Draupadī’s hair
La chevelure de Draupadī
p. 179-214
Résumés
The Mahābhārata’s portrayal of Draupadī is examined by comparison with her depiction in Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa’s Veṇisaṃhāra and in the South Indian Draupadī firewalking cult. Through focusing on themes connected primarily with Draupadī’s hair, there is found to be considerable consistency and continuity from the textual to the cultic materials. With dishevelled hair, and in particular in her disguise as a Sairandhrī (chambermaid, hairdresser), Draupadī evokes themes of impurity, “dissolution” in several senses, and Śūdra and outcast roles. Through these various characterizations, the epic (as well as the Veṇīsaṃhāra and the Draupadī cult) deepens her identification with the Hindu Goddess: Draupadī represents the Goddess not only as Śrī-Lakṣmí (whom she incarnates in the epic), but in such destructive forms of the Goddess as Mṛtyu, Kālarātri, Kālī, and Durgā.
La figure de Draupadī dans le Mahābhārata est analysée de manière comparative en la reportant à la description de Draupadī dans le Veṇīsaṃhāra de Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa et dans le culte de la marche sur le feu propre à l’Inde du Sud. À travers les convergences de thèmes essentiellement rattachés à la chevelure de Draupadī on observe une cohérence et une continuité remarquables. Avec ses cheveux défaits, et tout particulièrement quand elle se déguise en Sairandhrī (camériste ou coiffeuse), Draupadī évoque les thèmes de l’impureté, de la « dissolution » – en plusieurs sens du terme –, et les rôles de Śūdra et d’« intouchable ». A travers ces différentes caractérisations, l’épopée, tout autant que le Veṇīsaṃhāra et que le culte qui lui est rendu, approfondit l’identification de Draupadī avec la Déesse hindoue : Draupadī représente la Déesse non seulement sous l’aspect de Śrī-Lakṣmī (qu’elle incarne dans l’épopée), mais aussi sous les aspects destructeurs de la Déesse que sont Mṛtyu, Kālarātri, Kālī et Durgā.
Texte intégral
1According to well known Indian popular traditions, Draupadī – the heroine of the Mahābhārata – made a vow that she would not bind up her hair until she could comb into it the blood of either Duryodhana or Duḥśāsana. She uttered this terrible oath after being insulted and molested by these two Kauravas at the epic’s dice match, and it required not only her own thirteen years of dishevelment during her exile with her five husbands, the Pāṇḍavas, but also the eventual killing of these two foes by them in battle. The theme has circulated long and widely. It was first clearly expressed by a North Indian dramatist, Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa, who took it as the main theme of his play Veṇīsaṃhāra, “The Binding-Up of the Braid”. Bhaṭṭa, who apparently hailed from Kanauj and settled in Bengal, probably lived around 675-725 a. d. 1 And it was reworked most recently by Subramanya Bharati in the second decade of this century when he portrayed Draupadī as the image of Mother India defiled in his Tamil play Panchali Sapatham, “The Vow of Pāñcālī” (or Draupadī).2 It would seem, in fact, that through the centuries the theme’s popularity has been most consistent in the South. It is found in the Tamil rendition of the Mahābhārata by Villiputtūr Alvār (ca.1400), in the Kannada version of Kumāra Vyāsa (fifteenth century), in Malayalam renditions of the story by the sixteenth century Ezhuthachan and others, and in the dramatic styles of the Kathakali from Kerala, the Yakṣagāna of Karnataka, and the Terukkūttu of Tamilnadu.3 In the latter case, the Terukkūttu drama Turiyōtana-vatam (“Death of Duryodhana”) or Paṭukaḷam (“Battlefield,” or “Place of Lying Down”) completes the cycle of Mahābhārata-based plays that enact the story as background myth for the cult of the Goddess Draupadī (Tamil : Tiraupati-ammaṉ). The study of Draupadī’s cult demands investigation of Draupadī in the epic ; and the epic heroine can be illumined by the study of her cult.4
2According to A. B. Gajendragadkar, in whose edition of the Veṇīsaṃhāra one finds what seems to be the only major discussion of our theme, the vow is “Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa’s innovation” and “the Mahābhārata knows nothing of it.”5 As we shall see, these are extreme or incautious statements. But before examining the epic for its treatment of Draupadī’s hair, we must see how the Veṇīsaṃhāra – which makes it its central theme – differs in its handling from the epic. Let it simply be noted that certain methodological working assumptions are involved in this study, which itself should be regarded as an exploratory test of their explanatory value rather than a demonstration of their validity. These are, first, that certain themes connected with a number of the heroines of the Hindu epics can be illumined by looking to materials on the Hindu Goddess that often appear only later in post-epic literature and folk traditions ; second, that the epics themselves present a complex theological vision that gives pride of place not only to heroes and heroines who represent aspects of Viṣṇu, but also of Śiva and the Goddess ;6 third, that the epics thus provide narrative reflections on (and of) the cult and mythology of the Goddess as it emerges into the literary light of day ; and fourth, that the epic poets made selective use of oral traditions that probably had some affinities with oral and vernacular epic traditions still popular today.
Draupadī’s hair in the Veṇīsaṃhāra
3While Gajendragadkar and others have noticed in the Veṇīsaṃhāra numerous narrative and characteriological departures from the epic, the following have all been overlooked.
4Taking the departures in their narrative order, first, the Venīsaṃhāra gives the impression that Draupadī’s hair was made loose initially by Duḥśāsana. Thus Bhīma, covered with Duryodhana’s blood and unrecognized by Draupadī who thinks he is dead, says to her : “Pāñcālī, not indeed while I am alive should your braid (veṇī), dishevelled by Duḥśāsana, be tied up by your own hand.”7 This implies that Duḥśāsana dishevelled some kind of veṇī, “braid,” a conclusion that other Veṇīsaṃhāra passages reinforce.8 This is different from the Mahābhārata where, as we shall see, Draupadī’s hair is already dishevelled when Duḥśāsana seizes it because she is menstruating. One may only guess that Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa has either overlooked or suppressed this indication of Draupadī’s impurity.
5Secondly, Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa has Duryodhana order both Duḥśāsana’s pulling of Draupadī’s hair and Duḥśāsana’s thwarted attempt to pull off her garments. Duryodhana recalls this himself, referring to Draupadī as “she whose garments and hair were both dishevelled, pulled by the hand of Duḥśāsana at my command”.9 And at several other points Duryodhana is described as the one who was the cause of both pullings.10 Here Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa – who is joined on this point by Villiputtūr ĀLvār11 – departs from an important detail of the epic, where, as we shall see, it is Karṇa who orders the disrobing. But in deepening the parallelism between the pulling of the hair and the pulling of the garments by attributing both commands to Duryodhana as well as both acts to Duḥśāsana, Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa has evoked an important complementarity between the two violatory acts, and driven it home by reinforcing it over and over with a variety of compounds, the most memorable and basic being the keśāmbarākarṣaṇa, “the pulling of the hair and the garments”.12 I will return to this complementarity and its significance in the conclusion of this paper.
6The third departure is not so clearly one from the epic as from the popular tradition. Nonetheless, as we shall see, there are certain indications that the epic is closer to the popular tradition than to the Veṇīsaṃhāra. It is a question of whose vow it is : Bhīma’s or Draupadī’s. The popular traditions are clear that it is essentially Draupadī’s vow, with Bhīma’s role in killing Duḥśāsana and Duryodhana one of service to her. According to Gajendragadkar, however, the vow is primarily Bhīma’s : “with his hands smeared with the blood of Duryodhana [he vowed to] rearrange the dishevelled hair of Draupadī, who was therefore to allow her hair to remain in that disordered condition till he fulfilled his vow”,13 Gajendragadkar notes that Bhīma makes no such vow in the epic,14 and thus proposes that Bhaṭṭa has invented the whole thing. He is certainly right that the Veṇīsaṃhāra attributes the vow in the main to Bhīma.15 But there are also points where the Veṇīsaṃhāra recognizes Draupadī as making a complementary vow. In a passage that we shall return to later, Bhīma tells Draupadī that while he and his brother will officiate, she will be “the wife whose vow is maintained” (gṛhītavratā) for the “sacrifice of battle” (1.25). Again, evoking Draupadī’s own motivations, her maid recalls asking Duryodhana’s wife : “How will the hair of our queen be bound up when your [plural : i.e., the Kaurava wives’] masses of hair are not loosed” (yuṣmākam amukteṣu keśahasteṣu devyāḥ keśāḥ saṃyamyanta iti) (1.21)? And similarly, when Bhīma readies himself to kill Duryodhana, he says : “Pāñcālī’s fire of wrath is evidently well-nigh extinguished now that the masses of hair have been confusedly loosened among the women of the Kaurava court, their husbands forcibly slain by me”.16 These passages suggest that Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa is well aware of a tradition that Draupadī too is undergoing some sort of vow, sustained by her anger and focused on the reversal that will take place when it will be the Kaurava wives who must dishevel their hair. In this case, as we will see, the theme that Bhaṭṭa subordinates can be traced clearly to the Mahābhārata. It would also seem to have echoes in the popular traditions.
7The fourth divergence concerns the manner in which Draupadī wears her hair. According to Gajendragadkar and G. V. Devasthali, in the Veṇīsaṃhāra Draupadī keeps her “mass of hair tied in a single unomamented long braid” known as an ekaveṇī, literally a “single braid”.17 Unfortunately, this terminology can be misleading, for an ekaveṇī is not actually a “braid” but a style of tying up or clasping the hair once in back of the head and leaving the rest to flow loose as a mass.18 Unlike the ordinary threeplait braid called triveṇī and a five-plait style called pañcaveṇi,19 which are suitable for auspiciously married women, the ekaveṇī is worn by virahiṇīs, women separated from their husbands. When the husband returned, the women “untied the single mass and rearranged the hair properly with appropriate decorations”.20 Sanskrit literature knows numerous heroines of this type. Separrated from Rāma, Sītā wears an ekaveṇī (5.18.8 ; 55.27 ; 57.12) in Rāvaṇa’s aśoka grove.21 Kālīdāsa’s Śakuntalā “bears an ekaveṇī” (ekaveṇīdharā) when she finally confronts her husband Duṣyanta after years of rejection.22 And the wife of Kālidāsa’s exiled Yakṣa hero in the Meghadūta also awaits her husband’s return with an ekaveṇī. 23
8Although the term ekaveṇī is never used in the Veṇīsaṃhāra, Gajendragadkar is probably right that Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa views Draupadī as a virahiṇī. Once Bhīma is specifically referred to as “shaking her veṇī” (veṇīm avadhūyā ; 6.42), which certainly implies some form of veṇī ; and other references to her hair can also be taken in this sense, although a different interpretation is often possible.24 Wearing the hair in the style of a virahiṇī would thus symbolize for Draupadī that her husbands are absent, or even dead. As Gajendragadkar puts it : “the fact that she suffered that egregious insult at the hands of Duḥśāsana even in the presence of the Pāṇḍavas meant that to Draupadī they were as good as absent and continued to be so till the insult was avenged”.25
9If this is the way it is represented in the Veṇīsaṃhāra, then the play has at least on this point considerably narrowed the symbolism of Draupadī’s dishevelment. In popular traditions Draupadī’s hair is worn completely loose and free ; it is not tied in back.26 And, as we shall see, the same seems to hold for the Mahābhārata. Taken altogether, the discrepancies between the Veṇīsaṃhāra and the epic thus indicate some consistent patterns. The action is primarily in the hands of the men. It is Duḥśāsana who dishevels her hair ; it is Bhīma who makes her vow ; and it is her husbands’ symbolic absence that dictates her hairstyle. But Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa is alive to much more, as his reiteration of the “hair and garments” theme already suggests. In discussing the Mahābhārata’s, treatment of Draupadī’s hair and the fuller symbolic meanings that it evokes, his Veṇīsaṃhāra will not be forgotten.
