The instances19 mentioned above from the Mahabharata clearly indicate that Duryodhana inherited several personality traits from his ancestors. However, the conclusions in the book cannot be drawn till we analyse the personality traits of Duryodhana’s counterparts—the Pandavas.
IV
PANDAVAS
Positive Counterparts
1
PANDU
A Brief and Uninfluential Life
Pandu was the son of Veda Vyasa and Ambalika, born through the system of niyoga. His life was somehow always shrouded in doubt and mystery. As a young prince, after spending thirty nights with his new wife and with an earlier wife, he left them and went on a world conquest. Ruthlessly reducing ‘his rival kings to ashes’, in the words of the Mahabharata, he was at the height of glory. Why would that young prince, the long-awaited occupant of the Kuru throne who was adored by all, leave everything behind and go to the forest with his two wives to make hunting his full-time occupation? The Mahabharata tells us that his wives advised him to do so. Why would two young wives of a lustrous young king ask him to leave behind his kingdom and all its comforts, as well as the challenge and responsibility of ruling it, and go and live in the forest to spend his time hunting? The answer to these questions can be understood only after looking at his life in its entirety.
Pandu asked his wives to beget children for him with the help of other men, which was carried out through niyoga. Why exactly did he have to do that? Was it because of the curse by sage Kindama, whom he saw copulating with his wife in the form of deer and shot dead? Or had Pandu been impotent all along?
The answer to this question can be found by examining a verse in the epic. As Pandu lay dead after engaging in sexual intercourse with his younger wife Madri, Kunti came rushing to the scene. She blamed Madri for their husband’s death and said: ‘Blessed are you, Madri, and more fortunate than I am. For, you were able to see the face of the king in raptures.’ (Dhanya tvam asi bahleeki matto bhagyatara tatha, drshtavatyasi yad vaktram prahrshtasya maheepateh—Adi 124.21).1 Kunti was referring to the ecstasy of a sexual climax that still lingered on dead Pandu’s face. Kunti had perhaps seen this expression on the faces of the four different men who had fathered her children, but never on the face of her husband Pandu.
The Mahabharata minutely tell us that a smile lingered on Pandu’s face, even in his death. And yet nothing in the Mahabharata tells us that Pandu had rejected Kunti sexually. From all we know, he was deeply in love with her from the day she chose him for a husband to the last day of his life.
This explains a lot of things. For instance, it explains why Bhishma was in a hurry to get him a second wife. The Mahabharata does not tell us how long it was before Bhishma went and got Madri as a second wife for Pandu. It could have been immediately after his marriage to Kunti or after sometime had passed. Getting young Pandu a second wife as soon as he was married does not make sense, unless it was meant to be an urgent political alliance. Though, that does not seem to be the case. Besides, Bhishma would have been very reluctant to offer his nephew two young beautiful wives at the same time, considering the disastrous past of Pandu’s father Vichitravirya.
The second marriage should have been after some time with an important reason behind it. It was not a love marriage, but an arranged one. A political alliance does not seem to have been a desperate necessity, which leaves us with another strong possibility. The first marriage had failed to produce what the Kuru-Bharata family needed desperately: Pandu’s heir, in case anything happened to the young king. He had failed to produce an offspring with his first wife so far. Bhishma, who had no idea that Kunti was already a mother before her marriage, must have assumed that the fault lay with her (the woman was the first suspect in such cases, and getting a second wife was the easiest solution for the man, particularly a king). He might not even have considered the possibility that Pandu was impotent. And Pandu might not have revealed it himself, nor did Kunti. So Bhishma got Pandu a second wife, Madri.
It also explains why Pandu left on a world conquest exactly thirty nights after his wedding with Madri. That must have been a terrible month for the impotent Pandu. He now had two wives, each as beautiful as a goddess, and yet there was nothing he could do to improve his sexual life. So, a bitter, frustrated and furious Pandu gathered his army and left on a world conquest. He had failed to prove his potency. But he could prove himself in the battlefield. Pandu was savage in the battlefield, as the Mahabharata tells us. He did not just win battles, but burnt his rivals to ashes. He then came back victorious, bringing enormous wealth with him.
