The Pāṇḍavas, together with their joint wife Draupadī and their retinue, arrive at Hāstinapura where they are well received. Once they have rested, they proceed to the venue of the dicing match, the newly built assembly hall, which is abuzz with anticipation. The protagonists take their places. Śakuni will play on behalf of Duryodhana;Yudhiṣṭhira will throw the dice himself. Before they begin, Yudhiṣṭhira solemnly warns Śakuni to play fair. ‘Gambling is guile (nikṛti), an evil,’ he says, ‘there's no prowess here for the nobility ... Śakuni, don't defeat us dishonourably or basely’. Śakuni answers brilliantly, ruthlessly exposing Yudhiṣṭhira's addiction to the game: ‘But the learned person confronts the unlearned, and the knowledgeable the ignorant, by guile, Yudhiṣṭhira, though people don't call it that. If you believe you're up against guile here then don't play – if you're afraid’ (2.53.11–12). This is a masterly challenge, one he knows the addictive Yudhiṣṭhira, eager to save face, cannot refuse.
On the one hand, Śakuni practically admits that he will cheat. To each his own, he implies, and gambling is my skill; beat me if you can. On the other hand, is Yudhiṣṭhira afraid to play with him – he a Kṣatriya – in front of all these people? The dicing game has taken on the aspect of a surrogate duel between the two sides under the cover of fate, not skill, as the decider.
One wonders if Yudhiṣṭhira is so eager to play that he cannot see through this trap, so desperate that, hoping against hope that Śakuni will not cheat, he actually hopes that luck (or fate) will decide the contest, not expert manipulation. Or is it that, in spite of his doubts, he cannot back down now in front of a Kaurava crowd? We are left to speculate. But he is determined (in more than one sense: by his addiction to gambling, by his sense of honour, by the rules of the rājasūya sacrifice (?)) to play. He has taken a vow never to refuse a challenge, he answers weakly, so he'll play. ‘I stand bound by decree’ (2.53.13). What decree? His own vow? (Is it dharma to stand by an irresponsible promise? Later this understanding of dharma will be contested.) Fate's decree? (But this has been contested by the ‘wise’ Vidura. In any case, in the face of Śakuni's dishonesty, does fate have a chance?) Perhaps the decree of the king-paterfamilias who has summoned him? (But this does not necessarily imply either a dishonest contest or a personally consequential one, for the king has described it as a ‘friendly’ game, and it is clearly becoming more than that.) In a charged atmosphere, the dicing begins.
We will not recount the details. No friendly game of dice, this – the stakes are real and high. In all, twenty rounds are to be played, and Yudhiṣṭhira loses consistently and mightily. Again and again we hear the refrain: ‘Having heard (the stake), Śakuni addressed (the dice), resorted to guile, and cried “Won!” at Yudhiṣṭhira’. By round ten, Yudhiṣṭhira has lost much wealth – pearls, gold, his finely caparisoned chariot, a thousand elephants, male and female slaves, choice horses, a small army of chariots and their drivers etc. Vidura intervenes. He sees disaster looming and does not mince his words. It is useless to appeal to Duryodhana to desist, for ‘drunk with the dice game, he's besotted, oblivious to the situation’ (2.55.5). He's a jackal (an inauspicious animal) who will cause conflict in the family and ruin his House;he must be stopped at all costs. It is equally useless to appeal to Yudhiṣṭhira, though this is not said. For Yudhiṣṭhira is besotted too, but he is losing, and to pull out now would be to lose face in a big way. So Vidura appeals to the only person he hopes can do something, the king himself, whose authority all acknowledge. He says to Dhṛtarāṣṭra:
For the sake of the family, one may abandon an individual. For the sake of the village, one may abandon a family. For the country's sake, one may abandon a village. For the sake of the soul, one may abandon the world!
(2.55.10)
In short, abandon Duryodhana before it's too late, before he destroys the peace of your kingdom! But Duryodhana savagely intervenes, openly accusing Vidura of disloyalty to the king. Besides, he exults in his nature. ‘There is only one Guide (ekaṣśāstā) and no other’, he declares, ‘the Guide that teaches the person as he lies in the womb. Instructed by that one, I flow on, like water running down a slope’ (2.57.8). Is this a variant of the theory current at the time that it is the ‘womb’ – the dispositions that we are born with – that determines how we live our lives (see Śvetāśvatara Up. 1.2)? Bold in the knowledge of his father's support, he is actually repudiating his authority to act as his guide. He will follow the bent of his own nature – his interpretation of his Kṣatriya nature – formed in the womb. He has come so close to total victory over his enemies that nothing will stop him now. Dhṛtarāṣṭra remains silent and the game enters a new and more terrible phase.