Draupadī’s hair in the Mahābhārata
10The Mahābhārata seems to know more about Draupadī’s hair than it ever makes explicit. And what it does tell us seems to rely on an understanding of Draupadī’s – and Bhīma’s – behaviour that is in certain respects different from the Veṇīsaṃhāra’s. The pertinent epic passages, discussed in sequence, are the following.
1. Pulling of the hair
11When Duḥśāsana, at Duryodhana’s command, drags Draupadī into the Kaurava men’s hall (sabhā) by the hair, two things are most significant. First, as the text indicates here several times and reiterates elsewhere, she is menstruating (rajasvalāsmi ; 2.60.25b ; cf. 27a ; 32b). Secondly, when Duḥśāsana seizes her, the hair is described as “long blue and flowing” (dīrgheṣu nīleṣvatha cormimatsu […] keśeṣu ; 22cd), and further as “strewn about” or “dishevelled” (prakīrṇakeśī ; 28a). These two facts are not unrelated. Draupadī’s hair is dishevelled because she is menstruating. The Mahābhārata draws here on a well known prohibition on wearing the hair braided during menstruation, and not binding it up until the ritual bath that ends the period of impurity. More particularly, during her menses a woman “should not arrange her hair with a comb”,27 a prohibition which provides background to a further detail of certain “popular” versions of Draupadī’s vow : that she would wait to braid her hair not only with Duryodhana’s blood but with a comb made from his ribs.28 Today the hair is worn loose during menstruation by Hindu and Sikh women in the Punjab, as reported by P. Hershman : “[…] times of pollution occur [at the death of an unweaned child ;] at the death of a husband ; following childbirth ; during menstruation ; and following intercourse when she has not washed. It is highly significant that in the ritual bath which brings to an end these periods of pollution, it is absolutely crucial that she washes her hair, grooms it and binds it in a proper fashion”.29
2. Departure for the forest
12In the interim between the preceding and present scenes, much of importance has happened. Draupadī has raised the moot and never resolved question of whether Yudhiṣṭhira could have bet her after he bet himself ; she has withstood Duḥśāsana’s attempts to disrobe her ; she has accepted the offer of boons from Dhrtarāstra and chosen her husbands’ freedom and the return of their weapons ; and, having set out with her husbands toward their kingdom at Indraprastha, she has come back with them to the Kaurava sabhā at Hāstinapura. There Yudhiṣṭhira loses the “second invitation” of the dice match, the winner-take-all throw that sends the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī into exile, and Draupadī and the Pāṇḍavas prepare for their departure. Our first verse finds her bidding adieu to Kuntī, promising to look after the youngest Pāṇḍava Sahadeva : “‘ So be it, ’ said that lady. Stained with flowing tears, her single garment smeared with blood, her hair loose, she went out”.30 Then a second passage finds Vidura describing to Dhṛtarāṣṭra Draupadī’s departure for the forest :
Wearing a single garment, weeping, her hair loose, menstruating, her wet garment stained with blood, Draupadī spoke this word : “Those on account of whom I have reached this condition, their wives, in the fourteenth year, with their husbands slain, their sons slain, their relative and dear ones slain, their limbs smeared with the blood of their relatives, hair loose, menstruating [? rajasvalāḥ], having thus offered water to the dead, will enter the City of the Elephant [Hāstinapura]31.”
13One noteworthy feature of this second passage is that it presents one of the two instances in the epic where Draupadī says something that resembles a vow. But unlike the vows (pratijñāḥ ; 2.68.46 and preceding passages) of her husbands, which take the form of commitments to acts they will themselves carry out against their foes, Draupadī’s statement has more the look of a prediction or a curse. It is a “word” that commits her husbands and their allies to a course of action, but with no stated commitment to any acts of her own. Yet if it does not mention any such commitment, she does predict that among the reversals that will take place, the Kaurava women will have to wear their hair dishevelled. As we have seen, Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa also plays upon this reversal in a context where it has clear reference to Draupadī’s (i.e., Bhīma’s) vow.
14The most striking fact indicated by these two epic passages, however, is that Draupadī has not changed her garment or her hair since she was dragged into the sabhā by Duḥśāsana. It is difficult to know just how long the poets took this interval to be. On the one hand, it is twice indicated that the Pāṇḍavas “had gone far on their way” (vyadhvagata ; 2.66.24 ; 67.1) back home, from Hastinapura to Indraprastha. How long it would take a royal procession to cover what would thus seem to be at least half the roughly seventy crow-flown miles between these two cities, and then cover the same ground in return for the “rematch,” is perhaps best left to the poetic imagination. But it would not be amiss to suggest that it would have been long enough for Draupadī to change her garments and her hair if she had wanted to do so. On the other hand, both passages seem to affirm that upon returning to Hāstinapura, Draupadī is still menstruating. But one may wonder at this. In at least one of its contexts, the term rajasvala suggests a more general condition of impurity, as in the meaning “covered with dust”. Otherwise we have the implausibility of Draupadī predicting that when the Kaurava widows return from performing their husbands’ and kinsmen’s funerary rites, they will all be menstruating at the same time. The fact that Draupadī’s prediction is uttered in the form of a parallelism to her own and her husbands’ condition after the dice rematch suggests that Draupadī now may also be rajasvalā in this more general “dust-covered” sense. Rajasvalā may thus in these instances simply mean “impure”, in a state of defilement. As the Kaurava women after the war will enter the city “covered with dust” or “in an impure condition”, so Draupadī and the Pāṇḍavas leave the city – Draupadī being described just after Nakula, who is literally “covered with dust” (pāṃsūpacita ; 71.17a) – into a realm of death symbolized by the gestures of their chaplain Dhaumya, who strews darbha grass to the death Goddess Nirṛti and sings Sāman verses to Yama (71.21).
15We cannot, of course, be any more precise than this on the physiological and temporal specifics of Draupadī’s menstrual cycle. But certain symbolic connotations now seem unmistakable. Whether she is still having her period or not, Draupadī enters the forest as if she is. That is, she enters the forest in an extended condition of defilement. And though, as we shall see, she will change her garments during the thirteen years of exile, if she does not change her hair it is because it is the primary symbol of that defilement which cannot be cleansed until her condition has been reversed by the deaths of her tormentors. And that reversal will occur, as she says, when the Kaurava women mourn their dead as rajasvalāḥ-s, with dishevelled hair.
3. In exile
16On just their third night (3.12.3) in the forest, the Rākṣasa Kirmīra bars Draupadī and the Pāṇḍavas’ way. Draupadī faints and is caught by her five husbands : “With her hair widely dishevelled and ruffled by Duḥśāsana’s hand, she (looked like) a river run wild amidst five mountains”.32 This verse thus provides the first indication that Draupadī continues to wear her hair dishevelled in the exile. And it would seem that she keeps it so throughout the twelve years of forest wanderings. Nowhere else is it so described, but the pulling of her hair is several times alluded to as if it were an ever-present source of outrage (3.13.108 ; 48.33- 35), and there are also reminders that Draupadī is engaged with her husbands, during the exile, in various forms of tapas (3.141.21- 22), wandering as “very lean and good ascetics” (shkṛśāḥ sutapasvinaḥ ; 3.125.19), she herself wearing “bark skirt and deerskin” (3.226.20b) or a “brownish-red garment” (kāṣāyavasanā ; 227. 10d).33 It is not unlikely that such allusions to forms of tapas are directly related to Draupadī’s tacit (in the epic) vow, especially in view of the use made of such themes in the period of concealment.
4. Concealment
17The thirteenth year of exile, which the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī must spend incognito (ajñāta), is rich in its surprising twists and complex symbolism. For the present, we must limit ourselves to a discussion of Draupadī’s disguise alone, though it should be emphasized that its full eludication would require a discussion of her husbands’ disguises as well, and of the Virāṭaparvan as a whole.
