The symbolic meaning could be that a man’s ego prevents a devi from becoming a kumari, which is why he is cursed or has his head cut off. These are spiritual, metaphysical topics.
Shiva was svayambhu, but who was his son Kartikeya’s mother—Parvati or Ganga?
According to the Shiva Purana, after their marriage, Shiva tells Devi that he has no need for a child. He says, ‘I am svayambhu, anadi, anant, without beginning or end; I will never die. So why do I need children?’ Devi says, ‘But I want children; I want to be a mother.’ An interesting conflict arises here. When Shiva is about to offer his seed, all gods and goddesses say that his seed cannot be accommodated in just one womb; it should be placed in many wombs. His seed is supposed to be so hot that no one can touch it. First it is given to Vayu, wind, in the belief that he’ll be able to cool it down, but he fails. Vayu gives the seed to Agni, fire, who too cannot hold it. He passes it on to Ganga and her waters start boiling. The reed forests (Sara-van) near the river start burning. From the ash of those reeds, a child emerges. In some versions of the story, six children emerge. As the infants start crying, Kritika nakshatra, a constellation of six stars, descends from the sky as the children’s mother and feeds them milk. Finally, Gauri, Shiva’s wife, joins the six children together. That child is Kartikeya, also called Shanmukha, or one with six heads.
The question then arises: the father of the child is Shiva, but who is the mother? Vayu, Agni, Ganga, Sharavan, Kritika, Parvati all stake a claim. So, he has many mothers. Shiva’s seed has thus gone to many yonis; it shows that the child is so powerful, he cannot be born of just one womb. Kartik means son of Kritika. In the south, he is called Sharavanan, son of Sharavan. In images, he is sometimes shown along with six or seven matrika, mothers.
What is Ganesha’s story? Who is his mother?
In stories, although Shakti wants to become a mother, the gods don’t want her to give birth like other women. If a child is born from her yoni, it’ll be so powerful that it will defeat even Indra, the king of the gods. So, Shiva–Shakti’s children are not born from Parvati’s yoni. Kartikeya is born of Shiva’s seed, from many yonis. Ganesha is born from the scrapings of Parvati’s body. Again, he is ayonija.
The story is that Parvati goes to Shiva, asking him to give her a child. He says he is not interested in having children as he’s immortal. She tells him she’ll make one herself; she’s the goddess, after all. She first collects the scrapings (mull) of her skin, mixed with the already applied chandan and haldi. Then she makes a doll of it and gives it life. In the Vamana Purana, it is said the child’s name, Vinayaka, comes from binanayak (without a man); there are other stories about the word’s origin too. Shiva does not like the way Parvati has birthed her child, as he cannot recognize her image in it, so he cuts off its head. Parvati starts weeping, and insists he bring back the child to life. So Shiva gives him an elephant head and that’s how Ganesha is born. Again, it is ayonija.
In the Mahabharata, we see many ambitious mothers who want their sons to be king.
In the Puranas, the stories have more of a spiritual, intellectual concern, while in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the focus is on wealth and property. For this reason, the men go to war, and the women want their sons to grow up and be victorious. This is presented in a fascinating way in the Mahabharata. When Shantanu asks to marry Satyavati, she attaches a condition that her son will inherit Shantanu’s kingdom. She claims she is securing her child’s future. Is that the real reason or does she want the high position of rajmata (queen mother) for herself?
There is also a competition between Gandhari, Kunti and Madri. When Gandhari is pregnant, she hears that Kunti has given birth to a son (she used her mantra to have Yudhishtira without the nine-month waiting period). Gandhari is so upset that she beats her belly with a stick. The mass that emerges from her belly is cold as iron. When Vyasa creates 100 children from this mass, Gandhari is happy, because now she has more children than Kunti. Kunti uses up the power of her mantra to beget two more children. She then gives the mantra to Madri who uses it once and calls Ashvin Kumar and has the twins, Nakula and Sahadeva. Pandu asks Kunti to let Madri use the mantra once more as she herself has used it thrice, but Kunti refuses. She fears that if Madri were to produce twins again, she’d have more children, and therefore more importance, than her. This rivalry has been subtly depicted in the Mahabharata.
What about the mothers in the Ramayana?
Kaikeyi’s story is the most well known. When she had saved Dashratha’s life during a deva–asura battle, he had promised her two boons. The day before his eldest son, Rama’s, coronation, she throws a tantrum and demands her boons. She asks that her son Bharata be made king instead of the firstborn Rama, and that Rama be sent into vanavas (life in the forest) for fourteen years. Rama’s mother, Kaushalya, is pained and asks Kaikeyi why she is being so cruel to a son who has always treated her like his own mother.
