever they found it.
It did not come to her aid when that son of hers was forced to bend in the only direction from where support came, to Duryodhana and to evil, and finally met his sad end fighting on the side of evil.

But it came to her aid when her husband asked her to offer herself to other men so that she may bear him progeny which would open the gates of heaven for him. Remove all the euphemisms, and this is what Pritha’s power over the gods gave her: children out of wedlock.

True, I sound bitter. Hasn’t there been anything in Pritha’s life to be happy about? Yes, there has been, without doubt. The love of a man who knew how to love with his heart, even if he could not with his body. And six children – my four and Madri’s two – the like of whom the world will have to wait for a long time to see again. The love of someone who entered my life as my rival and became my greatest companion, my great solace, my sister – Madri. And the love of a nephew whom the world worships as the very lord of the universe.

But suffering leaves its mark on the soul, I suppose, in spite of everything. And endless suffering certainly does – suffering that seemed to have no end as it lasted through decades and decades. And to think that it was all because of the greed of one man for power and the inaction of another who refused to stand in the way of that greed, though he was duty bound to. That hurts.

O0O

Five Angry Women: 3

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Ambika

Our family has given many princesses to the Bharatas. King Bharata, that illustrious son of Shakuntala and Dushyanta the story of whose love has become one of the greatest romances of this land, the one that gave this dynasty its present name and who in ancient days conquered all of Aryavarta and gave it the name Bharata, himself had married a Kashi princess, the beautiful Sunanda.

But history does not record how the princesses who came to the antahpura of the Bharatas were treated. Their stories are lost among the glorious acts of the kings who fought in many lands and won all the wars. Amidst all that victory and glory who will bother about a few queens in the inner apartments of the palace?

But one thing strikes. The Bharatas seem to be overly fond of bringing women into their palaces against their wishes. I am told that Queen Satyavati was not very happy to come here as the empress of Shantanu, our father in-law. I mean mine and my sister Ambalika’s.

Gandhari and Madri, two of our daughters in-law, certainly did not come here according to their wishes. A distraught Gandhari gave in when she found the alternative was death and destruction to her father and all that belonged to him. When Madri’s brother Shalya refused to oblige Bheeshma, he was offered profuse wealth in exchange; and of course, coercion through the not very subtly veiled threat of Prince Bheeshma was there to force Shalya’s hands.

We were brought to Hastinapura by Prince Bheeshma – the same Bheeshma who had brought Mother Satyavati as a wife for his father, the same Bheeshma who would get Gandhari for Dhritarashtra, the same Bheeshma who would bring Madri for Pandu. He can take credit for bringing women for three generations of the Bharatas – for his father, for his half-brother, and for his nephews. So what, if he did not get a wife for himself?

I loved the prince I married very much, I loved him to distraction, and perhaps I loved him to his death – and so did my sister. Young Vichitraveerya – he was younger than both me and Ambalika; he married very young because his elder brother Prince Chitrangada had died before attaining the age of marriage and Vichitra himself was sick – perhaps Prince Bheeshma suspected that something might happen to him before he provided an heir to the throne of the Bharatas. Eventually that is what happened, anyway.

Young Vichitra knew what love and care was for the first time in his life after we came to the palace. A woman recognizes easily a man hungry for love and we found effortlessly such a one in him. The poor prince had grown up an unwanted child, a neglected child. His father was deep in grief and guilt over his second marriage, which took away the right to the throne from Prince Bheeshma, his very life-breath. His mother, incessantly humiliated by the nobility in the court, for ever neglected by the emperor, effusively respected by Prince Bheeshma – given the empty, formal respect due to a woman who was his mother only because she had married his father – had grown silent and withdrawn. She spent all her time in her chamber, which she had rendered dark by means of curtains. She hadn’t wanted to be a queen or an empress, nor had she wanted to be a queen mother. An emperor’s longing for her had brought her to the palace and once in the palace she had ceased to get even his formal love. Love had dried up in her heart, as a river dries up reaching a desert. The noblemen and ladies who crowded the palace shunned the prince of mixed blood. And, anyway, it was his elder brother who was going to succeed the emperor to the throne.

Now, his young heart thirsty for love filled for the first time, Vichitra learned not only to take love but also to give it. I have known very few people who could love the way he did; there was such depth in his love, such intensity, such transparent passion, and such total generosity. Probably he was so filled with gratefulness at someone coming to love him – and two beautiful, desirable, young princesses at that – that his entire being melted and overflowed. But his emaciated being that had existed on a scanty diet all these years could not withstand this torrential, deluge-like onslaught of passionate love. As for us, we were too young to understand the need to restrain. In his very overflowing of passion, our prince lost his life.

We had seven years of Vichitra’s love, seven years during which he left us not for a moment, day or night, not even for the affairs of the state. And yet neither Ambalika nor I conceived once. The palace whispered that it was because we sisters were both barren – but Vichitra assured us: our love was enough for him. More than enough. He felt fulfilled by that.

Uncle Bheeshma arranged dasis for him – the palace was full of slave girls. Several of them were of kshatriya birth. But Vichitra refused to touch them. No, he couldn’t be unfaithful to his Ambika and Ambalika, he said.

Then we heard other whispers – they said there was some curse on the Bharatas. Which is why neither of us was conceiving. They said the vow of celibacy that Uncle Bheeshma had taken was that curse finding its fulfillment. Just as our inability to conceive was. The line of the Bharatas would come to an end with Uncle Bheeshma and Vichitraveerya.

And then suddenly one day Vichitra died, and when that happened, life came to an end for us. Ambalika and I became breathing carcasses. Nothing mattered to us after that. To think that we had lost so completely in a young boy whom we had married so reluctantly, married because we had no alternative but to, snatched away and brought to Hastinapura as we were by the terrible prince Bheeshma from our Swayamvara hall.
Can dead bodied be hurt again – not easily, but yes, because we were to know an experience worse than the very death of Prince Vichitraveerya: an ancient custom the monstrosity of which grows in size the more you ponder over it.

Mother Satyavati was unwilling to accept defeat. She did not want it said that because of her the great line of the Bharatas came to an end.

Mother Satyavati came to my chamber one day. She was agitated beyond words and I knew whatever she had to tell me was extremely unpleasant both to her and to me. She told me we owed it to the people of the Bharata lands, to the throne of Hastinapura, to ancestors of the Bharatas, to posterity, and to Prince Vichitra himself that I produced an offspring. But how? Through the custom of niyoga. A brother produces offspring in the wife of his dead brother.