18As J. A . B. Van Buitenen has remarked, there is a Holī-like inversion of roles in the disguises which the three oldest Pāṇḍavas assume before entering Virāṭa’s capital in the kingdom of Matsya. The same principle, he notes, also applies to Draupadī, but he mentions only the lesser of two inversions : “In Draupadī’s case the skewness lies not so much in the choice of occupation, but in the self-imposed isolation from her husbands […] with whom she had gone through everything”,34 Rather, the essential and significant inversion with Draupadī lies in the paradox that she whose hair is hidden, and, I would argue, still dishevelled,35 will take on the occupation of chief hairdresser for Virāṭa’s wife, Queen Sudeṣṇā. Of the many crucial passages in this parvan concerning Draupadī, two put this paradox into the clearest relief. First, donning her disguise, Draupadī prepares to enter the capital : “Then, having tossed back her curly ended faultless soft hair, that dark-eyed one concealed it on her right side. And having wrapped herself in a single large black garment that was very dirty, having assumed the dress of a Sairandhrī, Kṛṣṇā [Draupadī] wandered about distressfully.”36 Next, having applied for the job of Sairandhrī, Draupadī hears Sudeṣṇā’s first words of reply to her : “I would have you dwell on my head” (mūrdhni tvaṃ vāsayeyaṃ vai ; 4.3.20). This is a transparent pun. As a Sairandhrī Draupadī’s primary task will be to serve Sudeṣṇā as hairdresser.37 Thus Draupadī, incarna tion of Śrī – the Goddess of the sovereignty which is symbolized in the royal diadem (kirīṭa) – is reduced to dressing the royal hair.38 Indeed, her disguise – with her long hair concealed under a “large black very dirty garment” – is the very antithesis of what one would expect from the incarnation of Śrī, whose other primary associations include good fortune and auspiciousness.39
19The “skewness” in Draupadī’s disguise thus involves not only an inversion of her identification with Śrī-Lakṣmī, but a deepening accentuation of the symbolism of her “tacit” vow of dishevelment. Actually, the Southern Recension of the Mahābhārata leaves little doubt of a connection between Draupadī’s vow and her disguise. There, when she tells Yudhiṣṭhira how she will conceal her identity, she says : “I will be a Sairandhrī, belonging to that caste, by the name of Vratacārinī” (sairandhrī jātisaṃpannā namnāhaṃ vratacāriṇī ; 4 94* line 6 ; before 4.3.16). Vratacārinī, meaning “she who is undergoing a vow”, can hardly be anything but a paradoxical reference to her vow of dishevelment.40 Here we should recall one of Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa’s allusions to Draupadī vowing. At the outset of battle in the Veṇīsaṃhāra, she asks about the sound of drums and is told by Bhīma that a sacrifice is beginning. “What is this sacrifice?” she asks. And Bhīma answers : “The Sacrifice of war (raṇayajña). So indeed. We four [the younger Pāṇḍavas] are the officiating priests ; Lord Hari is the director of rites ; the king [Yudhiṣṭhira] is the one consecrated (dīkṣitaḥ) for this sacrifice of war ; [our] wife is the one whose vow is maintained.”41
20As Gajendragadkar indicates : “the wife of the sacrificer […] had to observe certain vows. In the present case the vow refers to the vow observed by Draupadī of wearing her hair loose.”42 This is surely right, and also most illuminating. Although she is relying on a textual variant, Madeleine Biardeau has called attention to an epic recognition of the Pāṇḍavas as dīkṣitas. As they embark on their period in the forest, during which, as we have seen, they and Draupadī will undertake various forms of tapas, they are prophetically described in some manuscripts as dīkṣitas. 43 The thirteenth year, spent “like creatures dwelling in the womb” (garbhavāsa iva prajāḥ ; 4.66. Iod),44 would thus mark the completion of their dīkṣā, the “consecration” through which the sacrificer is “reborn” in the dīkṣā hut and thereby consecrated to perform sacrifice.45 The Veṇīsaṃhāra passage just cited thus relies on a suggestive epic theme when it presents Yudhiṣṭhira as a dīkṣita being consecrated – as he is in the epic – for the “sacrifice of battle”.46
21Now one aspect of the dīkṣā, particularly in connection with the theme of rebirth in the dīkṣā hut, is the taking on of ritual danger, death, and impurity.47 This takes us near to the heart of the symbolism of the Pāṇḍavas’ disguises. Indeed, impurity – taken in the sense of tasks inappropriate to one’s caste – is a common denominator of all the disguises. Says Bhīma in the Veṇīsaṃhāra, the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī were “concealed by means of improper occupations” (anucitārambhanibhṛtaṃ ; i. ii). But it is Draupadī whose occupation is most deeply bound up with impurity.48 This is obvious in connection with her “very dirty garment.” But it is also to be perceived in her tasks as a Sairandhrī.
22The term Sairandhrī, following van Buitenen’s insightful discussion, is the feminine form of the name of a low caste people, variously sanskritized.49 Thus when Kīcaka declares his passion for her, Draupadī can try to discourage him by telling him she is “a low caste Sairandhrī, an abhorrent hairdresser” (vihīnavarṇāṃ sairandhrīṃ bībhatsāṃ keśakārikām ; 4.13.13). The Southern Recension amends this verse to specify that the “low caste” is the “fourth” (caturtha), that is, the Śūdra caste (notes to 4.13.13).50 But Manu and other classificatory texts (see Mahābharāta 13.48.19-20) hint at more complex and still lower caste associations.51 In this light van Buitenen suggests deriving the name from śilindhra, silindhra, “mushroom”, “also a borrowed word in Sanskrit”, and proposes “that the Sairandhras might be a tribe of mushroom gatherers or eaters”.52 As silīndhra, silandha, sīlandhra also refers to a kind of fish, however, it might be preferable to suggest a tribe of fisherfolk. This would present a deep irony, as the Pāṇḍavas are of course hidden in the kingdom of Matsya, “Fish”.53 But if such etymologies are guesswork, it is worth noting that in South India the term Sairandhrī, with the meaning “prostitute,” is cited as the etymological explanation for the name – given variously as Sindollu, Chindiwandlu, Sindi, Sindhuvallu – of a group of courtesans and actors among the outcaste Mādigas.54
23Cutting and dressing hair are, of course, low caste occupations. To take a modern instance, the hairdresser for women at Panjabi marriages and funerals is the barber’s wife.55 Such handling of another’s hair naturally involves the handling of impurities. As already indicated, ritual washing and dressing of women’s hair occurs after times of pollution, including sexual intercourse and menstruation. According to Hershman, in such women’s rituals female hair “becomes in abstract terms a symbol of female sexuality or more concretely of vaginal menstrual blood”, a correlation made explicit when Punjabi women refer to ‟ the regular pollution of menstruation […] as syr nòṇi (having to wash the head)”.56 It is thus not surprising that Draupadī’s reduced status calls forth the variety of associations with low caste that were discussed above.57
24It would thus appear that if, as Bhīma says in the Veṇīsaṃhāra, the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī conceal themselves through “improper occupations”, it is Draupadī’s occupation that is the most improper and impure. It is surely the only one with Śūdra and even outcaste connotations.58 One might thus suggest that it is through her that certain aspects – particularly those involving impurity – of the Pāṇḍavas dīkṣā-like rebirth are given shape and direction. For example, while Arjuna (in this same parvan) sees to the marriage of Abhimanyu and Uttarā, which will eventually lead to the “rebirth” of the Pāṇḍava line, Draupadī concerns herself with impurities that affect the rebirth of the Pāṇḍavas themselves. One will thus note that whereas Arjuna brings Uttarā multicolored garments with which to dress her “dolls” (4.35.22-23) – an image of the baby, Parīkṣit, whom she will eventually bear to Arjuna’s son –, Draupadī’s garment is a “very dirty black”, If the former garments represent the amnion and chorion as auspicious dīkṣā-related symbols of rebirth,59 Draupadī’s black garment would represent the necessary taking-on of impurity and death as the precondition for that rebirth. Similarly, when Virāṭa strikes the disguised Yudhiṣṭhira, and Draupadī catches the blood from his nosebleed in a golden bowl (4.63.46-47), she prevents the Pāṇḍavas from using their power destructively against the kingdom of Virāṭa, the very “womb” of their rebirth. Says Yudhiṣṭhira to Virāṭa : “Surely, if that blood from my nose had fallen on the earth, you and your kingdom, O king, would undoubtedly have perished.”60 This scene evokes myths of the Raktabīja type, where blood touching the ground leads to the release of destructive forces. Like Kālī or other representatives of the Goddess who prevent disaster by drinking up drops of blood before they touch the ground,61 Draupadī prevents disaster by catching them in a bowl. But also, by implication, in preventing the destruction of Matsya, she prevents the Pāṇḍavas from revealing their identities too soon, which would terminate the possibility of their rebirth.
25Both as hairdresser and blood-catcher, Draupadī thus turns her contact with impurities to her own and her husbands’ advantage. But the scene which gives such themes their fullest play is the killing of Kīcaka. This tormentor, although Queen Sudeṣṇā’s brother, is a sūta by caste, and thus there is a resonance of association with Karṇa, a figure whom Draupadī already holds in high enmity for his role in ordering her disrobing, and whom, at least according to the Northern Recension, she rejected as a suitor on the very grounds that he was a low caste sūta (see 1.178.17 and 1827*).62 Let us look at the episode primarily from the standpoint of Draupadī’s hair : its association with the themes of purity and impurity, and its evocation of further themes connected with the Goddess.
26Frustrated by his efforts to seduce Sairandhrī-Draupadī in his own quarters, Kīcaka chases her into King Virāṭa’s men’s hall. There, in front of Bhīma and Yudhiṣṭhira who are incapacitated by their disguises, he seizes her by her “mass of hair” (keśapakṣa ; 4.15.7) and kicks her. “Her eyes blood red with wrath, having loosed her hair” (keśān muktvā ; 15.36), she rushes off to remonstrate with Sudeṣṇā, and then goes back to bathe. Keśān muktvā, “having loosed her hair”, is problematic.63 I take it Draupadī spreads or shakes loose her already unbound hair (her keśapakṣa ; earlier hidden beneath her black garment, perhaps now revealed for the first time?) before her husbands and Virāṭa as a sign of outrage and additional defilement. The Southern Recension supports this inference with an alternative line : “having held together her loose hair which was sprinkled with blood” (keśān pramuktān saṃyaṃya rudhireṇa samukśitān ; 4.338*, line 2, apud 4.16.37) – Kīcaka’s kick, according to the Southern Recension, having made her mouth bleed (mukhād rudhiram āsravat ; 4.309*, line 3, apud 4.15.7). One is reminded here of the sexual connotations of blood in the hair discussed by Hershman : foiled rape in this instance turns into hair sprinkled with oral blood. But if there is not precise and evident consistency in every epic reference to Draupadī’s hair, one can at least find it in her actions. When she goes back to her quarters, eagerly wishing for Kīcaka’s death, she purifies herself by washing her limbs and garments (gātrāṇi vāsasī caiva prakṣālya salilena sā) (4.16.2). And again, after Bhīma has slain Kīcaka, Draupadī – “freed” (mokṣitā) by Bhīma (4.23.11) – goes back to the city and washes her limbs and garments (gātrāṇi vāsasī caiva prakṣālya salilena sā) (23.12). The striking thing in these precisely repeated verses is that her two purificatory baths do not involve any reference to the washing of her hair.
27In Bhīma and Draupadī’s collaboration to bring about the death of Kīcaka there are also further echoes of the mythology of the Hindu Goddess64 In all this, one must understand that Bhīma and Draupadī are acting as one. As Biardeau puts it, when he slays Kīcaka, Bhīma is “le bras de la déesse.”65 This is not the place to underscore the many affinities between Bhīma and the Goddess throughout the epic.66 It must suffice to note that when Kīcaka goes back to his apartments to doll up for his expected nighttime tryst with Draupadī, “the fool was exceedingly delighted, not realizing that it was Death (mṛtyu) in the form of a Sairandhrī.”67 And when he finally arrives at the trysting place to fulfill his desires, finding Bhīma “lying there in the bed, the sūta [Kīcaka] touched Death (mṛtyu) [who was] burning with wrath that was born from the insult to Kṛṣṇā.”68 Since they meet in the dark, it is not clear whether Kīcaka’s humorous failure to realize that he has not met Draupadī but Bhīma is due to his lust, or to Bhīma being dressed in women’s clothes, as he is in South Indian dramatizations of the scene.69 But in any case Bhīma is acting as and for Draupadī, and both are identified with Death, Mṛtyu, as she is envisioned and touched by Kīcaka. In the epic, Mṛtyu is a Goddess, a form evoking Kālī and Durgā as they break into the Hindu literary tradition.70 For Death to appear to Kīcaka “in the form of a Sairandhrī” would seem an unmistakable evocation of Kālī, the wild Goddess with the dishevelled hair.
