The Infinite Sari

The great assembly hall of Hastinapura had been built to honor the Kuru line, its pillars carved with the deeds of kings, its floor of polished stone glowing in the lamplight. On this night it held a different kind of glory - the slow, dreadful unmaking of a man.

Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, the king of Indraprastha, the son of Dharma himself, sat at the gambling board with the dust of ruin upon him. One by one he had wagered and lost. His wealth had gone first, his jewels, his cattle, his chariots and elephants. Then his kingdom. Then his brothers, the mighty Bhima and Arjuna, the gentle twins Nakula and Sahadeva. Then his own freedom. Shakuni, the cunning prince of Gandhara, rolled the dice for Duryodhana, and the dice obeyed him as servants obey a master.

"You have lost yourself, O King," Shakuni said, his voice oily with false sympathy. "Yet one treasure remains to you. You have not staked Draupadi, the daughter of Drupada, the jewel of the Pandavas. Wager her, and you may yet win back everything you have lost."

A hush fell over the hall. The elders - Bhishma, Drona, Kripa, Vidura - stiffened. Even some of the Kauravas glanced at one another, for there are lines that even wicked men hesitate to cross. But Yudhishthira, his mind clouded, his reason drowned in the fever of the game, did not pause as he should have.

"I stake her," he said. "I stake the princess of Panchala, who is neither too short nor too tall, whose hair is dark and long, whose eyes are like autumn lotuses. I wager Draupadi."

Shakuni cast the dice. "Lo," he cried, "I have won!"

And in that instant, in the eyes of the assembly, the queen of the Pandavas became a thing that had been gambled away.

Duryodhana's face shone with a joy that was close to madness. The kingdom he had envied, the cousins he had hated since boyhood, the wife whose splendor had once made him stumble in their hall of illusions and brought laughter to her lips - all of it was his now, and he meant to taste every drop of his triumph.

"Go," he commanded a steward of the court. "Go to the inner chambers where the women dwell. Tell Draupadi that she is no longer a queen but a servant of the Kauravas. Bring her here, to sweep these floors among the slaves where she belongs."

Vidura, the wise half-brother of Dhritarashtra, could bear it no longer. He rose, trembling with grief and outrage. "Do not do this thing, Duryodhana," he pleaded. "Consider what you are. A woman who is herself a stake cannot lawfully be won, for the man who staked her had already lost himself and was no longer her master. Ask yourself this question before you summon her. Greed has brought low many a house, and this greed will be the death of the Kurus. Listen to me, before it is too late."

But Duryodhana only sneered, and the steward, fearful of the prince, hurried away toward the women's quarters.

Draupadi was within, clad in a single garment, for she was in the period of her monthly courses and had withdrawn from the court as custom required. When the steward delivered Duryodhana's message, she stared at him in disbelief. "What king," she asked slowly, "having lost himself, would then wager his wife? Was there nothing else left for him to stake? Go back and ask my husband this. Ask him in the open assembly whether he lost himself first, or me. When I have his answer, I will come."

The steward returned and repeated Draupadi's question before the whole assembly. Yudhishthira sat with his head bowed, unable to answer, for the question pierced him to the heart and he had no reply that was not also a confession.

Duryodhana's patience snapped. The princess would not come of her own will, and her question threatened to turn the hall against him. He turned to his brother Dushasana, whose cruelty matched his own. "Go yourself," he said. "You do not fear the Pandavas, who sit there bound by their dharma like cattle in a pen. Bring her, and let her ask her questions of us to our faces."

Dushasana sprang up with a savage laugh and strode into the women's quarters. Draupadi, seeing him come, fled toward the apartments of the Kuru ladies, hoping to find shelter among Dhritarashtra's queens. But Dushasana was swift. He seized her by her long, dark, fragrant hair - the very hair that had been sprinkled with holy water at the great Rajasuya sacrifice, the hair no man had any right to touch - and he dragged her.

"Let me go!" she cried. "I am in my courses, I wear but a single cloth, you wicked man! Do not drag me thus into the hall of men!"

But Dushasana only tightened his grip. "Slave, slave," he chanted, mocking her, hauling her stumbling and weeping across the threshold and into the great assembly, before the eyes of fathers and kings and the elders of the Kuru house. Her clothing was disordered, her face streaked with tears, her whole body shaking - and she was brought to stand among the men who had once bowed to her as their empress.

Standing in the center of that vast hall, half-clothed and disheveled, Draupadi did not collapse into helpless weeping. The daughter of fire, born from the sacrificial altar of Drupada, drew herself up and looked upon the assembly with eyes that blazed.