Various questions occur to one in this continuing attempt to discern what dharma is, e.g. (i) to what extent may one support morally the dubious actions of another? – an issue summed up in Vidura's quotation evaluating the relative worth of a hierarchy of goods, capped by the advice that to save one's soul one must be ready to give up the world; (ii) the implied debate about the relative influence in one's life of determining nature on the one hand and self-determination on the other, encapsulated in Duryodhana's remark that he must follow nature's bent, like water running down a slope. We are taught, in this episode of the Mbh., that dharma is, in important ways, a relative concept, governed by context – and still we receive no authorial answer to the issues raised.
Śakuni goads Yudhiṣṭhira to continue gambling. In four further throws Yudhiṣṭhira loses all his wealth, including his kingdom. There's no stopping Yudhiṣṭhira's (or Śakuni's) headlong actions now. Then Yudhiṣṭhira stakes Nakula's, one of his twin brothers, freedom – and loses. Next he wagers Sahadeva, the other twin, a scholar who ‘teaches the laws’ (dharmān; 2.58.14) – could he not have spoken up at some point? – and loses;then his other brothers, Arjuna followed by Bhīma. Is he entitled to do this? This is another question of dharma, for not only are these his younger brothers but also his subjects in so far as he is the ruler of their territory.
‘Won!’, gloats Śakuni each time. ‘You have lost much wealth, your brothers, and horses and elephants too’, says Śakuni to Yudhiṣṭhira. ‘Consider now, Kaunteya, if there's anything else that's left unwon’. ‘I am left’, returns Yudhiṣṭhira, and stakes his freedom against servitude to Duryodhana. They throw. ‘Won!’, rings out the familiar cry. Nineteen rounds have been played, and if the match's symmetry is to be preserved, there is one throw left.5 And indeed the match is prolonged for one last, dramatic round. With dastardly guile, Śakuni suggests the stake. ‘There remains your beloved lady, and one throw is still unwon. Stake [Draupadī] and through her win back yourself [and all else]’. For a while, Yudhiṣṭhira muses on Draupadī’s charms. Is this a moment of sanity? Not in the least. The blood rushes up, and beyond recall he cries: ‘Come on [Śakuni], with the lovely Draupadī [as stake] I cast my throw!’. This is not the language of someone playing a token, ritual game of dice!
At these words, there is consternation in the assembly-hall. ‘Shame! Shame!’ cry the elders. The hearts of Bhīṣma, Vidura and other observers quail. Duryodhana's cronies rejoice. The blind Dhṛtarāṣṭra, excited, unable to control himself, asks repeatedly, ‘Has he won?’ Śakuni deliberates and flushed with anticipated victory handles the dice one last time. ‘Won!’ he screeches, as the die is cast.
This is the moment that Duryodhana has been waiting for. Now he has the Pāṇḍavas in his grasp; he can humiliate them as he pleases. At once he sends for Draupadī. ‘Fetch her’, he tells Vidura, ‘Let her sweep the place and run errands. Let's enjoy it!’ (2.59.1). Vidura objects. He warns Duryodhana at length about the folly of his intentions. This will lead to a deadly feud between the Pāṇḍavas and the Kauravas, to Duryodhana's and his House's ultimate destruction. But in the process he raises a crucial question. ‘I don't think [Draupadī’s] come to slavery yet. For she was staked by the king when he was not his own master’. Indeed, Draupadī
had been staked after Yudhiṣṭhira had wagered himself and lost. Therefore, was Yudhiṣṭhira entitled to stake Draupadī at all? This is the dharmic question on which all that follows pivots.