My entire being revolted against the very idea and yet I submitted – not for the lands of the Bharatas, not for the sake of the throne of Hastinapura, not for the sake of the Bharata ancestors, not for the sake of posterity – for I cared a hoot for these – but for the sake of my dead prince. I did not want it said that the Bharata line came to an end with Prince Vichitraveerya.

And yet I was shocked beyond belief when I saw the sage entering my room. Who did I expect? Prince Devavrata Bheeshma, who never broke his vows even if the very heavens threatened all of earth with hellfire? But if he had taken the vow to remain a celibate all his life he had also taken a vow to stand by the throne of Hastinapura till his last breath. The two vows were in conflict now. And Mother Satyavati had asked me to expect my brother in-law in my chamber that night.

Yes, perhaps him.

Or maybe, one of the other Bharata princes – Prince Bahleeka, Emperor Shantanu’s brother had sons not too old and they lived in the royal palaces.

What was it that shocked me so when I saw sage Vyasa entering my chamber that night? The fact that it was he who had entered my chamber? Or was it his appearance? I would perhaps never know. I was in no state to analyze my thoughts and feelings then nor am I in a state to objectively look at them now. Perhaps both, I suppose.

Anyway, if it is any consolation, I was later to learn that the sage was not so horrible and revolting in his normal state and was a very lovable person in his own way, though by no means a handsome man. His appearance at that time was because he was engaged in some form of terrible austerity.

As those wiry, dark arms smeared with ashes and I know not what else took me in them, I closed my eyes in unspeakable horror.

I was doing my duty to my prince and I had tried to do it as cheerfully as was possible, but I am born a princess, grew up among the finest things in the world, and my dreams were centered on a handsome prince all the years I had dreamed of being a mother. The sage and the idea of what he was doing with me, to me, were beyond my limits of endurance. In any case, it was not I who closed my eyes – they closed themselves. It was not a voluntary, thought-out decision, but something that happened to me.
My son Dhritarashtra was born blind.

A blind prince has no rights of succession. Dhritarashtra could not succeed to the throne of the Bharatas. They needed another prince.

Now it was Ambalika’s turn to submit herself. Again, she too turned pale at the sight of the sage and this despite knowing who she was to expect. But I have only pity or her.
Her child, to whom the name Pandu, the pale one, stuck, was born sickly pale.

No woman should have submitted even once to what I had had to go through. That is the most degrading thing in life I can think of. It is animals you to take to each other for breeding, not human beings. For men and women, it should be a coming together and merger of the spirit, mind and body – in that order. A fusion brought about by love. With men and women creation of new life should not be an animal function. If performed as an animal act, subjection to it once will destroy in one stroke all that is noble in a woman.
Yet I was asked to undergo that process a second time, so that the Bharatas could have a healthy prince without defects as the heir to their throne.

It was my maid that I sent to the sage this time. Even a mere human body such as I had by then been reduced to, not a human being but a human body, revolts from certain acts.

I was not altogether disappointed when I was seized by force by Prince Devavrata from my swayamvara hall. For, to be a Bharata queen is the greatest dream of all Aryan Princesses. The outside world had no idea what women who became Bharata brides had to endure. I was shocked to learn that we were not to be his wives, but of his half-brother. And yet that half-brother loved me beyond words and made me feel fulfilled. But life had ceased to have any meaning to me the day my prince died. And I ceased to live after I had given the Bharatas a prince, whom they named Dhritarashtra. Yet I acted once more – to perform that one act, the first act of revolt in my whole life: sending my maid in my place to the sage.

Perhaps I was a weakling; both of us, Ambalika and I, were weaklings. For I know one woman who had the courage to go through that experience more than once, and at the behest of her own husband.

I am talking of Pritha, Pandu’s wife.

O0O

Five Angry Women: 2

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Satyavati

A lotus is beautiful, you consider it divine, you call it the miracle of nature, you see the glory of the Creator in it—such beauty and it has bloomed in mire, in dirt! But no woman wears the lotus on her head—that honor goes to the flowers that bloom in the well-tended gardens. A lotus is wonderful, but just wonderful enough to offer at the feet of kings, of the gods, of great men, but not wonderful enough to wear on one’s head. Fit for the feet, not for the head.

The footwear on your feet are soft, are beautiful, are convenient. They protect your feet from heat, from the pebbles on the path, from the thorns in the jungles, from dirt. But they are made of leather, the skin of animals and they forever remain accursed by their birth. You can wear them everywhere but before a place of worship you have to remove them; they are inauspicious, tainted. Why, you do not take them even inside your homes. Their limit is your doorsteps.

My father knew this as well as anyone else, if not more. For he was himself a king of sorts, a chieftain, but of the lowborn. Dasharaja was the chief of the fisher folk. He knew that just as he would not be allowed to sit in the assembly of other chiefs of noble birth, his daughter shall never be welcome as their bride.

And yet a king, an emperor, fell in love with me – perhaps through the power of the blessing of the rishi whom I bore a child – and when that happened my father insisted that I shall be given him only on condition that the eldest son born to me by the emperor shall be his heir. The emperor was taken aback, naturally. And he wouldn’t submit himself to this atrocity, for he loved his son, already a fine young man, prince Devavrata, more than anything else in the world. So the emperor went bake to Hastinapura without me.

My father insisted on this condition because his knowledge of the ways of palaces told him that only as the mother of the future king would I be able to gain some respect in Hastinapura. Without that I would have been reduced, he feared, to the level of a palace sweeper once the emperor’s fancy for me came to an end or he himself left this world. Emperors must after all die as everyone else and Emperor Shantanu was already quite old.

But the emperor’s desire for me was so great that he lost all interest in life and the affairs of the state. From palace whisperings the young son learned what ailed his father and came for me. He vowed with the gods as his witnesses that he shall never claim the right to the throne and shall remain a celibate all his life.

I was welcomed into the palace of Hastinapura as the most hated woman. Even the king’s longing for me turned into loathing the moment he learned that it was the terrible vows of his son that had fetched me for him. It was as though a drum of water had suddenly been emptied over the fire in his heart.

I never wanted to be a queen or an empress—I would have been quite happy as the wedded wife of one of the fishermen along the bank of Yamuna. I would have risen with the risen sun to see him off to his day’s work with his nets and stood waiting for his return, praying to Mother Yamuna for his safety. I would have been perfectly contented to bear his children to accompany him in his work as they grew up and later to support him when he was too old to go fishing. Or I would have been happy living alone in the hope that one day my son, the son of the rishi, would come back after finishing his studies under his father and then I would see men falling at his feet in reverence. Even I would go and touch his feet for he would be a rishi himself—I had imagined it all again and again in my idle hours sitting on rock-protected strips of marble on the banks of Mother Yamuna. How happy I would be as he stopped me from bending and instead himself fell at my feet, his mother’s feet! A rishi touching my feet, a rishi who is the very flesh of my flesh, the life of my life!