The Mahabharata uses a very unusual expression to describe the triumphant Pandu on his return to Hastinapur: ‘punar-mudita-vahanah’. This means that on the return journey to Hastinapur, even ‘his vehicles were happy, once again’. That is to say that Pandu was happy once again. And even his vehicles, his horses and elephants, reflected his happiness. The words ‘once again’ are significant because they imply that it was not a happy Pandu that had left on the conquest, but an unhappy one.
Also, surprisingly, Pandu did not add the conquered wealth to the treasury of the Kurus, as would have been expected of him. Instead, he distributed it among Bhishma, Satyavati, Ambika, Ambalika, Vidura, his friends, etc. It is as though he wanted them all to see the amount of wealth and glory he had attained, to certify how much of a man he was. There was so much wealth, that it is said that Dhritarashtra later performed a hundred ashwamedha sacrifices with it. This shows that Pandu possibly possessed narcissistic traits.2 His need for excessive attention and admiration can only be considered dysfunctional, resulting in exploitative acts or behaviours.
After this, he did an extremely strange thing. The long-awaited ruler of Hastinapur, Pandu had just taken over the reins of the kingdom. He had to prove himself as a competent king by successfully winning battles. But immediately after the battles, on his wives’ urging he decided to leave Hastinapur. He went to the jungle with them and engaged in hunting. Why would Pandu do something like that? A strong possibility that comes to mind is that he did not want Bhishma to bring him yet another wife. He had no answers to his accusing glances, along with those of his mother and grandmother. He must have discussed this with his wives, from whom he could not have hidden the facts of the matter. With their wisdom and understanding, they must have advised him to leave everything and go to the jungle with them. No one would torment him there.
If Pandu had been impotent all along, then it was not the curse of the sage that had forced him to have his children begotten by other men. What Pandu actually did to the deer couple may have been a later addition to the story. What might have happened is that Pandu saw a male and a female deer copulating in the jungle and shot them dead. That’s all.
But then why would, as we asked earlier, a cultured man who was a scion of the noble Bharata dynasty do such a thing? Perhaps, for the same reasons that caused his impotence. There is every reason to believe that Pandu’s impotence was psychological. Pandu was physically fit. He was a mighty warrior, a terror to his enemies. Except for the paleness of his skin, there was no mention of any physical deficiency in him. And he died while engaged in a sexual act with his wife. All these point to his impotence as having been psychological and not physical.
Literature on the psychopathology of impotence tells us that psychopathological impotence may be associated with a very restrictive upbringing concerning sex, negative attitudes toward sex and negative or traumatic sexual experiences. Other deep-seated causal factors include unconscious feelings of hostility, fear, inadequacy or guilt. All of these are symptoms of neuroticism. The study also states that men with sexual dysfunction present significantly higher levels of neuroticism when compared to sexually healthy men. Moreover, regression analysis indicates neuroticism as the best predictor of sexual functioning. Regarding psychopathology, men with sexual problems presented significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms. Therefore, the study concluded that personality dimensions and
psychopathology play an important role in male sexual functioning. The results may have important clinical implications.3
Let us look at how Pandu was conceived. The niyoga was not a happy incident for Pandu’s mother Ambalika or for her sister Ambika, who was Dhritarashtra’s mother. Ambalika knew it would be Vyasa performing the niyoga. Yet when the sage entered her room and approached her bed, she was horrified and turned pale. The act of conceiving Pandu was one of indescribable horror and repugnance to his mother. The horror the sisters felt was so great that they refused to undergo the torture a second time and sent a maid in their place when they were forced to. After the conception and birth of Pandu and Dhritarashtra, both sisters withdrew into shells that they never emerged from.4 The palace of Hastinapur was packed with maids and slaves. It was impossible that a fatherless child with a negligent mother did not hear palace rumours about his birth. It should not surprise us if he heard what happened in graphic details. How a young sensitive mind would react to such talk is impossible to predict. And Pandu was definitely a very sensitive child and grew up to be a very sensitive man. In Pandu’s case, it apparently resulted in an unconscious horror of sex, for what he heard concerned his own mother. The images that the gossip generated could have played repeatedly in his mind, eventually rendering him psychologically impotent. It is not impossible to imagine that every time he approached one of his wives, the image of his mother and the horrible experience she had been subjected to flashed in front of his eyes.
