The Abduction of Draupadi

It was the twelfth year of the forest exile, and the Pandavas were living once more in the Kamyaka woods, where the river ran clear and the sal trees stood like pillars. The hermitage they had built was a humble cluster of bark huts and thatched roofs, ringed by the small gardens of Brahmins who had followed the sons of Pandu into the wilderness rather than abandon them.

One morning the five brothers rose before light and went out together to hunt. The deer of Kamyaka had grown scarce near the camp, and the ascetics who depended on the Pandavas for protection needed meat for guests and skins for their rites. Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva took up their bows and their quivers and went deep into the forest, leaving the hermitage in the keeping of the family priest Dhaumya and a handful of attendants.

Draupadi remained behind. With the men gone and the morning chores not yet begun, she stepped to the door of the hermitage and stood for a moment in the early light, a queen in bark cloth, her dark hair unbound, looking out at the forest road. She was thinking, perhaps, of the years still left to serve, of the kingdom lost at dice, of the day the count of exile would end. She did not know she was being watched.

For down that very road, at that very hour, came a procession out of the west: chariots and elephants, banners and outriders, the bright noise of a royal retinue on the march. It was no army, though it moved like one. It was a wedding journey - a king travelling in state to court a bride.

The king in the chariot was Jayadratha, lord of the Sindhu country and of the Sauviras, a ruler of wide lands and many soldiers. He was no stranger to the house of Kuru. He had married Dussala, the only daughter of Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, the single sister among a hundred Kaurava brothers. By that marriage he was son-in-law to the blind old king and brother-in-law to Duryodhana himself. He was travelling now toward the Shalva kingdom to seek a second wife, and his road happened to thread the edge of the Kamyaka forest.

Then he saw the woman at the hermitage door, and forgot the road, and forgot the bride he was riding to win.

Never had he seen such beauty in all his journeys. She stood alone, lit by the morning, careless of who might pass, and the sight of her struck him like a blow. He could not believe a creature so radiant lived in a bark hut in the deep woods. He turned to his companion, a young prince named Kotikasya, son of the king of Surasena who rode with the wedding party, and said, "Whose woman is that? Goddess, Yakshi, or mortal queen, I have never beheld her equal. Go to her. Ask her name, ask her lineage, ask whose house she belongs to. Find out whether she is a being of heaven or a daughter of earth, for my mind cannot rest until I know."

Kotikasya stepped down from his chariot. He walked toward the hermitage where Draupadi stood, and he composed his face into courtesy, and he began to ask his questions.

Kotikasya approached and spoke with smooth politeness. "O lady of the lovely brows, who are you that you stand here in the forest leaning on the branch of a tree, beautiful as a flame in the night? You seem too splendid to be human. Are you Sri, the goddess of fortune? Are you an Apsara, or some spirit of these woods? Whose daughter, whose wife, whose sister are you? And he who waits in yonder chariot, the king of Sindhu, desires to know - will you not tell me your name?"

Draupadi answered with the dignity of a woman who had nothing to hide and feared no man's question. She drew her garment about her and said, "It is not fitting for one like me to speak so freely with strangers, yet since you ask plainly, I will answer plainly, for I am alone and there is no one else to speak. Know that I am Krishnaa, the daughter of Drupada, king of Panchala. They call me Draupadi. And I am the wedded wife of five lords - the five sons of Pandu, whose names ring through the world."

She named them in order, and as she named them she named their kingdoms and their deeds, so that the man would understand exactly whose threshold he stood upon. "Yudhishthira the just, Bhima of the terrible arm, Arjuna who won me at the contest of the bow, and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva. These are my husbands, dwelling here in exile by their vow. I bid you welcome, kinsman of the Surasenas. Rest, take refreshment. My lords are gone to the hunt and will return soon, bringing the deer of the forest. Stay and meet them, and tell your king to be at ease as a guest in their house."

It was a warning dressed as hospitality. Kotikasya heard the names, understood the danger, and went back to report.

Kotikasya returned to the chariots and told Jayadratha all of it: this was Draupadi, daughter of Drupada, wife of the five Pandavas, the queen of the dice hall, the woman whose insult had once nearly burned the Kuru house to the ground. Her husbands were away at the hunt. Her guards were few. A wise man, hearing such an answer, would have raised his banners and ridden on without looking back.

Jayadratha weighed it all - her beauty, her solitude, the absent warriors, his own escort numbering hundreds of spears - and got down from his chariot smiling. He left his soldiers on the road and walked to the hermitage alone, as though paying a friendly call.

He greeted Draupadi as a kinsman by marriage, and she received him as one. She gave him water and a seat and the kind words owed to the husband of her sister-in-law, for hospitality was the law even in a hut of leaves, and she could not yet read what was coming. But she saw soon enough.

"Why does a woman like you," he said, leaning close, "waste herself upon five wanderers who could not keep so much as a single village? Look at this place - root and fruit for your supper, bark for your gown, a hard floor for your bed, and five masters to share between them. This is no fit life for the most beautiful woman the world has made. Leave the beggars to their forest. Come away with me to Sindhu. I will set you above all my queens, give you cities and ornaments and servants past counting. You were never sentenced to this exile. Why serve it?"