I was quite content.

The emperor never forgave me my father’s sin—for what was caution to my father was sin to him. Years passed without the emperor, now my wedded husband, ever entering my chamber. What was so tempting before was sheer venom now, a venom so powerful that his very contact with it would blow off all that he held dear in life.

And then it was after the Rajaguru and his nobles reminded him of his duty to the empire, the duty to give it an heir, that he finally yielded and came to me.

It was a man coming to a woman to fulfill his duty! Two bodies joined momentarily to use, yes, to use, one of their abilities. A male and a female body meeting to bring new life into this world.

I am an empress and crude words do not befit my speech but if I could put it bluntly this is what I would say: we mated that night. Yes, mated, like animals.

Human bodies are capable of bringing new life into this world but the act of producing new life has to be one of infinite love and tenderness, a result of life’s longing for life. If it is not, the result shall be disastrous. Life produced because it is your duty to produce it cannot be noble life, cannot be healthy, would not lead to fulfillment.

Nor were the two products of my womb – one was too impetuous and it cost my little child his life itself before he came to know what life was, what youth was. And the other, a mental wreck, too died not long after paying the price of his parent’s sins with his own life. He was created holding all passions back, in a disinterested, mechanical act. And his heart was like a desert land that thirsted for the rains of love. Came the two princesses of Kashi, Ambika and Ambalika, my Vichitraveerya jumped into the bottomless ocean of passionate love and sensuality. The whirlpools caught him and ere long he had also left this world. The Emperor had died years ago.

The Bharatas’ dream of a glorious, everlasting dynasty flickered in the storms of these tragic events; the empire seemed to flounder before their very eyes. Accusing fingers of every subject of Hastinapura rose and pointed at me – they demanded an heir to the throne. But for me, the noble Devavrata would have become their king and they would have been happy under him. I, the low-born fisher maid, had mixed my blood with the noble Bharata blood and produced weaklings who could not even survive long enough to produce further offspring to themselves.

I approached Devavrata. Even my father begged him. But he was not willing to swerve from his vows which had by now become absurd. Bheeshma was proud of his vows and he would not break his vows even to save one of the two vows he had taken. He wasn’t going to be helpful in producing an offspring who would sit on the throne of Hastinapura, nor would he sit there himself. He cared not if his refusal meant the end of the Bharata dynasty.

Then I remembered my son, by now a great rishi before whose feet crowned heads bowed, a man less of this world than of another. My Krishna, whom his father called Dwaipayana because he was conceived on an island, was now the great sage Vyasa to the people.

He came and I asked him the meanest thing I could ask of a rishi: the services of his body for a few moments it would take to sow seeds in the field of Vichitraveerya. I wanted him to go to Ambika. After all, Vichitra was his half-brother and Ambika was Vichitra’s widow. He knew of the custom of Niyoga. I reminded him of his duty to his mother and explained to him his mother’s helplessness. He yielded.

He asked for time to finish his austerities first but it was time that I did not have. He yielded again.

Accepted custom or no custom, sacred practice or no practice, to ask a young woman to offer herself to a man other than her husband – not in marriage, not to live with him as he wife and beloved, but for a few moments for a physical act, to offer her body to another man so that he may deposit his seeds in it to germinate and grow – that is the most loathsome act I have had to do in my whole life. And I did it. I was duty-bound – again duty-bound – to do it. The Rajaguru, the nobles, the common men and women in the streets and fields across the vast lands of the Bharatas, all demanded it of me, and I did it.

Asking Ambika humiliated me more intensely than asking my son Krishna. Maybe, because the physical act remains with the woman for nine long months but with a man it is a fact of a few moments. As for mental tortures, who among the living can escape guilt and self-loathing for the acts we commit in life.

Later I had to repeat it all with Ambalika. And once more I was forced to do it – that was the third time.

I offered the Bharatas Dhritarashtra and Pandu, and fate brought Vidura into this world as the son of a maid. But all three were begotten by my son and hence belonged to the Bharatas.

I had done my duty.

O0O

Five Angry Women: 1

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Gandhari

I was but a field for the Bharatas. To Prince Dhritarashtra, to be precise. And that is how they referred to me often: Dhartarashtra-kshetra, the field of Dhritarashtra. Kshetra means a field, a spot of ground, a bit of soil, a patch of land, where you sow seeds and let time run its course for you to reap the crop.

I was never given any more right than a field has in the matter of its produce. How I had to stand and watch as a helpless bystander as my pretty children all grew up to be evil, masters in the wicked ways of the world, encouraged by a father whose greed for power was the very essence of his being!

Poor man! That is, if a field has the right to feel so about its owner, its cultivator, who tills it and farms it. Prince Dhritarashtra was brought into this world to be a king and the moment he was born it was proved he should never become one because he was blind. He grew up with the one cruel reality never fading from before his sightless eyes: that he shall never have power in his hands though he was born to wield all the power of the Bharatas. No wonder he became the embodiment of greed for power.

I came to Hastinapura precisely as that – a fertile field for the seeds of Dhritarashtra. The previous generation of the Bharatas had been very unlucky in the matter of offspring. The eldest, Prince Devavrata Bheeshma would not marry because of a vow he had taken; the second, Prince Chitrangada died before he was old enough to marry; and the youngest, Prince Vichitraveerya, died without issues though he was wedded to two princesses. The next generation was brought to the world by that strange abominable custom of niyoga whereby a brother of her deceased husband produces offspring in the woman. Well, not so abominable perhaps, if you consider women as mere fields – should it matter to the fields what seeds are sown in them, whose seeds are sown in them? Their only function is to germinate the seed, and nurture it so long as it needs its nourishment.

The assiduity of the Bharatas is renowned. They were particular that this time they needed a field that would give them plenty of yield and fast enough. And they came for me – it was widely whispered round that I had received a boon that I shall become the mother of a hundred sons. The most fertile piece of land! The Bharatas wanted it.
Men consider their wives as mere fields but strangely when it comes to their own daughters they are touchy! The daughters are not mere fields for someone! Would they realize that their wives are also someone’s daughters!