An interesting aspect of this story is that when Dashratha marries Kaikeyi, he does not have any children. The astrologer says that Kaikeyi will definitely have a son. At that time, Dashratha promises her that her son will become king. So, in a way, Kaikeyi is only asking for what is rightfully her due. It’s like a court case, a settling of an agreement, where the lines are not clear. Whether Kaikeyi is ambitious or merely asking for her right is hard to say.
Krishna is called Devakinandan and Yashodanandan. Who was his mother?
There are some who believe that Krishna is not an avatar (of Vishnu) but an avatari—from whom avatars emerge—himself. But he is born from Devaki’s womb, so he is yonija and experiences death, as is described in the Mausala Parva in the Mahabharata. Now, though he is born from Devaki’s womb in Mathura, he is raised by Yashoda in Gokul. So he has two mothers—a birth mother and a milk mother.
In folk songs, Krishna is asked who his real mother is—Devaki who has birthed him or Yashoda who has raised him? Krishna replies, ‘Do you think my heart is so small that it cannot house more than one mother? I can handle both.’ But the question is who has the maternal right over him? Who can answer that—it’s a complex world. The story suggests that relationships are not built by blood alone. Another interesting detail is that Devaki is a princess, while Yashoda is a milkmaid. Krishna’s claim that both women are his mothers shows that he has a relationship with palace dwellers as well as cowherds, with the city as well as the village. He is large-hearted and this is why Krishna is associated with love.
In the Puranas, is there a story of single mothers?
The Bhagavata Purana has a story of Devahuti whose husband is Rishi Kardam. The rishi tells Devahuti that he doesn’t really want to have children, but he has been told by his ancestors that he won’t achieve moksha (liberation from the cycle of life and death) until he has children. But he doesn’t want any part in raising that child. Devahuti agrees to raise the child alone, and the child grows up to be Kapila Muni who develops the Sankhya philosophy. It is also well known that Sita raises Luv and Kush on her own. Shakuntala too raises her son Bharata by herself in the forest, without the support of her husband.
Is there a story in our Puranas where a father plays the role of a mother?
When apsaras have children, they abandon them. Shakuntala’s mother Menaka abandons her in the jungle; she is raised by Rishi Kanva who is like a single father. When Sita goes back to her mother, and disappears inside the earth, she leaves her children behind with Rama who becomes a single father.
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Women in the Mahabharata
According to you, is the Mahabharata a story about men or women?
It starts as a women’s story, then shifts the focus on men, and finally becomes about women again. The story begins with Shantanu and his two wives. His first wife is Ganga, queen of rivers. She marries him on the condition that no matter what she does after their marriage, he will not question her. She then proceeds to drown each of the seven children she gives birth to. When she’s about to do the same to the eighth ch
ild, he stops her. Because he’s broken his promise, she leaves with the child. His second wife, Satyavati, a fisherman’s daughter, agrees to marry him on the condition that her son will become king. Both women put forth conditions that he has to accept if the marriage is to take place.
In the next generation, things change. Satyavati has two sons—Chitrangad, who dies in a battle with a gandharva, and Vichitravirya, who is a weakling. Ganga’s son Devavrata (Bhishma) is asked to abduct the daughters of Kashi’s king—Amba, Ambika and Ambalika—and bring them as brides for Vichitravirya. Where in the previous generation women were attaching conditions to marriage, in the second, they are being abducted; they have no rights. Amba is in love with someone else so she’s allowed to leave. When she is not accepted by her lover, she returns only to be rejected again; once something has been given away, she is told, it cannot be taken back. She asks Bhishma to marry her, but he tells her about his vow of celibacy. Amba is ruined; she has nowhere to go and no one to turn to. She suffers.
In the meantime, her sisters’ husband Vichitravirya dies before fathering any children. So they become childless widows. Satyavati says since they have married my son, their womb is my son’s. Whosoever puts his seed there, the children will be my son’s. This was called the niyoga system whereby a woman could bear another man’s child but legally, the child would belong to her husband. Satyavati asks her two daughters-in-law to have niyoga with Rishi Vyasa, who was born to her before marriage. On seeing Vyasa, Ambika closes her eyes, and so begets a blind son—Dhritarashtra. Ambalika gets scared, becomes cold, and so she bears a weak son—Pandu. Satyavati is not happy with the quality of the children produced and asks Vyasa to go back to Ambika. Vyasa tells Satyavati that he’s a vanavasi (one who lives in a forest), and unkempt; given the previous experience, he’ll need to make himself more attractive. Satyavati is unmoved and rushes him. However, Ambika refuses to be treated like an animal, and sends her maid instead. The child produced is Vidur. He is perfectly healthy but as a servant’s child, he can never be king. You see that the status of women has come down a notch.