Draupadi's face went cold. She drew herself up and answered him with words that insulted queens have quoted ever since, words that struck like the flat of a sword.

"Be ashamed, king of Sindhu. Do you not fear the law of men or the wrath of heaven, that you speak so to the wife of your own kinsmen? You are the husband of Dussala, who is sister to my lords. By that bond you should guard me as a daughter of your house. Instead you crawl toward me like a jackal that lusts after a lioness, like a cur that would steal the butter from the sacrifice. You measure my husbands by their bark cloth and forget their bows."

She came nearer and her voice dropped, which made it worse. "Hear me, foolish man. You may as well pluck the whiskers of a sleeping lion, or wake a hooded snake by treading on its tail. You stand a chance now, while they are gone, which you will not have when they return. Yudhishthira will school you in patience, but Bhima will break you across his knee, and Arjuna's arrows will find you before you see them loosed. Mount your chariot and ride while the road is still open, for if you wait, you wait for your own death."

No king in front of his own army can be made to flee by a woman's scorn, and Jayadratha had walked too far in sight of his soldiers to walk back small. The flattery curdled into rage. The smile fell away. He had asked, and been refused, and shamed, and now he would simply take.

Jayadratha reached out and seized Draupadi by the upper garment. She flung him off with such force that he staggered and fell, and for a heartbeat she was free. She turned and called for Dhaumya, the family priest, who came running from within the hermitage.

But the king was on her again before she could flee. This time he caught her bodily and dragged her toward the road, and though she struggled and cried out, his strength and his soldiers were too many. He lifted her into his great chariot.

Old Dhaumya ran after the wheels into the dust, raising his thin arms, crying the verse of the law for any soldier who would hear it. "She cannot be carried off! By the rule of warriors she may not be taken until her protectors are met and defeated in battle. Remember dharma, king of Sindhu! Remember what you do this day, for the men whose wife she is will follow you, and they do not forgive. You bind the noose around your own neck."

Jayadratha did not listen. The chariots wheeled and the elephants turned and the whole procession moved west, away from Kamyaka, raising a column of dust above the trees. In the chariot Draupadi wept and raged and threatened, naming her husbands one by one, and the king laughed and whipped his horses faster. Dhaumya, the old priest, refused to be left behind. He would not abandon his queen. On foot, among the chariot wheels and the marching feet of the soldiers, he followed her into the west.

Deep in the forest, the Pandavas had taken their game and were turning homeward when the omens reached them. Jackals crossed their path howling on the left; birds wheeled and shrieked overhead; the wind carried the smell of trouble. Yudhishthira stopped and said quietly to his brothers, "These signs are evil. Something has gone wrong at the hermitage. Let us hurry." And the five turned and ran for home with their kill abandoned.

They came out of the trees to find the hermitage in disarray - an empty doorway, a weeping crowd of ascetics, and the marks of many wheels cut deep in the earth pointing west. Draupadi's maidservant, the faithful Dhatreyika, ran to them in tears and poured out the whole of it: how the king of Sindhu had come asking, how the queen had refused him, how he had seized her by force and carried her away in his chariot while Dhaumya ran behind crying the law.

She named the abductor, and the name made the wound deeper. Not a foreign enemy, not a faceless raider, but Jayadratha - the husband of their own cousin Dussala, a man bound to them by blood and marriage, who had eaten at the Kuru table. He had used the bond of kinship to walk to Draupadi's door, and then betrayed it.

Bhima's face went dark as storm. "He is a dead man," he said. Arjuna strung his bow. Without another word the five sons of Pandu turned to the western road and followed the wheel-ruts at a run, and the forest seemed to bend out of their way.

The chase that followed became a measure of pursuit in the memory of the country. The five brothers ran Jayadratha's column down before it could cross out of the forest into open Sindhu land. They could see the dust ahead, then the rear of the procession, then, far in front, the chariot in which their wife was held.

Draupadi, looking back, saw them coming and her heart leapt. "There they are," she cried out so the king would hear. "There are my lords. Now you will learn what you have done."

Jayadratha turned his army to face them, hundreds of spears against five men, and the hundreds learned in one terrible hour what the dice game had only postponed. Arjuna's arrows came from beyond the range of any answer, dropping the charioteers and the standard-bearers before the line could close. Bhima did not trouble himself with a chariot at all; he waded into the elephants on foot with his mace and his bare hands and broke them, and the cavalry that came against him he scattered like a man scattering chaff. Nakula and Sahadeva closed the flanks like a door swinging shut, so that the Sindhu host had nowhere to run but into the trees.

The escort broke. Those who could flee fled into the forest, throwing down their weapons. And Jayadratha, lord of Sindhu, seeing the day lost and his soldiers gone, did the last dishonorable thing left to him. He set Draupadi down from the chariot, leaving her by the road, and whipped his horses, and fled alone into the west to save his own skin.