Matrimonial relations between the Gandharas and the Bharatas were nothing new. Even Emperor Hastin, the founder of Hastinapura, had desired connections with us and got a Gandhari princess for his son Ajameedha. Yet my father would not have given me over to the Bharatas on any account, except that if he had not done so it would have meant certain death to himself and all the male members of our family and to countless number of our men in a brutal war. Fangs of blood and violence would have ripped open all of Gandhara and all there would have been razed to the ground. Our land, and all in it, would have been destroyed mercilessly, as pitilessly as a wild elephant in a lotus pond destroys all its flowers. The name of the warrior who headed the Bharata family meant dread—both literally and figuratively. Bheeshma meant dread.

Yet father was reluctant. For one thing, the prince for whom I was being sought had no Bharata blood in him though they claimed he was a Bharata. His mother was the Kashi princess Ambika and father, the sage Vyasa. For another, he was born blind. And, besides, it was whispered that he was a slave to uncontrollable passions, his personality having got twisted by the violent winds of opposing forces amidst which he grew up thirsting for power and respect but winning only protection and pity.

When I stepped into the portals of Hastinapura, I made a shock. I was blindfolded, and had to be lead by a maid to make obeisance to my elders. I could feel the awesome stillness that engulfed the palace, after the sound of the quick hot breaths the lungs sucked into dozens of bosoms stricken by an agonizing confusion.

With that single act I had done what my father wanted to do with his weapons but could not. I had struck a blow to the mighty Bharatas from which they were never going to get up. They wanted a field, a fertile field, for the seeds of Dhritarashtra and they were going to have that fertile field. But nothing more. Love cannot be commanded by a threat of weapons and Gandhari was not going to be ordered to be a loving guide to the blind prince of the Bharatas.

Women do not necessarily grow to love the man they marry against their wishes. Often it is only to tolerate them, to submit to them that they learn. They learn to resign to their fate.

My act of blindfolding myself was not an act of self-denial in the sense of denying the pleasures of the world that come to us through our eyes because they were denied to my husband. It was not a noble act at all. It was an act of vengeance. Gandhari too was a kshatriyaa, a warrior-woman. If prince Bheeshma was mighty, so was she. He had his weapons and she had hers.

How I wished I could see the faces of those shocked men and women assembled in the reception hall of Hastinapura on that day as I stepped into it, alighting from my chariot helped by my maids and Brother Shakuni! But no, I can’t both give the shock and enjoy seeing it.

Vengeance is wicked, you might say. Yet, it is. I have suffered more than enough through my long life for it. And yet I say, no one has the right to force another human being to do what he does not want to do. And certainly no woman should be forced to wed a man not of her liking. A woman should be able to go to him with the most holy of attitudes, with love filling her heart to the brim. For she is to receive a part of him into her and hold it there, nurture and nourish it into a human being. For, through that act she is becoming a part of the timeless act of creation, she is becoming the creator of new life.
But if that man is hateful to her, there can be nothing more detestable, nothing more nauseating than having to submit to that act of receiving his seeds and ten having to hold his seeds in her. No doubt this is something only a woman can understand, only a woman who had had to submit to that unmentionably horrendous act…for instance, a woman who has been raped by a monster.

With love the act, the process of creation, is wonderful, but without love it is the most horrid thing in the world. The tragedy of it is that the child born is not only his but also hers. As much hers as his – in fact, much more hers than his. And every time she loves him because he is hers, she will be forced to love what is his. The most unenviable position of women! Having to take care of, with no alternative but to take care of, what belongs to a man she hates with all her heart.

I was given no option in the matter, I had no choice. I was forced to offer myself as a field to a man for whom I had no tender feelings in my heart; forced through a threat to my father’s life and to all else that he held dear in the world.

How conceited a man can grow in his own glory – Prince Bheeshma thought I would be happy once Dhritarashtra was forced on me.

A woman has a right for vengeance. Every woman has a right to her revenge if she is forced to become a field, an object, an abject thing and nothing more.

Where women are forced to submit their bodies against their will to men’s purposes, where women are significant only as female human bodies and not as human beings, evil shall flourish. The Bharatas had forced themselves on me. They had forced themselves on the princesses of Kashi, Ambika and Ambalika, and they had forced themselves on the princess of Madri, Pandu’s wife.

Perhaps I should have stopped my children from going the evil way. But I had no power to do so. They gave me none.

Princes are not brought up by their mothers. Men decide what they shall become, not the mother. The king decides what they shall become, not the queen. The queen is given no say in that matter. And that is right in a way, isn’t it? It is right that the field shall have no say in how the produce from her is to be used.

And yet I came to love Dhritarashtra – nature’s anaesthesia, perhaps. Or maybe that is what it means to be a woman – to love even those who trample her. But that is another story.

O0O

Yuganta and the Vidura-Yudhishthira Relationship in the Mahabharata

In her brilliant and path-breaking study of the Mahabharata called Yuganta, Iravati Karve argues that there is a possibility that Vidura could have been Yudhishthira’s father – a strong possibility, though not a certainty. According to her, there is much in the Mahabharata to suggest this.

Whether Vidura was Yudhishthira’s father or not has important implications to the story of the epic, for, says Karve, “As soon as we consider the possibility that these two might be father and son, the whole Mahabharata takes on a new light. If Dharma [i.e., Yudhishthira] is the natural son of Vidura and the legal son of Pandu, the whole Mahabharata conflict is no longer between the sons of Dhritarashtra and Pandu, but among the sons of all three brothers. The triangular fight does not materialize because Vidura and Pandu have a common son. To prevent anyone’s finding out who were the fathers of his children, Pandu went and lived far away in the Himalayas and apparently the natural fathers of his sons remained unknown and unacknowledged.”

Speaking about Vidura’s possible fatherhood of Yudhishthira, Karve says: “The Mahabharata does not hide anybody’s secrets. It even reveals that Karna is the illegitimate son of Kunti. If Dharma was born from Kunti and Vidura, then, why should this fact be kept a secret? All the sons of Kunti are alleged to have been born from gods who were invited at Pandu’s wish. The children were born while Pandu was still living and were acknowledged by him as his sons. According to the legal conceptions of those times, they were Pandu’s sons and were thus called Pandavas. Supposing that one of the children had been born from Vidura, would he in any way have been inferior to the others? Dharma’s right to the throne rested on two things: he was older than Duryodhana, and he was the son of Pandu. His rival Duryodhana was indeed younger by a few months. But he was the son of Dhritarashtra, a prince of the royal house, and Gandhari, a princess. One wonders if Dharma’s claim would have been considered inferior if he were known to be the son of Vidura, a suta.”