"I ask this of all of you who are gathered here," she said, her voice ringing clear though it shook with anguish. "Whose wife am I now? Did my lord Yudhishthira lose himself before he staked me, or after? For if he had already gambled away his own freedom and become a slave, then he owned nothing - not even himself - and a slave has no power to wager another. Answer me. You are men learned in law and in dharma. Tell me whether I am won or not."

It was a question that cut to the marrow of the law, and not one man in that assembly could answer it without shame. Bhishma, the grand patriarch, the oldest and wisest among them, bowed his head. "The course of dharma is subtle, my child," he said heavily. "I cannot rightly decide your question. A man without property cannot stake the wealth of others, yet a wife is ever under the lordship of her husband. Yudhishthira would sooner abandon the whole earth than abandon truth, and he himself has said he was won. I cannot give you the answer you seek."

And so it went. The elders shifted in their seats. Drona stared at the floor. Kripa said nothing. The kings who had come to honor the Kurus looked away, ashamed and afraid. The mightiest gathering of warriors in all the world sat silent while a woman pleaded for justice, and their silence was itself an answer - a verdict of cowardice that would haunt every one of them on the field of Kurukshetra.

Again and again Draupadi repeated her question, and again and again the hall met her with silence. The Pandavas sat with bowed heads, bound by their elder brother's word and by the terms of the game, their hands aching for weapons they were forbidden to raise. Bhima's breath came like a forge bellows; his eyes never left Dushasana.

Then, from among the very sons of Dhritarashtra, one young man could no longer hold his peace. Vikarna, a brother of Duryodhana himself, rose to his feet, pale and resolute.

"O kings," he said, "why do you not answer the princess of Panchala? If we remain silent, the sin of this assembly will fall upon us all. Hear me, then, for I will speak what I believe to be just. There are four vices that destroy a king - the love of hunting, of drink, of women, and of dice. A man given over to such a vice does what should never be done, and his deeds carry no lawful weight. Yudhishthira was led to this game by these cunning gamblers and was sunk in the vice of dice when he staked Draupadi. Furthermore, she was staked only after he himself had been lost, and a man who is no longer his own master cannot wager another. And she is the common wife of all five brothers, not of Yudhishthira alone, so he could not stake her without their consent. For all these reasons, I declare that Draupadi has not been lawfully won."

A murmur of approval rippled through the hall, and for a moment it seemed that conscience might yet prevail. Some of the kings cried out, blessing Vikarna and condemning Duryodhana. But Vikarna stood alone among the Kauravas, a single voice of justice in a hall of the powerful, and the powerful were not finished.

The murmur of approval had not died away when Karna, the great archer and the dearest friend of Duryodhana, surged to his feet, his face dark with anger. He could not bear that a boy like Vikarna should sway the assembly with talk of justice.

"Vikarna," he said scornfully, "you are a child, and you speak as children speak, taking upon yourself the right to instruct your elders. When all that the Pandavas possessed was staked, Draupadi too was included, for a wife is among a man's possessions. She was won fairly, in the sight of all. As for her single garment and her presence here - cease this empty pity. The gods ordained one husband for one woman, yet this Draupadi has five. By every measure she is an unchaste woman, and to bring such a one into the hall, clothed or unclothed, is no sin at all."

Then he turned to Dushasana, and his words fell like a hammer. "Dushasana, this Vikarna is a foolish child. The Pandavas are now slaves, and so is their wife. Take the garments from their bodies, and take the garment from Draupadi as well."

A shudder ran through the assembly. The Pandavas, hearing themselves declared slaves, silently removed their upper garments and cast them aside, accepting the shame of their bondage. But it was the command concerning Draupadi that froze the blood of every decent man present. Duryodhana, delighting in Karna's cruelty, added his own insult. He looked at Bhima, then bared his left thigh and slapped it, gesturing for Draupadi to come and sit upon it as a slave woman sits upon her master's lap. Bhima saw the gesture, and in that moment a vow began to form in his heart that all the world would one day hear.

Emboldened by Karna's words and his brother's command, Dushasana seized the end of Draupadi's single garment and began to pull, intending to strip her bare before the whole court.

Draupadi turned her gaze from one protector to another and found none. She looked to her husbands, and they sat with their heads bowed, bound and helpless. She looked to Bhishma and Drona, the grandsires of the realm, and they would not meet her eyes. She looked to Dhritarashtra upon his throne, blind in body and blind in will, and he said nothing. The whole edifice of law and kinship and honor that should have shielded her had crumbled to dust, and she stood alone.

Then, in the last extremity, she abandoned every earthly hope and lifted her arms and her voice to the only refuge that remained.