5. Draupadī’s call for war
28Having emerged from exile and concealment and found the Kauravas unwilling to return to them their share of the kingdom, the Pāṇḍavas – about to send Kṛṣṇa to negotiate with Duryodhana – meet with their allies and debate strategy. A surprisingly conciliatory speech by Bhīma, urging Kṛṣṇa to appease Duryodhana, sets off a chain of reactions which concludes and culminates with Draupadī’s call for war and revenge. Rebuking her husbands, she urges Kṛṣṇa to turn his full wrath on the Kauravas, and continues with the following words and gestures :
Having said this, the dark-eyed, large-hipped one took with her left hand her mass of hair – softly gathered back and curled at the ends, very beautiful, deep black, perfumed with fine scents, endowed with every good mark, glossy like a great cobra. And the lotus-eyed one of elephant gait, having approached the lotus-eyed one, her eyes filled with tears, Kṛṣṇā to Kṛṣṇa said this word : “This [hair] pulled by the hand of Duhśāsana is to be remembered by you at all times, O lotus-eyed one, when seeking peace with the foe… [She adds that if her husbands won’t avenge her, her father, brothers, and sons will.] Unless I see Duhśāsana’s dark arm cut off and covered with dust, what peace will there be in my heart ?71”
29In its interplay between eyes and names, the passage is rich in evoking the mythological and theological dimensions of the relationship between Kṛṣnā-Draupadī and Kṛṣṇa-Vāsudeva.72 Draupadī, Śrī incarnate, would seem to show an inauspicious and destructive side of the Goddess when she left-handedly brandishes her cobra-like mass of black hair and demands the black arms that seized it. But most interesting, this is the closest the epic comes to attributing to Draupadī one of her popular vows. As with the vow demanding the blood from Duryodhana’s thigh to anoint her hair, the condition of her hair is directly connected with a call for revenge concerning one of her tormentor’s (here Duḥśāsana’s) limbs. It is unlikely that the well known popular vows concerning the blood from Duryodhana’s thigh or from Duḥśāsana’s chest could derive from this speech. But the epic poets give expression to much the same tone, and to a parallel, probably sexual symbolism.73
6. The rebraiding
30The war over, Yudhiṣṭhira’s self-recriminations begun, Bhīma consoles him : “By good luck, the sinful Duryodhana has been slain with all his followers in battle. By good luck, you have gone the way of Draupadī’s mass of hair.”74
31This passage establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that Draupadī has worn her hair loose since the dice match. The Ganguli-Roy and Dutt translations of the epic both seem to recognize this, with Ganguli making it explicit in a footnote. Yet these two translators have missed some of the verse’s simple precision. Ganguli takes keśapakṣasya […] tvam padavīṃ gataḥ as “you have attained to the condition of Draupadī’s locks”, and notes : “i.e., thou hast been restored to the normal condition. Draupadi had kept her locks dishevelled since the day they had been seized by Duhsasana. After the slaughter of the Kurus, those locks were bound up as before, or restored to their normal condition”.75 But padavīm is more simply a “way”, as when Nakula says that the Pāṇḍavas enter the forest “following the way of Draupadī” (draupadyāḥ padavīṃ caran ; 2.68.45b). And Draupadī’s keśapakṣa is not simply her “locks” but, as we have seen, the “mass of hair” that has been seized by Duḥśāsana and Kīcaka and brandished at Kṛṣṇa. Thus, while the passage certainly alludes to Draupadī’s “vow”, it does so more pointedly than Ganguli has realized. In “following the way of Draupadī’s mass of hair”, the Pāṇḍavas have moved from the depths of defilement to rebirth, from rebirth to revenge, and from revenge to coronation. For in the rebinding and anointing of Draupadī’s hair the latter is implicit : she is “Royal Prosperity” or “Sovereignty” – Rājaśrī – incarnate, and her anointing represents the restoration of Yudhiṣṭhira’s access to sovereignty.76 In this connection it is all the more interesting that the “good luck” attendant upon “following the way of Draupadī’s mass of hair” is mentioned along with the “good luck” of Duryodhana’s death. Again, one can only wonder how deeply, and with what other themes in mind, the poets mean to connect the death of Duryodhana with the binding up of Draupadī’s hair.
Binding and loosing
32It is plain that Draupadī’s hair, as a powerful symbol, is not exhausted by either of the two literary contexts so far discussed. One must reach deeper into Indian culture to appreciate what the Mahābhārata and the Veṇīsaṃhāra are themselves evoking through the use of this theme.
33The closing scene of the Veṇīsaṃhāra opens some surprising vistas. Having just recognized Bhīma, begored after killing Duryodhana, Yudhiṣṭhira asks him, “What else remains ?” “A very great remainder”, says Bhīma ; “I will just bind together Pāñcālī’s mass of hair, dragged down by Duḥśāsana, with this hand moistened with the blood of Duryodhana”. “May you go,” replies Yudhiṣṭhira ; “let the tapasvinī experience the great festival of the tying of the hair”.77 The reminder of Draupadī’s tapas is impressive. But why a “great festival” (mahotsava) ? One does well to recall the South Indian village ceremonies in which the festive tying up of the Goddess Draupadī’s hair not only marks the end of the war (with Duryodhana’s sacrificial death), but is a necessary precondition for the firewalk. In both cases, the festive aspect is related ritually to the consecration and coronation of Yudhiṣṭhira.78 And one is reminded further of the three queens unbinding and rebinding their hair, slapping their thighs, and circumambulating the horse in the Aśvamedha just prior to the chief queen’s (mahiṣī’s) under-cover sexual union with the victim, an act essential to the ritual establishment of the king’s sovereignty.79 One may thus posit that the unbinding and eventual rebinding of Draupadī’s hair resonates with themes of royal ritual. But why is it so especially festive to her? And why the blood?
34One must go back to the matter of impurity. As we have already seen, it is the Mahābhārata itself which indicates that Draupadī’s thirteen year dishevelment represents a condition of extended menstrual defilement. Ethnographic evidence has also been cited to the effect that washing of the hair is an “absolutely crucial” part of the ritual bath that ends the period of menstrual confinement. One must, however, understand here that conventional notions of menstrual blood as “defiling” are somewhat one-sided. To the woman, at least, menstrual blood is also purifying. There are numerous statements in the Dharmaśāstra Saṃhitās to the effect that women are cleansed by the menstrual flow.80 And the same point is made by Hershman : Punjabi women “are not happy unless they have a strong menstrual flow and they eat ’hot’ foods in order to speed this. As Punjabi women say : ’the dirty must be bled out so that we can become clean again.’”81 This purifying function of menstrual blood can be perceived in numerous myths where the sins of various male divinities are deflected onto women (in combination with such other entities as Waters, Trees, and Earth), thence to be absolved through the women’s menstruation.82 One should also keep in mind that female “blood” is thought to combine with male “seed” in the act of conception, and thus to be indispensable to the life process.83 It is thus essential for a woman’s period to go through its natural course, and especially, while it is doing so, for her to be unmolested.
35Now, when Duḥśāsana drags Draupadī by the hair into the sabhā, this natural course is interrupted, and Duḥśāsana’s act is a molestation in probably more senses than one. As Hershman points out, there are close symbolic connections between women’s head hair and female genitals.84 The pulling of the hair, with all the sexual insults that attend it in the Mahābhārata (including Karṇa’s order to disrobe Draupadī and Duryodhana’s bared thigh), is thus a form of sexual assault, and a symbolic prelude to rape. In this connection, it is instructive to see how the Atri Saṃhitā covers the case of a woman raped by a Mleccha ( “barbarian”) : “A woman, once she has been possessed by a Mleccha or an evil-doer, may purify herself by the Prājāpatya and the menstrual flow. If she is taken by force, or else is herself imposed on by another, a woman, once she has been possessed, purifies by the Prājāpatya.”85 Duḥśāsana, an incarnate Rākṣasa like all the hundred Kauravas, fills quite ably the Mleccha, evil-doer role. It is most curious that the purification for such an assault is not only the completion of a menstrual cycle, but the Prājāpatya vow, a most difficult penance which “lasts for twelve days”.86 Draupadī’s twelve years of exile as a tapasvinī are probably an extension of this or some such vow. But this puts her dishevelment into a new light. If her vow responds to a rape-like defilement, then it represents not simply an extension of menstrual impurity, but an extended condition of interrupted menstrual purification. 87 And the blood combed into her hair, at least when it comes from Duryodhana’s thigh, must be at least in part a reversed image of sexual revenge. The interruption of female menstruation is “purified” by a ritual hair bath not with water, but with the “strong flow” of male blood ; blood, moreover, which comes from her chief tormentor’s right thigh, a seat of virility and of phallic associations.88 Yudhiṣṭhira’s words in the Veṇīaṃhāra – “Let the tapasvinī experience the great festival of the tying of the hair” – thus call for the appropriate completion of Draupadī’s purification.
36If the twelve years of Draupadī’s exile thus disclose the purificatory, tapasic dimension of her vow, it is, however, still the thirteenth year – spent incognito – that reveals her most “hidden” nature. Though she is Śrī incarnate, and thus directly affiliated with Viṣṇu (normally regarded as Śrī’s husband), she is also Kṛṣṇā ( “the Dark Woman”), a name which in the Mahābhārata certainly connects her with Kṛṣṇa-Vāsudeva, but also with Mṛtyu, “Death”, whom we have recognized in the epic as a prefiguration of Durgā and Kālī. The name Kṛṣṇā, in fact, comes to be a common epithet for these latter two Goddesses, as in the Mahābhārata’s two apparently interpolated Durgāstavas (4, App. I, 4, D, line 11 ; 6, App. I, 1, line 17) and in the Purānas.89 Its usage for Draupadī is instructive. When she emerges, dark (syama ; 1.155.42a), from the sacrificial fire altar, a disembodied voice announces : “Best of all women, this Dark Woman (kṛṣnā) will lead the kṣatriya caste to its destruction” (sarvayoṣidvarā kṛṣṇa kṣayaṃ kṣatraṃ ninīṣati ; 155, 44cd). Thus, while ostensibly it is because of her complexion (varṇaṭah), it is also implicitly because of her destructive role that she is given at birth the name Kṛṣṇa (155.50). This “dark” and destructive side of Draupadī is further compounded by certain affiliations with Śiva.90 She is thus not simply an image of Śrī-Lakṣmī, but of the full “vision” of the Hindu Goddess. To Kīcaka, as we have seen, she is “Death (Mṛtyu) in the form of a Sairandhrī”, and thus an epic intimation – or to be on the safe side, prefiguration – of Kālī herself.