Developing her argument further, Karve says, “When they were planning to call gods to father the children, it is very curious that the first god Kunti called was Yamadharma, the god of death. Vidura was said to be an incarnation of Yamadharma, so we can surmise that she did not call the god but her husband’s brother Vidura. Moreover, as the younger brother of Pandu, Vidura was, from the point of view of law and dharma, suited to father Pandu’s children. The child born from this union with an incarnation of Yamadharma or the god himself was
Yudhishthira, but because of the serious nature he early displayed he was called Dharma. Thus, for many reasons, Dharma seems to be the son of Vidura.”

According to Karve there are two more incidents which lend support to this argument. She cites the incidents: One, Vidura’s yogic merging with Yudhishthira just before his death; and the other, Vyasa’s statement in support of Vidura fathering Yudhishthira. She says that the fact that Kunti had a son by her brother-in-law Vidura was kept secret up to the end of the war.

O0O

Before taking a deeper look at Karve’s arguments about the fatherhood of Yudhishthira, one thing about my own thoughts about the problem. I consider the Mahabharata fictionalized history, in the sense that at the core of it all are incidents that really happened and people who really lived, and since it is history, though fictionalized, I do not accept that the god of Dharma or any other god fathered Yudhishthira. I believe it is perfectly fine for children to have non-human fathers at a mythical level, but at a realistic level it is not.

Now, while Karve’s arguments for Vidura being the father of Yudhishthira are on the whole quite strong, there are some problems with them, a few with regard to details and others with regard to the arguments themselves. To begin with, Karve says, referring to Yudhishthira: “Dharma’s right to the throne rested on two things: he was older than Duryodhana, and he was [legally] the son of Pandu. Let us see if this is true.

The clearest and conclusive discussion on Yudhishthira’s right to the throne appears in the Udyoga Parva of the epic. Here during a heated scene immediately before the war, in yet another attempt to make Duryodhana accept the truth, Bhishma tells him:

Andhah karanahīneti na vai rājā pitā tava
Rājā tu pāndur abhavan mahātmā lokaviśrutah
Sa rājā tasya te putrāh pitur dāyādyahārinah
Mā tāta kalaham kārshī rājyasyārdham pradīyatām

“Since your father was blind, he could not become king, being disqualified because of that. It was the noble Pandu, renowned everywhere, who became king. Since he was king and the Pandavas are his children, they are the heirs to his property. Don’t quarrel, son, and give [at least] half the kingdom to them.”

There is one single reason given here for the Pandavas’ claim to the throne: that they are the sons of Pandu and Pandu was the king. Unlike what Karve says, that Yudhishthira was older than Duryodhana is not an issue at all.

On this occasion, Gandhari, who too was present during the discussion, adds this clear statement supporting what Bhishma says:

Rājyam tu pāndor idam apradhrshyam;
tasyādya putrāh prabhavanti nānye.
Rājyam tad etan nikhilam pāndavānām;
paitāmaham putrapautrānugāmi.

“This powerful kingdom, indeed, belonged to Pandu. And after him it belongs to his children, and to no one else. The entire kingdom belongs to the Pandavas, for, the tradition is that the kingdom comes down from the father to the son and then to his son.”

Here too a single reason is given for the claim of the Pandavas over the kingdom – that they are the children of Pandu and Pandu was the king. The kingdom passes down from the father to the son. That Yudhishthira was older than Duryodhana is not an issue at all.

If these statements by Bhishma and Gandhari are not enough, here is what Dhritarashtra himself says on the issue on this occasion. Old Dhritarashtra point blank tells his son that he has no right to the kingdom. The kingdom belonged to Pandu, since he, Dhritarashtra, was disqualified by his blindness, ever since Pandu’s death, it has belonged to his son Yudhishthira. Dhritarashtra concludes his long discourse to Duryodhana here, saying:

Mayyabhāgini rājyāya katham tvam rājyam icchasi.
Yudhishthiro rājaputro mahātmā;
nyāyāgatam rājyam idam ca tasya
Sa kauravasyāsya janasya bhartā;
praśāsitā caiva mahānubhāvah.

This quotation is from the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata. The Gita Press edition has additional half a verse here, which should be part of the text: Arājaputro hyasvāmī, parasvam hartum ichhasi. When you add this half verse after the first line above, the verses quoted above mean:

“I was not fortunate to have the right over the kingdom; how can you then desire to be king? You are not the son of a king and therefore the kingdom does not belong to you. You are coveting what does not belong to you and trying to snatch it away from its rightful owner. The noble Yudhishthira is the son of the king, and this kingdom has rightfully been inherited by him. He is now the lord of all of us Kauravas, and that generous one is the [rightful] ruler of this land.”

As we can see, here too the only factor mentioned is that Yudhishthira is Pandu’s [eldest] son – that he is older than Duryodhana is not a matter of importance at all.

If at all a second factor is to be considered, as Dhritarashtra and others imply, it is whether the claimant is morally, physically and competency-wise qualified or not. Dhritarashtra explains here [not quoted] that Yudhishthira admirably fits every requirement of a king and Duryodhana does not.

Another minor thing here. During the discussion, Karve says “Duryodhana was indeed younger [than Yudhishthira] by a few months.” According to the Mahabharata, it is not by just a few months that Duryodhana is younger than Yudhishthira, but more, though we cannot be sure exactly how much. What the Mahabharata says categorically is that Duryodhana was born the same day as Bhima [Yasminn ahani bhīmas tu jajñe bharatasattama, duryodhano ’pi tatraiva prajajñe vasudhādhipa]. It will be safe to assume that Duryodhana was at least one year younger than Yudhishthira.

O0O

Another thing that Karve says in her essay on the Vidura-Yudhishthira relationship is: “When they were planning to call gods to father the children, it is very curious that the first god Kunti called was Yamadharma, the god of death.”

Yama and Dharma are names of the same god, with two functions, and that god is occasionally referred to as Yamadharma. However, the Yama name is more commonly associated with death, and the name Dharma, with dharma – virtue, righteousness, justice, etc. Karve refers to Yamadharma as the god of death. It would indeed have been strange if they had thought of the god of death – but when Pandu suggests that Kunti invoke the god, it is not his function as the god of death that he had in mind.

The Mahabharata repeatedly says that it is Dharma that was invoked by Kunti to beget her eldest son – not once does it use the word Yama in this context. Dharma is invoked is the god of virtue and not as the god of death.

When Kunti is persuaded to beget children by niyoga with a god, she asks Pandu to tell her which god she should invoke – āvāhayāmi kam devam brūhi. Pandu tells her to invoke Dharma.

Adyaiva tvam varārohe prayatasva yathāvidhi
Dharmam āvāhaya śubhe sa hi deveshu punyabhāk
Adharmena na no dharmah samyujyeta kathamcana
Lokaś cāyam varārohe dharmo’yam iti mamsyate
Dhārmikaś ca kurūnām sa bhavishyati na samśayah
Dattasyāpi ca dharmena nādharme ramsyate manah
Tasmād dharmam puraskrtya niyatā tvam śucismite
Upacārābhicārābhyām dharmam ārādhayasva vai.