Duryodhana is in no mood for doubts, however. With a curse on Vidura, he dispatches an attendant to summon Draupadī. ‘You have nothing to fear from the Pāṇḍavas’, he reassures the servant. When apprised of her situation, Draupadī in turn sends the servant back to the hall to publicly ask her husband a question. ‘Whom did you lose first, yoursel for me?’ (2.60.7). The doubt first raised by Vidura is reiterated, and for the remainder of the episode this crucial question is associated with Draupadī, for she repeatedly seeks its answer. This is not just a doubt about the rules of a token game. The situation is immeasurably more serious. Revenge, honour, humiliation, loss of freedom, sovereignty, power, have all entered the picture. The conclusion of the dicing match is like the opening of a Pandora's box of questions about dharma. For it is dharma that is at issue, as subsequent events will show with increasing clarity.
The messenger does as he is told. ‘But’, says the text, ‘Yudhiṣṭhira made no movement; he was as if senseless. He replied not a word to the servant, either good or bad’ (2.60.9). Encouraged, Duryodhana sends the messenger back to Draupadī to summon her yet again. She must raise her question among the assembly herself. She responds with touching faith, ‘This is how the Disposer has now arranged it. He touches both the wise and the foolish. He has said that dharma alone is supreme in the world. When obeyed it will bring us peace’ (2.60.13). She must go to the hall. For now Yudhiṣṭhira himself has summoned her to pose her question.
Draupadī is in a bad way. Not only does she face dishonour before an all-male audience, but the situation is particularly humiliating for her because she is having her period, and according to the dharmic code she is to live secluded from men during this time, dressed in the prescribed fashion. ‘With one garment, tied below, weeping and in her period, [Draupadī] went to the assembly hall and stood before her father-in-law’. She had put her faith in dharma. Will dharma vindicate her?
Now is the hour of trial of this woman whom again and again the text describes as devoted to dharma (see e.g. 2.62.19; 2.63.25,33). At this point, one of Duryodhana's brothers, Duṣśāsana, a willing stooge, takes a leading part. Duryodhana asks him to bring Draupadī before them. With a sneer he goes up to Draupadī. ‘Come, come [Draupadī]’, he says, ‘you've been won. Look at Duryodhana without modesty now. You've been acquired according to dharma so come before the assembly’ (2.60.20). Overwrought, she runs to the section reserved for the women of the court, hoping for protection. This is too much for Duṣśāsana. He grabs her by the hair (a particularly humiliating insult (on which see Hara 1986)), and drags her towards the venue of the match. She begs for restraint. ‘I'm in my period’, she says in a low voice, ‘I've but one garment on. I cannot be taken like this to the assembly’. ‘Period or no, clothed or naked, you'll come’, replies her tormentor. ‘You've been won at dice and you're now a slave. One can lust after slave-girls as one fancies’.
Draupadī now affirms her commitment to her dharma, and condemns the Kurus for losing theirs.
‘King [Yudhiṣṭhira] abides by dharma’, she says, ‘and dharma is subtle, to be understood by experts. [So, in the absence of their judgment, why have I been allowed to be dragged here?] But even at my husband's word I do not wish to incur in the slightest the fault of abandoning the qualities proper to me ... Shame! The dharma of the [Kurus] must indeed be lost and the conduct of those who understand nobility too when all the Kurus in the assembly look on while the Kuru-dharma is transgressed!’
(2.60.31–33)
Not only is dharma subtle, as Draupadī avers, but there are subtle variations in the meaning of dharma in this lament. Perhaps the use of ‘experts’ in the Sanskrit (nipuṇa) indicates this; experts are needed to discern the various types of dharma that are in play and to judge whether any has been transgressed. There is the dharma of king Yudhiṣṭhira – this includes the responsibility of a king to protect his subjects and to abide by his word, but also Yudhiṣṭhira's responsibility as a husband to protect his wife. Then Draupadī says that she doesn't wish to abandon the qualities that are proper to her (svaguṇān) – the qualities, that is, of a Kṣatriya woman who is also a wife: qualities to which she has been born and which she must also cultivate. She does not wish to violate the obligations and responsibilities of her own strī-dharma, notwithstanding her husbands’ behaviour. Finally, she refers to the Kuru-dharma which she says accusingly must be lost because it is being violated or ignored. This dharma may well incorporate not only the chivalrous behaviour required of Kṣatriyas to protect the vulnerable, but the specific norms of hospitality to guests that the Kurus have sought to cultivate. There are legal, moral and naturalistic connotations of the term dharma at play here. We shall return to this point later. None of the elders of the assembly, however, dismayed though they may be by what is happening, seem able to summon the nerve to intervene in this maelstrom of doubt.