37Kālī is, of course, the exemplary Goddess of the dishevelled hair.91 The Mahābhārata provides rather equivocal evidence as to recognizing her, but the term kālī, “black,” is used adjectivally to describe the Goddess Kālarātri in a crucial passage.92 While Aśvatthāman, possessed by Śiva, slays the sleeping remnant of the Pāṇḍava army, Kālarātri – the “Night of Time” or “Night of Death” – is the form taken by the Goddess as the very embodiment of this night of destruction. The dying warriors thus envision her : “Black, with bloody mouth and eyes, with red garlands and unguents, wearing a single red garment, noose in hand, [in the form of] Śikhaṇḍinī, standing there smiling”.93 If the passage does not explicitly identify Kālarātri as Kālī, it describes a Goddess sufficiently like her to eliminate any other contestants, and Kālarātri is a common form of Durgā and Kālī in later texts.94 But the important thing is that Kālarātri- “Kālī” is connected with Draupadī. Nowhere is this more explicit than in the Draupadī firewalking cult. It is understood that on the night of her vengeance against Duryodhana, Draupadī takes on Kālīrūpa, “the form of Kālī”, appearing not only with dishevelled hair but in some cases with eighteen arms.95 The Mahābhārata itself does not explicitly identify the “black” (kṛṣṇā) Draupadī who will lead all the kṣatriyas to destruction with the “black” (kālī) Kālarātri who actually does so. But there are connections. Kālarātri appears directly after Aśvatthāman has killed Draupadī’s five sons and four brothers, one of whom – Śikhaṇḍin – is then immediately evoked in Kālarātri’s epithet Śikhaṇḍinī.96 One should also recall that when Kīcaka goes to meet Death, Mṛtyu, in the form of a Sairandhrī, it is in the dead of night. But it is the Veṇīsaṃhāra that ties all such themes together, through the words of Bhīma, at the very point where he rebraids Draupadī’s hair : “Honored lady, dishevelled by Duḥśāsana, let this braid – the Night of Time of the family of Dhrtarāstra – now be tied up”,97 Draupadī’s dishevelled hair is thus itself an image of Kālarātri, the Night of Time, the night of the dissolution (pralaya) of the universe.
38This theme of “dissolution” brings our discussion to a close. Dishevelled hair connotes “dissolution” in several metaphoric senses. In poems to Kṛṣṇa, the unbraiding of Rādhā’s hair connotes dissolution in love.98 As has already been seen, dishevelled hair is connected with the temporary dissolution of marriage ties in seclusion during menstruation. And it also connotes the dissolution of such ties even more explicitly at a husband’s death, at widowhood. A most vivid expression of this latter theme occurs in the Cilappatikāram, the Tamil epic, when the heroine Kaṇṇaki goes before the king of Madurai to confront him with the injustice he has committed in ordering the execution of her husband :
Her lily eyes streamed with water ;
in her hand, a single anklet [proving her husband’s innocence] ;
her form untenanted by life.
What evil have I done that I saw her,
her black hair spread like a forest?
The king of Maturai beheld her
and terrified he died.99
39This is of course only the beginning of the destructions wrought by this dishevelled “Goddess of Chastity”, As to Draupadī, both the “dissolutions” of menstrual separation and widowhood apply during her and her husbands’ forest exile and concealment. Throughout the thirteen years, she retains the impurity of menstruation compounded by the violatory touch of Duḥśāsana ; and having seen her kingly husbands treated as slaves, she, a princess, Royal Prosperity incarnate, is symbolically a widow until they are reenthroned.
40But beyond, or intertwined, with all these themes are what we may call the ultimate cosmological and theological themes of dissolution. We are back to the compound so persistantly invoked by Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa : the keśāmbarākarṣanam, “the pulling of the garments and the hair These two form a significant diptych, one which might be called the “two intangibles” – the garments and the hair – intangible, that is, in both the senses “not to be touched” and “theologically subtle”.
41One will recall that in the Mahābhārata it is not Duryodhana (as it is in the Veṇīsaṃhāra) who orders the disrobing of Draupadī, but Karṇa. As I have argued elsewhere,100 the disrobing scene suggests most basically, and probably most originally, a mythology connecting Draupadī with the Earth.101 Karṇa’s identification with his father Surya, the Sun God, is a theme which the epic poets never tire of reiterating. Their choice of Karṇa to order Draupadī’s disrobing is not arbitrary. The relationship between Draupadī aud Karṇa is, as we have seen, one of continued opposition. Their incompatibility is in fact dictated by a cosmological impossibility : a union of the Sun and the Earth. Paradoxically, speaking cosmologically, one could say that the Earth is for all to share (as Draupadī is by the five Pāṇḍavas) except the Sun. Karṇa’s command to strip Draupadī bare (2.61.38) is thus an image of the “occasional” (naimittika) pralaya, the “dissolution” of the three worlds. Were Duḥśāsana to succeed in fulfilling Karṇa’s command, Draupadī would be denuded like the Earth prior to its combustion, dessicated by the pralaya’s seven suns (sprung from the single Sūrya) and, as several texts put it, “bare like the back of a tortoise”.102 It is, of course, significant that in ordering Draupadī’s disrobing, Karṇa does not touch Draupadī or her garments himself. The miracle of the sarees thus symbolizes that between the yugas, where the Mahābhārata story is set, the Earth holds the power of her own renewal. Or, from another angle, except at the time of the naimittika pralaya, the Earth’s power to restore her garments is inexhaustible.
42If the disrobing connects Draupadī with a mythology of the Earth, the dishevellment of her hair evokes still “deeper” identities of the Goddess. A triveṇi is not only a type of three-plaited braid, but a confluence of rivers – in actuality of two rivers but mythologically of three. The model triveṇi is at Prayāga, confluence of the Gaṅgā, Yamunā, and the “underground” Sarasvatī. Here at the very point where the three rivers are “braided” together, one finds the greatest purity on earth. This tīrtha is said to outlast the pralaya (Matsya Parāṇa III. 4-10), which would seem to imply that it will never be “unbraided.” Moreover, Prayāga is the exemplary tīrtha connected with ritual hair cutting for men and widows, and even in some controversial instances for married women who offer their own veṇī-s into the triveṇi with the mantra : “May all my sins be destroyed by this offering of my braided hair into the veṇī […]”.103 The three rivers are of course Goddesses. One will recall Draupadī’s dishevelled hair also being compared to “a river run wild” (3.12.17), and think of the Gaṅgā’s wildness being tamed and channelled by its passage through the dishevelled hair of Śiva.104 Connections between the Goddess and the waters are also drawn in festivals of the Goddess’s menstruation, a condition which probably further evokes her dishevellment. In the Kongu region of Tamilnadu, such a festival occurs on the eighteenth of the month of Āṭi (July-August), when the overflow of the Kaverī river is identified with the Goddess’s period, and correlated with the victory of the Pāṇḍavas at the end of the eighteen day Mahābhārata war.1051f the Goddess in such festivals is Pārvatī or Kālī,106 it is clear how her regulated overflow is associated with themes of bounty and victory. In Draupadī’s case, however, it is precisely the violation of this regularity that calls forth images of unbounded dissolution. The untying of Draupadī’s braid represents the potential untying of the universe. For the universe is itself a braid, composed of the three guṇas or strands of prakṛti, nature. Here, however, it is not the naimittika pralaya that is evoked, but the prākṛta pralaya, the very dissolution of nature (prakṛti) which unravels all seven worlds and occurs after a thousand naimittika pralaya-s.107 Mythologically, this pralaya is the “Night of Time”, Kālarātri, with whom Draupadī’s hair is directly compared in the Veṇīsaṃhāra. Or, in more familiar terms, one thinks of Śiva whose own dishevelled hair not only channels the Gaṅgā but runs wild during his dance of dissolution, and finally of Kālī herself as the dishevelled Goddess of death and destruction.
43By regaining her garments, Draupadī thus shows that the Earth is inexhaustible, and the Kauravas cannot truly seize her or it. But by wearing her hair dishevelled for thirteen years, Draupadī also shows that the full dissolution of the universe is at least metaphorically pending should her husbands, with the help of Lord Kṛṣṇa, not regain the sovereignty and restore dharma on earth.
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Notes de bas de page
1 See discussion in A. B. Gajendragadkar (ed. and trans.), The Veṇīsaṃhāra of Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa. (1933 ; 3rd. ed. Bombay, New and Second Hand Book Stall, n.d.), part I, “Veṇīsaṃhāra. A Critical Study” ; part II, “Text with Translation” ; part III, “Critical and Explanatory Notes”, pp. 1-16 ; Francine Bourgeois (ed. and trans.), Veṇīsaṃhāra. Drame Sanskrit (Paris, Institut de Civilisation Indienne, 1971), p. 1, proposes the “eighth century”.
2 See Amarakavi Subramanya Bharati, The Vow of Panchali, trans. H. K. Valam (1957 ; rev. ed. Mylapore, Mohana Trust Pathippagam, 1972), p. 124 (here it is Duryodhana and Duḥśāsana’s blood mixed).
3 For summaries of this episode in Villiputtūr (hair tied at death of Duryodhana) and Kumāra Vyāsa (blood of Duḥśāsana), see M. V. Subramanian. The Mahabharatha Story. Vyasa and Variations (Madras, Higginbotham’s, 1967), p. 90 ; on Ezhuthachan’s treatment, see Krishna Chaitanya, A History of Malayalam Literature (New Delhi, Orient Longmans, 1971), pp. 85, 139-140 (Duḥśāsana’s blood). Martha Ashton has described the Yakṣagāna episode to me orally. The Kathakali play “Duryodhana Vadha” (Duḥśasana’s blood) and the Terukkūttu drama mentioned below (Duryodhana’s blood) I have seen myself.
4 For an initial synthesis of my research on the Draupadī cult, and for a companion piece to this article also exploring relations between cult and epic, see Hiltebeitel, “Sexuality and Sacrifice : Convergent Subcurrents in the Firewalking Cult of Draupadī”, to appear in Fred W. Clothey (ed.), Continuity and Change in South Asian Religion (New Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal, ca 1980) ; idem, “Draupadī’s Garments”, Indo-Iranian Journal, XX (1980 a) 2, 97-112. Fieldwork (1975 and 1977) on the Draupadī cult was made possible by grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the National Endowment for the Humanities, for which I express my gratitude.