"Hearing this, Pandu replied, 'O handsome one, strive duly this very day to gratify our wishes. Fortunate one, summon thou the god of justice. He is the most virtuous of the celestials. The god of justice and virtue will never be able to pollute us with sin. The world also, O beautiful princess, will then think that what we do can never be unholy. The son also that we shall obtain from him shall in virtue be certainly the foremost among the Kurus. Begotten by the god of justice and morality, he would never set his heart upon anything that is sinful or unholy. Therefore, O thou of sweet smiles, steadily keeping virtue before thy eyes, and duly observing holy vows, summon thou the god of justice and virtue by the help of thy solicitations and incantations.' [KMG translation]

I have quoted in Sanskrit the entire speech of Pandu in this context to point out that the word dharma appears several times in it, but there is no mention of the word Yama or any indication of Dharma’s association with death, whereas what Karve says is that the first god invoked by Kunti was the lord of death.

The passage quoted above also makes clear the reasons given by Pandu while asking Kunti to invoke Dharma: Dharma is the most virtuous of all gods – sa hi deveshu punyabhāk. And if he is invoked, the act that we are going to do will never be linked to adharma – adharmena na no dharmam samyujyeta kathamcana. A son given by Dharma will remain rooted in dharma, and there is no fear of his swerving from dharma, being the son of Dharma.

In innumerable places in the epic, Yudhishthira has been called the son of Dharma and in all these places the association of Dharma is with virtue and justice and other meanings of dharma, but never once with death.

Incidentally, the primary function of a king, according to the Indian tradition is the maintenance of dharma. The Mahabharata tells us that kingship was born out of the need to protect dharma. Considering this it is perfectly understandable that Pandu thought of Dharma on that occasion. He might also have been prompted by the thought that there has been adharma in the royal family in the previous few generations.

In contrast to this repeated references to Dharma as the god of virtue, when the god is discussed in connection with death, he is usually referred to as Yama, as in the Savitri-Satyavan story. The appearance of the god too on such occasions is that of the god of death, rather than of virtue. When he appears before Savitri to take away Satyavan’s life, what she sees before her an effulgent being in red clothes, with a crown on his head, his complexion dark, his eyes red, a rope in hand, and looking fearsome. When Savitri asks him, it is as Yama that he introduces himself, and not as dharma: viddhi mām tvam śubhe yamam.

He then informs her that her husband Satyavan’s life is over and he has come to tie him up and carry him with him.

ayam te satyavān bhartā kshīnāyuh pārthivātmajah
neshyāmy enam aham baddhvā viddhy etan me cikīrshitam

Savitri then engages Yama in a conversation. She tells him she has heard it is his agents [dutāh] that come to take the dead with them and asks him why he has come by himself.

Dharma is not associated with agents – dutas. There is nothing called dharmadutas. It is only in his function as the lord of death, Yama, that he has dutas.

Which is not to say that the two are not referred to as one god – they are. In the following verse in which the Savitri-Satyavan story is summed up, for instance, he is referred to both as Yama and as Dharmaraja.

tathety uktvā tu tān pāśān muktvā vaivasvato yamah
dharmarājah prahrshtātmā sāvitrīm idam abravīt.

However, generally the name Dharma stands for the god of virtue and the name Yama, for the god of death. And when Pandu asks Kunti to invoke the god, it is clearly as the god of virtue and not as the god of death.

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Karve says: “Vidura was said to be an incarnation of Yamadharma, so we can surmise that she did not call the god but her husband’s brother Vidura. Moreover, as the younger brother of Pandu, Vidura was, from the point of view of law and dharma, suited to father Pandu’s children.”

Karve is right is implying that in calling Vidura, they would be in effect be invoking Dharma since Vidura is considered an incarnation of Dharma. However, she is wrong when she says that as Pandu’s younger brother, “Vidura was, from the point of view of law and dharma, suited to father Pandu’s children.” Vidura was not, for there was something that disqualified him completely.

One thing ancient Indian culture and the dharmashastras were very particular about is that marriages should be anuloma and not pratiloma. An anuloma marriage is when a man marries a woman of the same varna as his or of an inferior varna. When a woman married a man of an inferior varna, it was called a pratiloma marriage and all dharmashastras were in one voice against this. The rule regarding anuloma and pratiloma marriage applied to niyoga too. And this totally disqualified Vidura from performing niyoga with Kunti – though he was the son of Vyasa, he was throughout his life considered a suta as his mother was a slave woman, a dasi, and hence Kunti’s niyoga with him would have been pratiloma noyoga, disapproved by, or rather tabooed by, both the scriptures as well as tradition.

Would Kunti have quietly performed niyoga with Vidura, keeping it a secret? I do not think so. Varna/caste feelings were very strong then in the minds of people, as it is even today, and there is no reason why Kunti could have been tempted to perform niyoga with Vidura. In the Mahabharata, Vidura does not come out as a very ‘desirable’ man from the standpoint of a woman like Kunti for her to break the taboo and approach him for niyoga. She would have been particular, speaking in human terms, that her niyoga was with a kshatriya of royal descent or with a brahmana.

And, for that matter, I do not think Pandu would have considered Vidura an appropriate choice either, for the same varna/caste reasons as Kunti’s, in spite of any amount of affection he might have had for his younger half-brother.

Neither Kunti nor Pandu would have wanted their son to be the grandson of a household slave of the family of the Kurus.

We have several instances of royal niyogas mentioned in our epics. Rama’s ancestor King Kalmashapada asks his queen Madayanti to perform niyoga – with Vasishtha, the most revered sage of the day and a brahmana. Emperor Bali sends his wife Sudeshna for niyoga – with Deerghatamas, a sage and a brahmana. In the Mahabharata itself, when niyoga has to be performed with Ambika and Ambalika, the options were limited only to anuloma niyoga and the thought of a pratiloma niyoga occurred to no one. The queens expected some member of the royal family of the Kurus – all kshatriyas. Bhishma’s choice, since he himself would not do it, was some respected brahmana. And when he mentioned it, Satyavati immediately mentioned her own son Vyasa, universally acknowledged as a brahmana of the highest quality. The epics do not give us a single instance of a kshatriya queen choosing a man of an inferior varna or caste as the surrogate father of her child through niyoga.

