The Mahābhārata as Kṛṣṇacarita: Draupadī’s Prayer in Two Regional Retellings

Abstract

The scene in which Duḥśāsana tries to publicly strip Draupadī after Yudhiṣṭhira loses her in the disastrous dice game is one of most well-known and disturbing sequences in the Mahābhārata tradition. In several Mahābhāratas, Draupadī calls out to Kṛṣṇa who saves her by providing her with a never-ending garment. This article closely compares Draupadī’s prayer to Kṛṣṇa in two Mahābhāratas that identify themselves as kṛṣṇacaritas, that is, works reporting ‘the deeds of Kṛṣṇa’: Villiputtūr’s fifteenth--century Tamil Pāratam and Sabalsingh Cauhān’s seventeenth--century Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahābhārat. Draupadī’s plea serves quite different purposes in these regional retellings: while Villi’s scene exemplifies the power of prapatti or ‘self-surrender’, Cauhān use Draupadī’s prayer as an opportunity to extol Kṛṣṇa in detail. What these two Mahābhāratas do share, however, is that they both transform the narrative of the entire dicing episode into a bhakti (devotional) story that emphasises Kṛṣṇa’s compassion for Draupadī and the Pāṇḍavas.