From the picture presented of him in the Mahabharata, Pandu appears to have been a man capable of great love. At least to begin with. As a child he must have loved his mother deeply, as was shown by his act of offering part of the wealth he had brought from the conquest at her feet. Listening to all the palace gossip as a child must have confused him. It could have led him, like countless other children, to think that sex was something horrid that men did to women. It wouldn’t be surprising if he felt that he too, was somehow responsible, in subjecting his mother to that horrid act. Partly because he was a man and partook in the crime that some men afflict at women, and partly because his mother had to undergo it for the sake of his birth. The result could have been a very powerful sense of guilt.
Another angle that must be looked into is Bhishma’s effect on the child and adolescent Pandu, with regard to his sexual development. The Mahabharata tells us that it was mostly Bhishma who brought him up. Here was a man who had become a legend in his own lifetime, partly because he had denied himself of sex. Pandu seems to have had his share of all the elements that cause psychopathological impotence.
In the spiritual interpretation of the Mahabharata, Vyasa’s four sons were the embodiments of the four purusharthas—the goals of human life. Shuka was the embodiment of the paramapurushartha of moksha, liberation. Vidura of dharma, righteousness. Dhritarashtra of artha, wealth and possessiveness. And Pandu was the embodiment of kama, desire. He was lust embodied. Therefore, it is easy to imagine that Pandu’s sons may have inherited these behavioural dispositions. An example I explain later is how, on reading the vigorously passionate expressions of the Pandavas when they first saw Draupadi, Kunti decided to marry her to all five brothers.
2
KUNTI
An Inconsistent DNA to Pandavas
Pandu was married to Kunti, the adopted daughter of King Kuntibhoja. Her real father was King Sura of the Yadava clan. Kuntibhoja had adopted her and used her to serve a Brahmin visiting his court. This Brahmin was known both for his irascibility and his great magical powers. Kunti served him so well that he blessed the king and gave Kunti several mantras with which she could summon any god to father her child. In her childish curiosity, Kunti, while still unmarried, used one mantra and called upon Surya. He appeared immediately and begot a son on her. Frightened, Kunti put the child in a box, with some gold and jewellery, and set it afloat in the river. The boy was found and adopted by the suta Adhiratha, and came to be known as Karna.
Kunti was the matriarch of the Pandava household, possessing verbal strength and decisive articulation. Matrilineality predominated in the birth of the Pandavas (through the convention of niyoga) and an example of it can be observed in Bhima’s revelation of his identity to his brother Hanuman. He said ‘I am a Kshatriya hero, a descendent of Kuru race and a son of Kunti’ (Rajagopalachari, 2009, p. 159).1 This statement aligned him to matrilineal preponderance. Kunti’s authority was also highlighted during her instructive stipulation of dharma to her sons while they lived in the forest, and her model of good kingship in Udyog Parva cannot be ignored. Her decisiveness in abandoning Karna and concealing it till the end was aligned with her primary concern—the ‘welfare of the dynastic line of Pandu’ (Chaitanya 1985, pp. 152–59).2 Moreover, it was her intelligence that allowed her to summon Dharma first. This assured that her actions were accompanied by legitimization of levirate.
She played a pivotal role in sanctifying the marriage of Draupadi to all five Pandavas. She ‘with her motherly instincts read her sons’ desire to go to Panchala and win Draupadi’ (Rajagopalachari, 2009, p. 68).3 This decision of hers was not inadvertent, but a planned strategy as it solved a dual purpose—to align the Pandavas with a common wife (symbol of unity), and to be supported by strong allies. In other words, Draupadi acted as Kunti’s deputy, who during their exile in the forest performed the motherly functions, one of which was to win back the throne of Hastinapur.