Let’s recall Draupadi’s attitude towards sutas that she expresses in her swayamvara hall, which I am sure, would have been the attitude of any kshatriya princess of the day. As Karna aims the arrows at the target in the hall, Draupadi shouts for everyone in the assembly to hear: nāham varayāmi sūtam – I shall not wed a man of the suta caste.

And remember Karna was a king in his own right at that time and apart from being considered a suta, he was practically everything that a kshatriya princess could look for in a man – among the very best warriors of the day, greater than almost anyone in archery, particularly with the common knowledge that Arjuna was dead; noble in character, young, full of valour, glorious to look at. As he makes his entry in the Mahabharata, in a single verse the epic compares him to the sun, the moon and fire. He was born with golden armour and earrings, making him very, very special. Besides all these, he was a hater of her father’s enemies Drona and Bhishma – Draupadi had been born from a sacrifice her father performed to obtain a son who would kill Drona and her brother Shikhandi has been born from another sacrifice her father had performed to obtain a son who would kill Bhishma.

In spite of all this, Draupadi shouts there, even forgetting the good manners required of a bride: nāham varayāmi sūtam – I shall not wed a man of the suta caste.

I do not think either Pandu or Kunti would have considered Vidura fit for the niyoga, let alone the first choice.

Remember Vidura’s wife was a suta woman – Bhishma, who arranged his marriage, did not look for a kshatriya woman for him, quite possibly because no kshatriya woman would have been willing – certainly not a royal kshatriya princess.

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Karve quotes Vyasa as saying “Vidura was Yama incarnate born to Vichitravirya’s maidservant and me through my yogic powers; and he in his turn, through yogic powers, gave birth to Yudhishthira, the king of the Kurus.” The Hindi translation of Yuganta, made from the Marathi, is equally clear. In it Karve quotes Vyasa as saying: “pahle vicitravīrya kī dāsī se mere dwārā sākshāt dharmarāj hī yogbal se janmā aur usne yogbal se kururāj yudhishthir ko janm diyā”

If we go by Karve, Vyasa’s statement here makes it crystal clear: it is Vidura, through his yogic powers, who fathers Yudhishthira.

Had this clarity been there in Vyasa’s words, we would not be discussing this topic now – the whole world would have accepted Yudhishthira as the son of Vidura. Unfortunately, however, there is no such clarity in Vyasa’s words in the Mahabharata. There are only two ways of describing Vyasa’s words in the epic in this context: either as ambiguous, or as clearly stating that it is the same god who became both Vidura and Yudhishthira. This is what Vyasa says:

Yena yogabalāj jātah kururājo yudhishthirah
Dharma ityesha nrpate prājñenāmitabuddhinā.

KM Ganguli translates this as: “From that deity of Righteousness, through Yoga-puissance, the Kuru king Yudhishthira also took his birth. Yudhishthira, therefore, O king, is Dharma of great wisdom and immeasurable intelligence.”

Yo hi dharmah sa viduro viduro yah sa pāndavah
Sa esha rājan vaśyas te pāndavah preshyavat sthitah.

“He who is dharma, is Vidura; he who is Vidura, is the Pandava [Yudhishthira]. It is that Pandava, of king, that is standing before you, obedient like a servant.

As we can see, nowhere does Vyasa say that Vidura through yogic powers gave birth to Yudhishthira. There is no such categorical statement from Vyasa here or anywhere else in the entire Mahabharata.

Incidentally, once again, Karve uses the word Yama [“Vidura was Yama incarnate”] here, though the Mahabharata text uses the word Dharma. On this occasion Vyasa uses the word Dharma seven times in the course of a few verses, and not once does he use the word Yama or allude to the deity of death. In fact, Vyasa here very clearly defines Dharma in a couple of verses, and the definition is not of the lord death but of righteousness and virtue [“who grows in the hearts of men when practiced as truthfulness, sense control, mind control, non-injury and charity”].

Karve gives another argument to say that Vidura could have been Yudhishthira’s father – a beautiful one this time. She refers to an Upanishadic custom according to which a father at the moment of his death makes his son lie next to him and then transfers all his powers into him. If there was such a custom, this is definitely a good argument, though a father-like person could also have done it with a son-like person and Vidura definitely had father-like feelings for his nephew Yudhishthira.

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We now come to how Karve sums up her argument. In her final words about the issue, she says, “One thing at least is clear: the Mahabharata, which is outspoken about all relationships, has not made a single unambiguous statement about the affection of Vidura and Dharma [Yudhishthira], or about their relationship.”

Once again it is difficult to agree with what Karve says. Though we may find it difficult to accept it today on rational grounds, the Mahabharata clearly states in several places that Yudhishthira was the son of the god of Dharma. Vyasa states this in his own words spoken soon after Vidura’s death – he says here that Yudhishthira’s father was the god Dharma who “like fire, like air, like water, like earth and like space is present simultaneously both here as well as there, at the same time. He is at once everywhere and is immanent in everything, moving and unmoving.”

In the famous Yakshaprashna of the epic, god Dharma, who had earlier appeared as a crane and then as a Yaksha, eventually reveals himself as Dharma. This is what Dharma tells Yudhishthira:

Aham te janakas tāta dharmo mrduparākrama
Tvām didrkshur anuprāpto viddhi mām bharatarshabha.
Yaśah satyam damah śaucam ārjavam hrīr acāpalam
Dānam tapo brahmacaryam ity etās tanavo mama.
Ahimsā samatā śāntis tapah śaucam amatsarah
Dvārāny etāni me viddhi priyo hy asi sadā mama.

“I am your father Dharma, oh son of great valour and I came because I wanted to see you, oh best of Bharatas. Glory, truth, self-control, cleanliness, straightforwardness, modesty, steadfastness, charity, austerities, and brahmacharya – all these are my bodies [I exist in them]. Non-injury, tranquillity, peace, penance, purity, tolerance – these are the doors leading to me. And you are always dear to me.”

The Mahabharata is unambiguous here – according to it, it is the god Dharma who resides in truth, etc., and who could be reached through ahimsa etc., who fathered Yudhishthira.

Clarifying this position further, Dharma says a few verses later: tvaṁ hi matprabhavo rājan viduraś ca mamāṁśabhāk – you are born of me, oh king, and Vidura too is born of a portion of me.

The epic makes it absolutely clear here. Vidura is not the father of Yudhishthira. Both he and Yudhishthira are born of Dharma.