We cannot help but begin to appreciate by now the mettle of this remarkable woman, thrust against her will into such adverse circumstances. A woman in a male environment, apparently alone and defenceless, she yet struggles to stand up for herself, and, as we shall see, for her seemingly ineffectual husband(s). In his essay on Draupadī (2005), Pradip Bhattacharya quotes the Marathi author, Durga Bhagavat, who goes so far as to say:
In no other mythological personality but Draupadi's do I find – so subtly and so precisely balanced – the continual conflict between the sentiment of love and the erotic impulse, devotion and friendship, restraint and possessiveness. And therefore I find that Draupadi's is a mind that ... possesses an extraordinarily savage vitality. It is endowed with an enigmatic intellect. And it carries the intense purity of forceful passions. So much so, that it often assumes the form of a conflict of tempestuous proportions. And therefore, in the torment suffered by Draupadi's mind the very fountainhead of the exquisitely beautiful restless spirit of the Mahābhārata is found.
(91–2)
This torment is not confined to her frustration and humiliation at the hands of the Kauravas in the dicing episode, but is discernible as the epic unfolds, even to its very end.
Those whom we may expect most to help Draupadī in her hour of need seem as helpless as the others. Bhīṣma, the court elder par excellence, voices the hesitation of his peers in part when he says, ‘Because dharma is subtle, my dear, I cannot rightly answer your question’. Then he poses the problem as he sees it: on the one hand, the man who has lost himself cannot stake what belongs to another; on the other hand, the wife falls under the husband's sway. Further, Śakuni has no equal in dicing, yet Yudhiṣṭhira was not forced to play (so in theory, he did have a choice in the matter – this goes against the view that Yudhiṣṭhira was required to play by the rules of the rājasūya ritual). ‘So I cannot answer your question’ concludes Bhīṣma, greatly distressed (2.60.40–2).
During this impasse, Draupadī, like the good wife she is, tries pathetically to defend her husband Yudhiṣṭhira's actions. He was forced to respond to a challenge, she says, a challenge made by cheats. He did not suspect trickery; how could he be reckoned to have a choice in the matter? Finally, she again demands an answer to her question.
The assembly must therefore strive to answer it. In fact, answering questions about dharma is the main purpose of the assembly-hall. The text indicates that there are three opinions on the issue. We have already heard what we may call the noncommittal view – that tendered by Bhīṣma. A second opinion is now given by Vikarṇa, a junior brother of Duryodhana. He reproaches the senior members of the assembly for not offering a view, reminding them of their responsibility to do so. Then he gives his own opinion:
Draupadī was staked when [Yudhiṣṭhira], who was challenged by cheats, was acting in the throes of his passion. The blameless woman belongs to all the Pāṇḍavas, and she was
staked by this Pāṇḍava after he was won. Further, it was [Śakuni] who suggested Draupadī when he desired a stake. Considering all this, I do not think she has been won.
(2.61.22–4)
Clearly, Vikarṇa does not accept that interpretation of dharma which requires that Yudhiṣṭhira must abide by his vow to accept a challenge even when it is dishonestly made. When Vikarṇa has finished, the assembly erupts in agreement. But the debate does not end there.
We are now given the third and opposing view, and it is argued forcefully by Karṇa, a powerful sympathizer of Duryodhana's who is an enemy of the Pāṇḍavas (not least of Draupadī who has spurned his desire in the past to marry her). Draupadī has been won in accordance with dharma, he contends. Yudhiṣṭhira lost all he owned in the assembly, and ‘Draupadī is part of all he owned’. Further, when Draupadī was clearly mentioned as a stake, it was not contested by the Pāṇḍavas. Finally, with respect to summoning Draupadī in one garment before the assembly during her period – only virtuous women deserve respect. But Draupadī is a whore. She submits to more than one man; she doesn't have one husband as is prescribed, but five, so no wrong has been done to her. ‘She, a chattel of the Pāṇḍavas, and the Pāṇḍavas themselves, have all been won here by [Śakuni] in accordance with dharma’ (2.61.31–7). As a fitting climax to his words and to make the Pāṇḍavas’ humiliation complete, Karṇa demands that both they and Draupadī be publicly stripped.
Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) Page 42