Also, Kunti was the one who ensured Krishna’s allegiance to the Pandavas, which inspired a righteous victory. Just for the welfare of her sons, she swallowed her pride, approached Karna and appealed to him to join the Pandavas, even though he refused. To him, she said ‘Son, all the Kauravas will be destroyed in the battle. Let it be as you say. Who can fight fate’ (Karve 1994, pp. 67–86).4 Not just a selfish instigation, it can be interpreted as her desire to protect Karna from a certain providence. Though she couldn’t sway him, she made him promise not to slay any of her sons except Arjuna. This was another intelligent move by Kunti.
Due to Pandu’s impotence, he wanted Kunti to have sons from another man. But she told him about the mantras that Durvasa had given her. With Pandu’s consent she summoned three gods to father his sons. Dharma, or Yudhishthira, was born of Yama, also called Dharma or the god of death and regulation. A year later, her second son Bhima was born of Vayu, the Wind God. He was a giant in stature and power. The next year, her third son Arjuna was born of Indra, the king of gods. These three sons are called Kaunteya (sons of Kunti) in the Mahabharata. Pandu’s other wife Madri begged him to ask Kunti to give her a mantra too, and Kunti acquiesced. Madri called the twin gods Ashvini and gave birth to twins Nakula and Sahadeva. They were called Madreya, sons of Madri. All five children were collectively known as the Pandavas, the sons of Pandu.
After Pandu and Madri’s death, Kunti returned to Hastinapur, along with the five infants, the half-charred bodies of Pandu and Madri, and many Brahmins. Pandu and Madri were cremated again with ceremonial rites. Kunti lived on at the Hastinapur court, and her five sons, together with the sons of Gandhari, were brought up under the tutelage of Bhishma. A keen rivalry soon developed between these five and their cousins.
Kunti seems to have been born to endure only sorrow. A dozen years of happiness were too few to compensate her for her long life of sorrow and humiliations. Every man in her life contributed to her unhappiness. She never said anything directly to blame her husband but she did reproach her father bitterly. ‘As a spendthrift squanders his money unthinking, so did my father give me away when yet a girl to his friend.’5 Though one feels pity for her, in her own estimate, her condition, though sometimes sorrowful, was never lowly or pitiable. She did not think that riches or material comforts were necessary for the happiness of a Kshatriya woman.
Her biological father gave her away to a friend. One lifelong sorrow was borne of this action. Her adoptive father gave her in marriage to an impotent man; and the rest of her sorrows were a result of this union.
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p; Pandu, her husband was the king of Hastinapur. Kunti, therefore, was the queen. Pandu, as he became the king, went on a conquering expedition, defeated many kings and brought immense wealth as tribute. He presented it all to his blind elder brother Dhritarashtra, and himself went to live in the Himalayan forests with his two wives, Kunti and Madri. All the Kuru kings were addicted to hunting but that could not have been his reason, for they did not take their queens along with them to the hunts. Pandu had gone to the forest with the intention of living there. Did he intend that some other man would beget children on his wives? Did he wish to carry out this plan away from the capital so that nobody found out the identity of the fathers of the children? However, at the end, Kunti returned with five children.
Pandu begged Kunti to conceive sons from some Brahmin. It was at this point that Kunti told him about the boon given to her by Durvasa. This was also an opportunity for her to reveal the existence of Karna. According to the custom of the time, when niyoga was an acceptable practice, such a child could have become a legitimate son of Pandu. However, Kunti at that time had no idea what had happened to Karna, whether he had lived or not. Therefore, she never said anything about this child.
Madri burnt herself on Pandu’s funeral pyre, but the life which Kunti was left to drudge alone was equally hard, if not harder. Kunti comes across as a tough and just woman on this occasion. In a patriarchal, polygynous society, a woman’s status depended entirely on the position of a man—either her father or husband or son. The highest stature that a Kshatriya woman could aspire to was to be the eldest wife of a crowned king and to give birth to his eldest son. To have more sons than the other wives was also a means of securing, if not the love of a husband, then at least the position of the chief queen. Kunti did not want the stigma of being barren to be attached to Madri, but she was certainly not going to allow the junior and more beautiful queen to have more children than herself. She knew that Pandu’s preference for the beautiful Madri was due to spite and jealousy. Since the security of Kunti’s sons depended on the king’s life, as in due course her sons would succeed their father to the throne, Kunti was highly protective of Pandu’s life.
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