Draupadi's marriage
Topic: Society in Early India: Kinship, Varna-Jati, Women · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 3 "Kinship, Caste and Class - Early Societies"
Meaning
Draupadi's marriage to all five Pandava brothers is the best-known case of polyandry, one woman having several husbands, in Sanskrit literature. The marriage is central to the story, yet the epic tries to explain it in three different ways. This suggests that elite families once practised polyandry, and that it fell out of favour with the Brahmanas who later edited the text. It teaches that creative literature does not simply mirror real society.
Example
Arjuna won Draupadi at King Drupada's archery contest. When the brothers came home, their mother Kunti told them, without looking, to share what they had brought. That made Draupadi their common wife. The epic adds two more explanations. In one, the Pandavas were forms of the god Indra. In the other, Draupadi in a past life had prayed to Shiva for a husband five times. Historians also point to polyandry in the Himalayan region, and to a possible shortage of women in wartime.
Don't confuse with
- Polygyny: this means one man having several wives, as the Satavahana kings did. Draupadi's case is the reverse.
Related concepts
- Composition of the Mahabharata
- Sutas
- Vyasa
- Narrative and didactic sections
- Itihasa
- Bhagavad Gita
- Hastinapura
- Mahashweta Devi
- Ramayana