"Govinda!" she cried. "O Krishna, beloved of the cowherds, dweller in Dwaraka! O lord of the universe, soul of all that lives! Do you not see how the Kauravas torment me? Lord of Lakshmi, lord of Vraja, destroyer of all affliction, save me now, for I am sinking in this ocean of Kuru. O Krishna, O Krishna, great yogi, soul of the world, maker of all, protect me, helpless and undone, in the midst of the Kurus!"

She could fight no longer with her hands, for both were occupied in clutching the garment Dushasana tore at. So she released even that. She let go of the cloth, raised both arms above her head, and surrendered herself wholly, crying out the name of Krishna with all the strength of her soul. And the cry of his devotee, uttered from the very depths of helplessness and faith, did not go unheard.

What happened next would be told and retold for as long as the story of the Mahabharata endured, for it was a wonder that no man in the hall could explain.

Dushasana pulled, and the garment came away in his hands - and beneath it was another, and as that one was drawn off there was yet another beneath it, and another, and another still. As fast as he could tear one cloth from her, a fresh garment appeared in its place to cover the queen. The grace of Krishna, invisible and inexhaustible, clothed his devotee with an unending stream of fabric, that her honor might never be stripped away.

Dushasana pulled until his arms burned and the breath rasped in his chest. Silks of crimson and gold, of white and blue and saffron, finer than any woven by mortal hands, came away one after another and piled upon the floor of the assembly. The heap grew and grew, rising about him like a brilliant mountain, and still Draupadi stood covered, untouched, inviolate.

The whole assembly watched in stupefied silence, then in rising awe. Many among the kings began to weep openly and to praise Draupadi and condemn the Kauravas. At last Dushasana, utterly spent, his greed defeated and his strength gone, sank to the ground in shame amid the mountains of cloth he had heaped up, unable to take from her even a single thread. He had laid hands upon a woman protected by the lord of the universe, and the whole world now saw that no power of the wicked could prevail against her.

Bhima could no longer contain the storm that raged within him. He had watched his queen dragged by the hair, slandered as a harlot, and assaulted before his eyes, and the bonds of his brother's dharma had held him in his seat like iron chains. Now he rose, and his voice shook the pillars of the hall.

"Hear me, kings of the earth," he thundered, his lips trembling, his eyes red as molten copper. "Hear a vow that has never before passed my lips. If I do not tear open the breast of this wretch Dushasana and drink his heart's blood in battle, may I never reach the regions of my ancestors!"

Then he turned his terrible gaze upon Duryodhana, who had bared his thigh to insult Draupadi. "And you, Duryodhana - I swear that in the great war to come I will shatter that thigh you have bared, and break it with my mace upon the field, or let me fall from the path of the righteous forever."

The hairs of all who heard him stood on end. And even as he spoke, nature itself answered with dreadful warnings. From the sacred fire chamber, jackals began to howl, their cries echoing through the palace. Asses brayed in horrid chorus, and fierce birds shrieked from every direction. Vidura and the learned ones who could read such signs grew pale, knowing that these omens foretold ruin upon the house of Kuru.

Gandhari, the noble queen, hearing of the calamity and the evil portents, hurried to her blind husband. The great elders trembled. The whole assembly felt that a doom had been set in motion this night which no man living could undo.

The blind king Dhritarashtra, who had let his love for his sons override his duty for far too long, now felt the chill of those omens settle into his bones. He understood at last that his house stood upon the edge of destruction, and that the daughter of Drupada wronged in his hall might burn the Kurus to ashes with the fire of her grief. Fearing her wrath and the ruin it foretold, he resolved to make amends.

"Draupadi," he called, his old voice gentle and pleading, "chaste and noble princess of Panchala, you are the most virtuous of my daughters-in-law. Ask of me whatever boon you desire, and it shall be yours."

Draupadi, her dignity unbroken, made her request with measured wisdom. "If you will grant me a boon, O King," she said, "let my husband Yudhishthira, the noble son of Dharma, be freed from bondage. Let him no longer be called a slave, that my son Prativindhya may never be known as the child of a slave."

"It is granted," said the king. "Ask another."

"Then free Bhima and Arjuna and the twins," she said, "with their chariots and their weapons, restored to their freedom."

"That too is granted," said Dhritarashtra. "And ask a third boon, for two are not enough for one so deserving."

But Draupadi declined. "Greed devours dharma, O King," she answered. "It is not lawful for me to ask more. My husbands are free; by their own valor they will win back whatever else they need."

So the Pandavas were released from slavery, their freedom and their honor restored by the courage of the woman they had failed to protect. Yet though the chains of that night were broken, the wounds it had opened would never close. The vows of Bhima and the unanswered question of Draupadi hung over the house of Kuru like a gathering storm, and all who had sat silent in that hall would one day pay for their silence upon the field of Kurukshetra.