The war makes this possible, but also results in the death of her father, brothers, and sons. She famously looks forward to being able to wash her hair in the blood of those who tried to strip her. Her suffering is met with righteous anger, and she repeatedly calls upon her husbands to protect her honour and avenge the insults she has endured. During these years of exile Draupadi suffers an abduction by a lustful king (she is rescued by her husbands, who nonetheless pardon him) and an attempted seduction by a general (who is then rather brutally killed by one of her husbands). In this whole sorry episode she proves her strength, initiative, virtue, and superior understanding of morality.Īlthough Draupadi succeeds in freeing her husbands from slavery, they must all endure a long forest exile before the climactic moment of the epic: a huge battle between the two sets of cousins and their allies, in which almost all the warriors of the earth are killed, and Yudhisthira emerges as the one true king. That she does not ask for her own freedom reinforces her position that she has never lost it. She chooses freedom for Yudhisthira and his four brothers (who, incidentally, are also her husbands, as discussed below). Eventually, ill omens force King Dhritarashtra to intervene and grant Draupadi two boons.

The attempt to strip her naked (at Duryodhana’s order) is prevented when her sari proves never-ending, thanks to her virtue and – in some versions – to the interventions of the god Krishna, to whom she is devoted. Nobody will answer her questions, and her fury is palpable. She asks the elders of the court why they have allowed such abuses to take place, and tries to get any one of them to rule on whether she really has been lost to Duryodhana. First of all she rebukes her husband and asks him if he staked her only after having lost himself (which, indeed, he had) and whether in that case it was really possible to stake her. So far this is just another story of an abused woman, but what makes Draupadi really special is the way in which she responds to her abuse. Once in the hall, Draupadi has to endure mockery from Duryodhana and his allies, including lewd remarks and even an attempt to strip her naked. Her shame is made worse by the fact that she is menstruating, and so dressed in only a single cloth. They remain silent and downcast as Draupadi is manhandled into the hall. The blind king – Duryodhana’s father Dhritarashtra – and other senior members of the court have allowed this match to progress despite its unfairness. Her husband, Yudhisthira, the paragon of virtue and honour, has just staked all his possessions, his half of the kingdom, his brothers, himself and then Draupadi in a gambling match with his cruel cousin Duryodhana. She tweets a pivotal episode of the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata, which was probably composed sometime in the last few centuries before the Common Era, a woman called Draupadi is dragged into a royal dicing hall. She has worked extensively on narrative materials from Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. Her main research interest is the role of stories in the construction and communication of religious ideas in early India.

Naomi Appleton is Senior Lecturer in Asian Religions in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh.

Draupadi vastraharan