5 Gajendragadkar, part I : 21 ; in agreement see G. V. Devasthali (ed. and trans.), Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa’s Veṇīsaṃhāra (Bombay, D. M. Tilak, 1953), P- 214. In addition to Bourgeois (see n. i), I have also consulted M. R. Kale (ed. and trans.), Veṇīsaṃhāra of Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa (Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1977) ; both are silent on this issue. After completing this article I learned of Daniel Dubuissons, “La déesse chevelue et la reine coiffeuse. Recherches sur un thfeme epique de l’Inde ancienne”, Journal Asiatique, 166 (1978), 291-310. His attempt to interpret Draupadī’s “hairdresser” disguise through Indo-European comparisons – stressing links between hair and vegetation – is intended as a completion of the Wikander-Dumézil interpretation of the Pāṇḍavas’ disguises (see below, n. 58). I am unconvinced by this article, which overlooks Dumézil’s equally significant insights into the relation between the Pāṇḍavas’ disguises and the caste structure, which confuses hair-pulling and baldness (see p. 298), and which fails to take into account the epic narrative (and wider religious and cultural) context in which the theme is expressed.
6 This assumption owes much to Madeleine Biardeau, whose work will be frequently cited below.
7 pāñcāli, na khalu mayi jīvati saṃhartavyā duḥśāsanavilulitā veṇirātmapāṇinā (6.38). All Veṇīsaṃhāra citations are from Gajendragadkar, part II. All Mahābhārata citations will be from the Poona Critical Edition. Translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own.
8 Thus see 6.42 : Bhīma says, “Let this braid, dishevelled by Duḥśāsana, ... be tied up” (saṃyamyatāṃ duḥśasanaviluliteyaṃ veṇī) ; 6.35 : “she whose braid was dishevelled from the pulling of the hair by Duḥśāsana” (duḥsāsanena kacakarṣaṇabhinnamauliḥ) ; 2.25 : “she whose garments and hair were [both] dishevelled, pulled by the hand of Duḥśāsana” (duḥśāsanena hastākṛṣṭavilolakeśavasanā pāñcālī) – translating similarly, see Gajendragadkar, part III : 126-127, with explanation.
9 mama ājñāyā duḥśāsanena hastākṛṣṭavilolakeśavasanā pāncālī ; 2.25 (cf. n. 8 above).
10 Most explicitly at 6.4. where Duryodhana is the “base cause of the great sin (s) of pulling the hair and garments of the queen” (devīkeśāmbarākarṣaṇamahāpātakapradhānahetur) ; similarly he is “the wind for removing the garments and hair of Kṛṣṇā” (kṛṣṇākeśottarīyavyapanayanamarut ; 5. 26) ; “a great sinner (for causing) the pulling of the hair and garments of the Pāñcāla king’s daughter” (pāñcālarājatanayākeśāmba- rākarṣaṇamahāpātakin ; 6.7) ; “a great sinner (for causing) the pulling of the hair and garments of Draupadī” (draupadīkeśāmbarākarṣaṇamahāpātakin ; 3.47). Noting without comment Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa’s attribution of both commands to Duryodhana, see Gajendragadkar, part III : 163.
11 See Subramanian 1967 : 90.
12 See above, nn. 8-10, citing 2.25, 3.47, 5.26, 6.4, and 6.7. Cf. also 1.8 : Bhīma lamenting that the Kauravas still live “having dragged the hair and garments of the Pāṇḍavas’ wife” (ākṛṣya pāṇḍavavadhūparidhānakeśān) ; 4.1 : Duḥśasana as “he who dragged the hair and garments of the Pāṇḍavas’ wife” (pāṇḍavavadhūkeśāmbarākarṣiṇaḥ). It is worth noting that one or another modification of this basic compound is found in every act of the play, with two appearances in the last act. It is thus an important leitmotif.
13 Gajendragadkar, part I : 20 ; part III : 2.
14 Kale 1977 : 9, mistakenly says he does.
15 Act 1 is called Pratijñābhīma, “the Vow of Bhīma”, and in it Bhīma makes his gory vow (1.21). Cf. also Veṇīsaṃhāra 6.6 and 6.39, and, on the primacy of Bhīma’s role, Bourgeois 1971 : 5-6.
16 pāncālyā manyuvahniḥ sphuṭam upaśamitaprāya eva prasahya pronmuktaiḥ keśapāśair hatapatiṣu mayā kauravāntaḥpureṣu ; 6.8.
17 Gajendragadkar, part III : 3 ; cf. pp. 52-57 ; see also Devasthali 1953 : 236-237.
18 See Vaman Shivaram Apte, The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 3 vols. (Poona, Prasad Prakashan, 1957-1959), s.v. ekaveṇī ; Gajendragadkar also makes this clear : “hair tied in a single mass, [allowed] to hang loosely on their back, somewhat analogous to what they now do when bathed overhead, to allow their hair to get dried” (part 3 : 3) ; in English terms, more a pony tail than a braid.
19 This style is known in the Cilappatikāram. See Adigal, Prince Ilangô, Le Roman de l’Anneau. Trad, du tamoul par Alain Daniélou et R. S. Desikan (Paris, Gallimard, 1961 ; London 1965), pp. 36, 41, 57 of the English edition.
20 Gajendragadkar, part III : 3.
21 Rāmāyaṇa, Baroda Critical Edition. See also 5.17.18 ; 5.13.24 and notes ; 5.23.9 ; 5.26.17. Rāvaṇa has also seized her by the hair (3. 47.16). However, see Mahābhārata 3.265.25 (Rāmopākhyānam) : her veṇī is susaṃyatā, either ‟ well tied up” or ‟ well braided”. In an interesting context, Kaikeyī is an ekaveṇī with a “soiled garment” (malināmbarā ; Rām, 2, App. I, no. 8, lines 17-18) when she enters the ‟ chamber of wrath” (krodhāgāra) to demand Bharata’s enthronement and Rāma’s exile. She thus takes on a symbolic estrangement from her husband.
22 A. B. Gajendragadkar (ed. and trans.), The Abhijñāna-Śākuntala of Kālidāsa (Surat, The Popular Book Store, 1951), p. 185 ; she also wears “dusky garments” (vasane paridhūsare ; idem), on which see idem, pp. 519- 520, Gajendragadkar’s comments.
23 Franklin and Eleanor Edgerton (trans.), Kalidasa, The Cloud Messenger (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1964), p. 67 (stanza 90).
24 She is frequently said to be wearing a “mass of hair” (keiahasta : 1.21, 6.41 ; keśapāśa : 6.6, 6.42). On the sense of these terms and keśapakṣa as “mass of hair,” see Gajendragadkar part III : 57-58. Problematic verses include Draupadī being described as muktakeśī, ‟ loose haired” (6.33, 6.42) and a description of Duhśāsana ‟ touching Kṛṣṇā whose veṇī was loosed” (muktaveṇīm ; 1.19). On the latter, Gajendragadkar, part III : 3-4 (cf. pp. 52-54), takes veṇī as tri- or pan̄caveṇī. Would this not suggest that Duḥśāsana pulled hair that Draupadī had already loosened ?
25 Gajendragadkar, part III : 3.
26 E.g., in the Kathakali and Terukkūttu. Cf. the artist’s representations in the Poona Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata, Sabhāparvan facing p. 304, and Virāṭaparvan, facing pp. 67 and 272.
27 This detail, and an ample discussion of Rajasvalā-dharmāḥ, ‟ rules of menstruation”, is found in Pandurang Viman Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, 5 vols. (Poona, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1974), vol. II, part 2, pp. 802-805 : quote from p. 803, citing the earliest text, Taittirīya Saṃhitā 2.5.1 : see Arthur Berriedale Keith (trans.), The Veda of the Black Yajus School Entitled Taittirīya Saṃhitā, “Harvard Oriental Series”, vols. 18 and 19 (1914 ; repr. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1967), vol. I, p. 189. The hair-braiding prohibition is obviously related to similar prohibitions in the texts against spinning and making ropes.
28 Lawrence Babb, Walking on Flowers : A Hindu Festival Cycle (Singapore, Department of Sociology, 1974), p. 19 ; Subramanya Bharati 1972 : 125-126.
29 P. Hershman, “Hair, Sex and Dirt”, Man, IX (1974), 282-283 ; cf. Gabriella Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi, “Women’s Pollution Periods in Tamilnad (India)”, Anthropos, LXIX (1974), 128, and Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson, The Rites of the Twice Born (Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1971), p. 247. On hair symbolism more generally, see Charles Berg, The Unconscious Symbolism of Hair (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1951) ; Edmund R. Leach, “Magical hair”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, LXXXVIII (1958), 147-164 ; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “Religious Hair”, Man, VIII (1973), 100-103 ; Raymond Firth, Symbols Public and Private (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1973), pp. 262-298.
30 tathetyuktā tu sā devī sravannetrajalāvilā śoṇitāktaikavasanā muktakeśyabhiniryayau (2.70.9 ; see above, n. 7).
31 ekavastrā tu rudatī muktakeśī rajasvalā
śoṇitāktāṛdravasanā draupadī vākyam abravit
yatkṛte ’ham imām prāptā teṣāṃ varṣe caturdaśe
hatapatyo hatasutā hatabandhujanapriyāḥ
baṇdhuśoṇitadigdhāṅgyo muktakeśyo rajasvalāḥ
evaṃ kṛtodakā nāryaḥ pravekṣyanti gajāhvayam (2.71.18-20).
32 duḥśāsanakarotsṛṭavipvakīrṇaśiroruhā
pañcaparvatamadhyasthā nadīvākulatāṃ gatā
33 Draupadī’s tapas lasts through the war and is said by Duryodhana to have sustained the Pāṇḍavas’ victory (9.4.18 ; 58.10). Kāṣāyavasana are brownish-red or yellowish-red robes used by monks, and also in samnyāsa-entry and tantric dīkṣā rites ; see Jan Gonda, Change and Continuity in Indian Religion (The Hague, Mouton, 1965), pp. 379 and 436-437 ; cf. J. A. B. Van Buitenen (ed. and trans.), The Mahābhārata, 3 vols. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1973, 1975, 1978), vol. II, p. 676 ( “her ochre robe”).
34 Van Buitenen 1978, vol. Ill : 5-10 (quote from p. 8).
35 So she is depicted by the Poona Critical Edition artist ; see above, n. 26.
36 tataḥ keśān samutkṣipya vellitāgrān aninditān
jugūha dakṣiṇe pārśve mṛdūn asitalocanā
vāsaśca paridhāyaikaṃ kṛṣṇam sumalinaṃ mahat
kṛtvā veṣaṃ ca sairandhryaḥ kṛṣṇā vyacarad ārtavat (4.8.1-2).
37 Thus when she tells her husbands about her planned disguise, her identifying trait is to be “skilled in hairdressing” (kuśalā keśakarmaṇi ; 4.3.17 : one must note the possible pun here, in that Draupadī is, in a much wider sense, ‟ skilled in work that concerns hair”). In her job interview with Sudeṣṇā, she mentions hairdressing first, followed by skills in pounding unguents and weaving garlands (4.8.18).