Yudhishthira reached Draupadi first and took her into the safety of the twins' guard, and the sight of her unhurt cooled some of the fire in him. But Bhima and Arjuna had eyes only for the dust of the fleeing king. "Run him down," said Bhima, already moving. "Dussala's husband or not, he dies today."

Yudhishthira's voice came level behind them, the same voice that had held the brothers steady through twelve years of insult. "Take him alive. Think of Dussala, our cousin and his wife. Think of Gandhari, who has only this one daughter. He must be punished, but he must not be killed. Do not make our aunt a mourner."

Bhima half heard it and did not slow. He overtook the king's chariot in open country, leapt upon it, and dragged Jayadratha down by the hair into the dirt. He struck him to the ground and beat him with his fists, and would gladly have crushed the life from him then and there, his great hands closing for the kill. Arjuna's hand fell on his shoulder. "Remember," Arjuna said. "The brother bade us keep him alive."

Bhima let the breath out of his rage, but not all of it. He bound the king of Sindhu hand and foot, threw him across the chariot like a sack of grain, and hauled him back to where Yudhishthira and Draupadi waited. There he cast the trembling prisoner down at his queen's feet, and asked her, as the woman he had wronged, to name the sentence.

Death was Draupadi's to claim, and no assembly under heaven would have disputed her right to it. She looked for a long while at the bound king lying in the dust, and then at the law that bound them all, and she chose the crueler thing.

"He is Dussala's husband," she said at last. "For her sake and Gandhari's, let him live. But he came here to make me his slave, to drag me off as a thing to be owned. Let him taste the word he meant for me. Do not kill him. Mark him, so that wherever he goes men will know what he tried and how it ended. Let him carry his shame home and wear it."

So Bhima did a thing more lasting than a killing. He took his sword and shaved the king of Sindhu bald, leaving only five ragged tufts of hair standing upon his head - one tuft for each of the five Pandavas, a living brand that every man who looked on him would understand. Then, before the surviving soldiers who had been gathered to witness, he made the king say aloud the formula of bondage: "I am the slave of the Pandavas." Jayadratha spoke the words with the hatred plain on his face.

Then Yudhishthira raised him from the ground, the eldest's mercy as heavy as the punishment. "You are freed," he said. "Go, and be a slave no longer, but never do such a thing again." They cut his bonds and let him go. Mercy from Yudhishthira, scorn from Draupadi, five tufts from Bhima - the king of Sindhu rode home carrying all three, and found that he could live with none of them.

A man punished justly may repent of his crime; a man shamed in public almost never does. Jayadratha did not ride home to Dussala to lick his wounds in his palace. The five tufts of hair and the word slave burned in him hotter than any sword cut, and he turned his shame into a single purpose: revenge upon the Pandavas, paid for with the favor of the gods.

He went to the mouth of the Ganga, into the wild places, and there he sat down and gave himself to a fearful penance. He starved his body and stilled his mind and offered austerity after austerity to the great god Shiva, the lord of the mountain, year upon year, until the heat of his devotion could no longer be ignored.

At last Shiva appeared before him. The god asked what boon the king of Sindhu desired, and Jayadratha asked for the only thing he wanted in all the world. "Grant that I may conquer the five sons of Pandu in battle."

Even a god will not promise the impossible. "That cannot be," Shiva answered. "No power I give can make you victor over Arjuna, who is the ancient sage Nara reborn, and who has Narayana himself for his charioteer. Him you cannot defeat, and you cannot kill any of the five, for their hour is not yours to set. But this much I grant you. Once, on a single day of the great war that is coming, you alone shall be able to hold back the other four brothers - to check them, to stop them, to wall them away from the field - though kill them you cannot."

It seemed a small boon, hedged about with so many denials. It was the deadliest gift granted in the whole of the epic.

The years turned and the exile ended, and the great war came at last to the field of Kurukshetra. Jayadratha rode out among the Kaurava host with Shiva's boon held close, waiting for the single day on which it could be spent. He did not have to wait long for it to be worth everything.

On the thirteenth day of the war, Drona arrayed his army in the chakravyuha, the spinning wheel of soldiers that no warrior on the Pandava side could break and escape save Arjuna - and Arjuna had been deliberately drawn away to the far end of the field by the Samshaptaka warriors who had sworn to die or kill him. Only Arjuna's young son Abhimanyu, sixteen years old, knew how to pierce the formation, though not how to come out again. To save the day he broke alone into the wheel, and the four other brothers and their armies surged forward to follow him in and fight at his side.

And there, at the mouth of the formation, stood Jayadratha. The boon came due. With the strength the god had given him, the king of Sindhu held the gate. He checked Bhima, he checked Yudhishthira, he checked Nakula and Sahadeva, walling all four outside the spinning ranks of spears, while inside the closed wheel six great warriors fell upon a boy alone. Abhimanyu fought as no boy ever fought, and died as no boy should, surrounded, unhorsed, beaten down by many at once because no one could break through to reach him.

The five tufts of Kamyaka were avenged upon a child. And when Arjuna learned at sunset who had held the gate against his brothers while his son was killed, he swore a terrible vow that bound the whole of the next day to the death of Jayadratha. But that is another story.