The question Yudhishthira asks the Yaksha/Dharma in the Yakshaprashna too is interesting: sa bhavān suhrd asmākam atha vā nah pitā bhavān? Are you a friend of ours, or are you our father? One of the several fascinating implications of this question of Yudhishthira to the Yaksha is he sees the possibility of the mysterious being in front of him being the father of the Pandavas. The Yaksha was certainly not Vidura – Vidura had no power to appear as a Yaksha [or as a crane] and yet Yudhishthira asks him ‘are you our father?’ According to Yudhishthira here, their father was someone other than Vidura.

Also, when Pandu asks Kunti to invoke the god, he asks her to do so through upachara and abhichara. Upachara is worship and abhichara involves rituals incantations that force a power/deity to appear before you, usually against his well. Pandu and Kunti do not need abhichara to call and make that request to Vidura who was Pandu’s younger brother and for all we know, very close to Pandu and to Kunti.

Also, Vyasa says that Dharma gave birth to Yudhishthira using his yogic power, just as Vyasa gave birth to Vidura using his yogic power. Vyasa was a man of enormous yogic power and he displays it many times in the Mahabharata. But as far as we know Vidura has no such powers, except what he develops in his very advanced age while he was living in the jungle as an ascetic. The man who gave birth to Kunti’s first son through yogic powers could not have been Vidura.

Our problem is that we believe Vidura should be the father of Yudhishthira and does not find a single clear proof for this.

The affection Vidura had for Yudhishthira is easy to explain even without assuming they were father and son. Yudhishthira was loved by all in his day, including most of his enemies, if not all of them. He was good natured, kind and compassionate, well-mannered, courteous, just, willing to accommodate other people’s views and had great self-control. Rooted in dharma like Vidura, a wise man like Vidura, he was so much like Vidura in so many respects. And he was Vidura’s nephew. There is absolutely no reason why Vidura could not have had a strong affection for Yudhishthira even without having a father-son relationship with him. Besides, that Yudhishthira lost his father [Pandu] at a young age and had to suffer so much in life, through the cruelty of his own cousins, could have deepened Vidura’s natural affection for him.

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My own stand on Yudhishthira’s parentage is this: at a human level, we do not have a single clue as to who his father is. The Mahabharata gives us none. That secret dies with Kunti and Pandu and if anyone else in the epic knew it, with them.

As for the Mahabharata telling us that Dharma was Yudhishthira’s father, my view is this: It was ‘invented’ later – because Yudhishthira was so much preoccupied with dharma, he was called the son of Dharma.

I also believe that the fathers of the other Pandavas too were ‘invented’ or imagined later. Because Bhima was strong like the wind, it was imagined he was the son of Vayu, because Arjuna was an unsurpassed warrior like Indra, it was imagined that he was the son of Indra, and because Nakula and Sahadeva were twins, good looking, wise and inseparable, they came to be called sons of the Ashwins, the twin gods,.

Yudhishthira was not preoccupied with dharma because he was the son of Dharma. He ‘became’ the son of Dharma because he was preoccupied with dharma.

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By the way, I do not believe that Yudhishthira and Vidura shared the same nature. They definitely had common preoccupations in life, but they were also two very different people. Vidura’s preoccupation with dharma was invariably a very earthly concern, without implying that Vidura was not concerned with dharma that was not practical. And at times Vidura did not mind circumventing the ordinary rules of dharma, the lower dharma or the words of dharma, for the sake of the spirit of dharma or the higher dharma. For instance, he did not mind being disloyal to and betraying his ‘masters’ when they were on the path of adharma, as when the Pandavas were treacherously sent to the house of lac by Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana. In this he is very close to Krishna, who would do the same for the same reasons – for Krishna too the higher dharma was more important than the lower dharma. Krishna had the courage to say that there are times when a lie is superior to the truth – satyāj jyeyo’nrtam vacah, and Vidura would wholeheartedly agree with this. Yudhishthira might eventually be persuaded to agree with this position, but it would be with great difficulty, as when he was persuaded to lie or equivocate about Ashwatthama’s death.

Yudhishthira’s preoccupation with dharma was essentially an intellectual pursuit, and for that reason different in nature from that of Vidura’s. I would call Yudhishthira an idealist obsessed with dharma, and Vidura a pragmatist with great respect for dharma.

Also, Vidura is almost a sthitaprajna, his inner world free from conflicts. Whereas Yudhishthira’s inner world is rarely free from storms, in spite of his external calmness, because of unresolved moral and psychological issues. Yudhishthira was a lost soul most of his life, all tied up within himself. His inadequacies, confusions and self-contradictions last till the very end, as shown by his response to Draupadi’s fall on the Himalayas. Vidura seems to have had absolutely clear perceptions right from the beginning. Vidura not once displays the suicidal tendencies that Yudhishthira repeatedly displays, nor does Vidura share Yudhishthira’s melancholy. Vidura is a ‘master’ from the beginning – if we are to go by the existing text of the Mahabharata, Bhishma begins consulting him on important issues even when he is in his mid-teens. By contrast, Yudhishthira remains a student till the end of his life. When we meet Vidura for the first time in the epic, he is already fully grown and finished and for Yudhishthira, his education is practically never over.

In literary terms, Vidura is a flat character, clear and simple, with no ambiguities about him; whereas Yudhishthira is one of the most complex characters in world literature.

The two individuals are not the same at all, though outwardly they look very similar.

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Additional

Immediately after finishing this article, I came across a report in the Hindustan Times of 6th April, 2009, under the title “Is that sperm taken from the right caste?” I am giving below the relevant parts from the report, without adding any comment of my own.

“If many childless parents in Bihar had their way, they would want vaults at sperm banks with clear labels: “Brahmin”, “Bhumihar”, “Yadav”.

Couples opting for sperm donations in Bihar are demanding to know the caste of the donor before they go ahead and often getting their answers as well.

“Neither features nor height nor even IQ concerned us as much,” says Anuradha Rai [36], an Internet marketing manager from the Bhumihar community. “My husband felt that if the sperm donor was from a different caste, the baby would not get the right genes and wouldn’t be like us.”

It is a stunning statement of how even young, urban, educated and well to-do Indians, their lives transformed by the emerging India, have been unable to unshackle themselves from the centuries-old caste consciousness despite their desperation to have a child.

Dr Himanshu Roy, a gynaecologist and infertility specialist, says, “The most common questions are about culture, health…and caste. Parents from the upper caste are especially concerned about this.”

While sperm banks are not permitted to reveal identities or complete details of donors, many have to oblige when it comes to caste. “People are insistent, almost fanatical, about caste,” says Dr S Kumar, who owns the sperm bank Frozen Cell.

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Note: All quotations from the Mahabharata are from the BORI Critical edition. However, for the sake of thoroughness, the Gita Press edition has also been consulted. All translations from the Sanskrit are mine, except where otherwise stated.