38 Cf. also 2.60.23. One of Arjuna’s names is Kirīṭin, evoking his connections not only with Draupadī but with kingship : see Madeleine Biardeau, “Études de Mythologie Hindoue [henceforth EMH] (V)”, part II. Bhakti et avatāra (suite), Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient [henceforth (B. E. F. E. O.], t. LXV (Paris, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 1978), pp. 177-178. On Draupadī and Śrī, see Alf Hiltebeitel, The Ritual of Battle : Krishna in the Mahābhārata (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1976), pp. 62-68, 96-99, 144-147, 166-178, 223-224.
39 Cf. the “disguise” and “inverted” appearance of Śrī weeping and “having an impoverished share” (mandabhāgyā ; 1.189.13) discussed in Hiltebeitel 1976 : 170-175. On Śrī and auspiciousness, see Frédérique Marglin, “Devadasls as Specialists in Auspiciousness”. Paper presented to the Conference on Religion in South India (Chambersburg, Pa., May 1978).
40 There is also a possible allusion in the Critical Edition when Yudhisthira responds approvingly to Draupadī’s plan for her disguise with the words “Good, you are established in a vow of rectitude” (sādhu sādhvīvrate sthitā ; 4.3.19) – although the words could simply refer to Yudhisṭhira’s confidence in Draupadī’s chastity during this period when she will appear wanton and accessible to others. The name Vratacārinī is exceptional. Draupadī tells Sudeṣṇā her name as a Sairandhrī, when formerly employed by Draupadī, was Mālinī (“garland girl” : 4.8.19). She is never called this, however, but only Sairandhrī.
41 raṇayajñaḥ / tathā iti / catvāro vayam ṛtvijaḥ sa bhagavān karmopadeṣṭa hariḥ saṃgrāmādhvaradīkṣito narapatiḥ patnī gṛhītavratā (1.25).
42 This recognition is surprising, for, as we have seen, the Veṇīsaṃhāra gives central place to Bhīma’s role in the vow concerning Draupadī’s hair.
43 Thus a few Northern manuscripts (including Nīlakaṇṭha’s) and one Southern. The Critical Edition supplies the more regular parājitāḥ, “defeated”.
44 Cf. also the Northern interpolation after 4.12.11ab : ‟ they went about in the city of Virāṭa as if again born in the womb” (virāṭanagare ceruḥ punar garbhadhṛtā iva).
45 For the source of these ideas and further elaborations, see Biardeau, “EMH (IV)”, part II. Bhakti et avatāra, B. E. F. E. O., t. LXIII (1976 a), pp. 207-208 ; idem, 1978 : 149-157, 187-188 (n. 3) ; Biardeau, “Religions de l’lnde”, Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, Ve section, t. LXXXII (1974), fasc. III, p. 94 ; Biardeau and Malamoud, Le sacrifice dans l’lnde ancienne (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1976), p. 133. On correlations between dīkṣā, tapas, and vrata (“vow”), see Walter O. Kaelber, “Tapas, Birth, and Spiritual Rebirth in the Veda”, History of Religions, XV (1976), 257-277 ; Gonda 1965 : 319, 326, 340-341, 381.
46 There is a growing scholarship on this “sacrifice of battle” theme. In addition to Hiltebeitel 1976, and Biardeau (1976 a and b ; 1978), see also Heino Gehrts, Mahābhārata. Das Geschehen und seine Bedeutung (Bonn, Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1975).
47 On precautions and themes concerning danger, death, impurity and purification during the dīkṣā, see Gonda 1965 : 339, 358-60, 371-372 ; W. Caland and V. Henry, L’Agniṣṭoma, description complète de la forme normale du Sacrifice du Soma dans le culte védique (Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1906), p. 22 ; Walter O. Kaelber, “The ‘Dramatic’ Element in Brāhmanic Initiation : Symbols of Death, Danger, and Difficult Passage”, History of Religions, XVIII (1978), 57-65.
48 I reserve discussion of the five brothers on this and other points, and of the ajñāta period as a whole, for treatment elsewhere.
49 Van Buitenen 1978, vol. III : 8 : other forms include sairamdhra, sariṃdha, sairiḍya, sairitya, sairidya, sairiṃdhya, and sairimdhra ; van Buitenen sensibly rejects the etymology siram-dhra.
50 The Southern Recension also refers to a Sairandhrī jāti, or “subcaste” (4.94* line 6, cited above).
51 Manu 10.32 identifies the Sairandhra as the offspring of a dasyu father and an āyogavī mother : a dasyu is bom outside the four varṇas (see Manu 10.45), and Āyogavas are “carpenters” (10.48) born from Śūdra fathers and Vaiśyā mothers (10.12).
52 Van Buitenen 1978, vol. III : 9.
53 On the symbolism of fish in connection with the kingdom of Matsya, see some very subtle insights of Biardeau 1978 : 96-99.
54 P. K. Nambiar (ed.), Census of India, 1971, vol. II, part V-B, series 19, Tamilnadu. Ethnographic Notes. Scheduled Tribes of Tamilnadu (Delhi, Controller of Publications, 1975), p. 284 [quoting an extract on Mādigas from Syed Siraj al Hassan, Castes and Tribes of H. E. H. The Nizam’s Dominions, vol. I (Bombay 1920), pp. 409-420, which is unavailable to me] ; Edgar thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, 7 vols. (Madras, Government Press, 1909), vol. IV, p. 315.
55 Hershman 1974 : 281, 285 ; on the widespread impurity of barbers in India, and on their low (but not “untouchable”) caste ranking, see Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus. The Caste System and its Implications (Paris, 1966 ; London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1970), pp. 48-49, 57-58.
56 Hershman 1974 : 282-286.
57 Also Duryodhana, upon winning her in the dice match, says “let her sweep the house” (saṃmārjataṃ veśma ; 2.59.1). Choosing to be a Sairandhrī, however, gives her certain options beyond those of a sweeper, for, as she says, Sairandhrīs, though “unprotected in the world” (arakṣitā loke ; 4.3.16), can move about freely and set limits to the tasks they will accept : see, for Draupadī, 4.8.27-31, and the similar conditions Damayantī imposes when she too disguises herself as a Sairandhrī (3.62.37-40).
58 Biardeau has recognized this in a brief note, where she speaks of Draupadī going through “une periode d’impureté” in which “elle est comme ‘intouchable’”. Cf. Biardeau 1976 a : 207, n. 1 ; 1978 : 187, n. 2. Stig Wikander and Georges Dumézil have perceived that the brothers’ disguises are differentiated according to the three “twice-born” castes : see Wikander, “La légende des Pāṇḍava et la substructure mythique du Mahābhārata” (trans. Georges Dumézil), in Dumézil, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, IV : Explication de textes indiens et latins (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1948), pp. 48-49 ; Dumézil, Mythe et épopée, I : L’Idéologie des trois fonctions dans les épopées des peuples indo-européens (Paris, Gallimard, 1968), pp. 70-73, 91.
59 See Gehrts 1975 : 206-207, 224-225 ; Hiltebeitel 1980, n. 38 ; Biardeau 1978 : 197.
60 yadi hyetad pated bhūmau rudhiram mama nastatah sarāṣṭras tvam mahārāja vinaśyethā na saṃśayaḥ (4.64.68).
61 See Devi Māhātmyam 8.40-63, and Hiltebeitel, “Rāma and Gilgamesh : the Sacrifices of the Water Buffalo and the Bull of Heaven”, History of Religions, XX (1980 b), 193, 200-211.
62 On Kīcaka and Karṇa, see Biardeau 1975-1976 : 176 ; idem 1978 ; 17.
63 Thus Van Buitenen (1978 : 50) : “undid her hair”.
64 In addition to what is discussed below, cf. the efforts – which the Goddess turns against their messengers – of Śumbha and Niśumbha to have Durgā. dragged to them by the hair to fulfill their lust (Devī Māhātmyam 5.121-7.20).
65 Biardeau 1974 : 96.
66 See Biardeau as just cited, and also, on his birth, 1976 a : 231-236, 250.
67 … bhṛśam harṣapariplutaḥ
sairandhrīrūpiṇaṃ mūḍho mṛtyuṃ taṃ nāvabuddhavān (4.21.19).
68 śayānaṃ śayane tatra mṛtyuṃ sūtaḥ parāmṛśat
jajvalyamānaṃ kopena kṛṣṇādharṣaṇajena ha (4.21.42).
69 See Martha Bush Ashton and Bruce Christie, Yakṣagāna. A Dance Drama of India (New Delhi, Abhinav Publications, 1977), p. 43. Bhīma also dresses as Draupadī in the Terukkūttu of Tamilnadu.
70 See Hiltebeitel, “The Indus Valley ‘Proto-Śiva’, Reexamined through Reflections on the Goddess, the Buffalo, and the Symbolism of vāhanas”, Anthropos, LXXIII (1978), 783-785.
71 ityuktvā mṛdusaṃhāraṃ (*) vṛjināgraṃ sudarśanam
sunīlam asitāpāṅgī puṇyagandhādhivāsitam
sanialakṣaṇasaṃpannaṃ mahābhujagavarcasam
keśapakṣaṃ varārohā gṛhya savyena pāṇinā
padmākṣī puṇḍarīkākṣam upetya gajagāminī
aśrupūrṇekṣaṇā kṛṣṇā kṛṣṇaṃ vacanam abravīt
ayam te puṇḍarīkākṣa duḥśāsanakaroddhṛtaḥ
smartavyaḥ sarvakāleṣu pareṣāṃ saṃdhim icchatā
/…/
duḥśāsanabhujaṃ śyāmaṃ saṃchinnaṃ pāṃsuguṇṭhitam
yadyahaṃ taṃ na paśādmi kā śāntir hṛdayasya me (5.80.33-36, 39).
* On mṛdusaṃhāra, the Ganguli-Roy and Dutt translations both follow Nīlakaṇṭha’s commentary : mṛdusaṃhāraṃ veṇīrūpeṇa samāhṛtam api mṛdum (Ramachandra Kinjawadekar, ed., Shriman Mahābhāratam, with Bharata Bhawadeepa by Nīlakaṇṭha, 6 vols. [Poona, Chitrashala Press, 1929-1933], Vol. III, p. 159). Manmatha Nath Dutt (trans.), A Prose English Translation of the Mahābhārata, 13 vols. (Calcutta, H. C. Dass, 1895-1905), Udyoga Parva, p. 121, thus for example renders it “soft though bound up in a braid” ; cf. Kisari Mohan Ganguli (trans.) and Pratap Chandra Roy (publisher), The Mahabharata (1884-1896 ; repr. in 12 vols., New Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1970), Vol. IV, Udyoga Parva, p. 177. It is noteworthy, however, that the Chitrashala Press artist (like his Critical Edition counterpart ; see n. 26) depicts Draupadī with dishevelled hair on the page directly facing Nīlakanṭha’s comment! Van Buitenen 1978 : 357, translates it simply as “soft.” “Softly gathered back” seems reasonably neutral ; saṃhāra does not require Nīlakaṇṭha’s interpretation of a veṇī.
72 See Hiltebeitel 1976 : 81-90, 145-146, 226-228 ; Biardeau 1978 : 130, n. i.
73 On overtones of castration in the breaking of Duryodhana’s thigh in the Draupadī firewalking cult, see Hiltebeitel, ca 1981. See also below, n. 88.
74 diṣṭyā duryodhanaḥ pāpo nihataḥ sānugo yudhi
draupadyāḥ keśapakṣasya diṣṭyā tvam padavīṃ gatah (12.16.25).
75 Ganguli-Roy 1970, vol. VIII : 31, n. 1 ; Dutt (1905, Shanti Parva : 20), translates with still more contrivancy : “By good luck, you too, like Draupadī’s locks, have regained your normal condition”. Nīlakaṇṭha is silent.
76 On Draupadī’s connection with Śrī, see above, nn. 38 and 39 ; the restoration of sovereignty may also be evoked when Draupadī bestows Aśvatthāman’s jewel on Yudhiṣṭhira for the latter to wear on his head (10.16.33- 34)–
77 Yudhiṣṭhirah – kim aparam avaśiṣṭam /
Bhīmasenaḥ – sumahad avaśiṣṭam / saṃyacchāmi tāvad anena suyodhanaśoṇitokṣitena pāṇinā pāñcālyā duḥśāsanāvakṛṣṭaṃ keśahastam /
Yudhiṣṭhiraḥ – gacchatu bhavān / anubhavatu tapasvinī veṇīsaṃhāramahotsavam / (Veṇīsaṃhāra 6.41).
78 Thus Veṇīsaṃhāra 6.12 has a messenger report to Yudhiṣṭhira that Duryodhana has been found : “Let jewelled pitchers be filled with water for your royal coronation ; and let Kṛṣṇā hold festivity at [the near prospect of] the tying of her braid, discontinued for so very long” (pūryatāṃ salilena ratnakalaśā rājyābhiṣekāya te / kṛṣṇātyantacirojjhite ca kabarībandhe karotu kṣaṇam) ; on kṣaṇam as “festivity”, see Gajendragadkar, part III : 193. At the South Indian Draupadī festivals, the braiding is linked not only with the firewalk but with Yudhiṣṭhira’s paṭṭāpiṣēkam, “coronation” – a ceremony that follows directly after the firewalk.
79 Āpastamba Śrautasūtra 20.18.13 ; Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra 15.29 ; Vādhūla Śrautasūtra Fragment no. 90. I thank David Knipe for bringing this scenario to my attention. These gestures are omitted in the texts from the White Yajur Veda school, which Paul Émile Dumont treats synoptically in the main body of his L’Aśvamedha. Description du sacrifice solennel du cheval dans le culte védique d’après les textes du Yajurveda blanc (Paris, Paul Geuthner, 1927) ; see pp. IX, 175-182, and, for the texts cited above, pp. 277, 337-339, 370-371-
80 E.g. Parāśara Saṃhitā 10.25 ; Atri Saṃhitā 190-199.
81 Hershman 1974 : 286.
82 See Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1976), pp. 157-159. A case could be made that all these entities are feminine, or at least connected with femininity.
83 See Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, “Sexual Fluids in Vedic and Post-Vedic India”, chapter 2 of Women, Androgynes and other Mythical Beasts (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980).
84 Hershman 1974 : 282, 286.
85 sakṛdbhuktā tu yā nārī mlecchair vā pāpakarmabhiḥ
prājāpatyena śudhyeta ṛtuprasravaṇena tu
balāddhṛtā svayaṃ vāpi parapratāritā yadi
sakṛd bhuktā tu yā nārī prājāpatyena śudhyati (Atri Samṃhitā 197- 198 ; text from Manmatha Nath Dutt (ed.), The Dharma Śastra, Text, vol. I (Calcutta, Elysium Press, 1908), pp. 197-198. See Kane 1974, vol. II, part 1 : 575, taking the passage in the sense of “rape”.
86 Kane 1974, vol. IV, pp. 132, 145-146 ; vol. II, part I, p. 377, n. 916 : it “consists in only one morning meal for three days, only one meal in the evening for three days, subsisting on alms for three days and total fast for three days.” Cf. Manu 11.211 and Yājñavalhya Saṃhitā 3.320. This is not to say that there aren’t other correspondences, e.g. the twelve night dīkṣā of the Aśvamedha ; see Dumont 1927 : 54.
87 Cf. Biardeau 1976 a : 207, n. 1, connecting Draupadī’s impurity with the non-completion of her husbands’ Rājasūya. More than one motive is likely.
88 See Hiltebeitel ca 1980 : conclusion. On Indian traditions concerning the male thigh, see O’Flaherty 1976 : 322-324, 334, and especially the notions about Duryodhana’s thigh being his vital spot in South Indian vernacular traditions of the Mahābhārata, on which see Subramanian 1967 : 283 (in Villiputtūr), and T. V. Subba Rao, “Telugu Folk Additions to Mahabharatha”, Folklore (Calcutta) 8-9 (1976), p. 272.
89 E.g. Devi Māhātmyam 5.12 ; 5.88 (Durgā) ; Matsya Pur ana 155,28- 33 (Pārvatī as Kālī, when Śiva calls her “black”).
90 She was “fashioned by the holder of the trident” (nirmitā śūlapāṇinā ; 18.4.10) ; and it is Śiva who sets events in motion that lead to her polyandry ; see Hiltebeitel 1976 : 79-85, 166-167, 177-188.
91 See the many references in David R. Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute : Kālī and Kṛṣṇa, Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975), pp. 81- 159, especially the remarkable quotation from Arthur Avalon, Principles of Tantra : The Tantratattva of Śrīyukta Śiva Candra Vidyārṇava Bhattacārya Mahodaya (Madras, Ganesh, 1960), p. 600 : “I see my Mother, the mad, disordered girl, dancing with gentle movements of Her body, now taking up the flute instead of the sword, or again seizing the sword instead of the flute, or yet again at times making both the sword and the flute into one in Her hand ; mingling Her laughter with Her dancing ; now loosening and now binding up Her hair.”
92 See Kinsley 1975, taking kālī as a proper name and mistakenly attributing dishevelled hair to her (a mistake easily produced by a misreading of the somewhat confusing Ganguli-Roy translation). I must correct an earlier minimization of the importance of this passage in my Ritual of Battle (1976 : 326).
93 kālīṃ raktāsyanayanāṃ raktamālyānulepanām
raktāmbaradharām ekāṃ pāśahastāṃ śikhaṇḍinīm
dadṛśuḥ kālarātriṃ te smayamānām avasthitām (10.8.64-65ab).
94 See Devi Māhātmyam 1.78cd, addressing the Goddess as Kālarātri, Mahārātri, and “the terrible Night of Delusion” (kālarātrir mahārātrir moharātriśca dāruṇā) – the first two referring to the nights of the “occasional” and “great pralayas”, on which see below. Cf. Śiva Purāna, Umā Saṃhitā 45.58-59.
95 See M. S. Gopalakrishnan, Mother Goddess : A Regional Study (Madras and Malabar) (University of Madras, M. Litt. Thesis, 1953), p. 107.
96 The name Śikhaṇḍinī (see above, n. 93, line 2) is interesting, although it is a variant along with kuṭumbinī, “elderly lady, female householder” ; see Biardeau 1976 a : 210, n. 2, remarking that Śikhaṇḍinī is also a name for Śrī (12.218.3a, 5a). This is paradoxical, contrasting the destructive with the auspicious. Śikhaṇḍinī is of course the true identity of Śikhaṇḍin, bom a girl from her previous life as Ambā, and turned male to defeat Bhīṣma. This identification of Kālarātri with Śikhaṇḍinī takes place immediately after Śikhaṇḍin’s death, and thus evokes the image of Kālarātri as the Goddess in her full aspect, manifesting herself in a form which includes associations with Śrī and Ambā.
97 bhavati saṃyaṃyatām idānīṃ dhārtarāṣṭrakulakālarātriduḥśāsanaviluliteyaṃ veṇī (Veṇīsaṃhāram 6.40).
98 See Edward C. Dimock, Jr., and Denise Levertov (trans.), In Praise of Krishna. Songs from the Bengali (Garden City, Anchor Press, 1966), pp. 7*, 24, 56*, 65 ; Deben Bhattacharya (trans.), The Songs of Chandidās (New York, Grove Press, 1970), pp. 64, 100*, 108 ; idem, W. G. Archer, ed., Love Songs of Vidyāpati (New York, Grove Press, 1963), pp. 55, 61, 81, 84*, 116 ; on the theme of love as pralaya, mentioning everything but the hair, see p. 44. Asterisks indicate especially forceful treatments of the theme.
99 Cilappatikāram. 20, veṇpā 2, as translated by George L. Hart, III The Poems of Ancient Tamil. Their Milieu and their Sanskrit Counterparts (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975), p. 105. Cf. also idem, p. 93, loose hair as “dangerous.”
100 See Hiltebeitel 1980 a ; Karṇa orders the disrobing at 2.61.38.
101 See Hiltebeitel 1976 : 67-68, 240.
102 This image appears at Viṣṇu Purāṇa 6.3.23 and Kūrma Purāṇa 45.23 ; see Biardeau, “EMH (III)”, part I. Cosmogonies purāṇiques (suite’), BEFEO, t. LVIII (1971), p. 69.
103 Kane 1974, vol. IV : 602-603.
104 Compare also Dimock and Levertov 1966 : 56 : “Her cloud of hair eclipses the luster of her face, like Rāhu greedy for the moon ; the garland glitters in her unbound hair, a wave of the Ganges in the waters of the Yamunā.”
105 Personal communication from Brenda E. F. Beck.
106 The festival of Rajaḥsaṃkrānti in Orissa celebrates the menstruation of Kālī ; anticipating the rainy season, the festival marks a three day period during which the earth must not be ploughed, unmarried girls ride swings, and boys take part in strenuous games : personal communication from Frédérique Marglin, and see Mayadhar Mansinha, The Saga of the Land of Jagannatha (Cuttack, J. Mohapatra, 1971), pp. 25-27. Neither Beck (see n. 105) nor Marglin recalled any association of the festival with dishevelment, but it is more than likely as menstruation itself evokes dishevelment (see above, nn. 27-29).
107 On the distinction between pralaya-s, see Biardeau 1971 : passim, and above, n. 102.
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