Pandu marries Kunti in a svayamvara. He has been cursed: if he has sexual relations with a woman, he will die. So Kunti has to take recourse to have children by the gods—Yudhishtira, Bhima, Arjuna. Although biologically they are not Pandu’s, by laws of niyoga, they belong to him. Pandu’s second wife, Madri, begets Nakula and Sahadeva from the Ashvini Kumars. By this third generation, women’s freedom has gone completely. The world of the svayamvara has given way to a very new world.
Gandhari is the princess of Gandhar, what we now know as Kandahar in Afghanistan. She travels all the way to Hastinapur (around Delhi), for her marriage without knowing who she is going to wed. She finds out just before the nuptials that her husband is blind. On her wedding night, Dhritarashtra asks her to always support him and act as his eyes. But before morning arrives, she has tied a blindfold and taken a vow to wear it throughout her life. Dhritarashtra confronts her and tells her that while the world thinks she is an ideal wife who is sharing her husband’s grief and handicap, he feels it’s her anger towards the fact that her family had not informed her of his blindness and that she had to marry him because her family had been defeated by his.
So it’s not clear whether she ties the band out of love or revenge.
It’s not clear in the text. When we read it or see dramatizations, we ponder over this. The point is not why, but its effect, the fruit of this action, which is terrible. When her 100 children are growing up, they have a father who cannot see, and a mother who does not want to see. Whatever her reason for blindfolding herself, she doesn’t remove it despite having children. So what kind of impact would it have had on the children? Did the Kauravas become who they were because of this?
I’ve heard that Madri commits sati?
It is there in the story. In the Mahabharata, sati is mentioned. Madri was supposed to be very beautiful and there was always tension between her and Kunti. Kunti had chosen Pandu in a svayamvara whereas Madri had been given to him. Kunti was sad that while she had chosen her husband, he had bought himself a beautiful wife. She may have not felt beautiful enough, and so on. One day, Pandu got excited seeing Madri’s beauty, forgot about his curse and became intimate with her. He died. Madri felt guilty about it and jumped into his pyre, saying she would follow him to Pitra-loka. She left her children behind with Kunti. So, not only did Kunti not get her husband’s love but she also had to raise five children on her own.
We’ve heard many stories of Draupadi. Did the Pandavas have other wives?
They had many wives. The first woman to come into the lives of this generation of Kurus is Hidimbi, a rakshasi (wild forest woman) who marries Bhima, but whom Kunti disowns as she’s not of the same clan. Bhima and Hidimbi’s son is Ghatotkacha. In some stories, it is said that when the Kauravas poison Bhima and throw him in the sea, he goes to Naga-loka where he marries a snake and has a son, Bilalsen. So Bhima has all these families before Draupadi comes into the picture.
Draupadi is won by Arjuna in an archery contest but when he brings her home, Kunti tells him to share with his brothers whatever he has won. So the status of women falls even further to the point where she’s considered an object, a commodity. Draupadi, on her part, lays down a rule that there can be only one woman in the palace. It’ll be her kitchen, her home, and no other woman can enter there. She stays with each husband for one year, so the first husband’s turn comes again only in the sixth year. What are the other husbands supposed to do in the interim? Again, the men are important. While the many queens of a king have to wait for their husband, these men refuse to wait. They marry other women. Yudhishtira marries a princess from Kashi, Nakula marries a princess from Chedi, and Sahadeva too marries another princess. They all have children with these queens, but never bring them home; they go to visit them. That becomes the custom. Arjuna has several wives. One is Subhadra, Krishna’s sister, a Yadava; another is the nagaputri (daughter of the Nagas) Ulupi, and the third is the Manipuri princess Chitrangada.
Rabindranath Tagore had written a poem on Chitrangada . . .
Yes. Chitrangada was a warrior princess. She hears of the handsome prince Arjuna coming to visit and feels that he may not like her as she is somewhat masculine, so she prays to Shiva to make her feminine. Shiva grants her wish and she turns into a gentle, lithe girl. However, when Arjuna sees her, he is not attracted to her. He already has many wives. He wants to see the warrior princess as he’s drawn to the idea of that kind of woman. Chitrangada goes back to Shiva and converts to her original self. Now when Arjuna meets her, he falls in love with her and they marry. A child, Babruvan, is born to them and stays back with the mother. Here, the woman is a warrior and retains the right to her child, which is the opposite of the Pandu and niyoga stories.
What’s Ulupi’s story?
It’s quite an interesting story. During a tirth yatra, when Arjuna goes to bathe in a river, Ulupi kidnaps him and asks to marry him. Arjuna turns her down. She tells him that she considers him her husband, so he has to accept her as his wife. Basically she has abducted him and is now forcing him to become her husband. This is a very unique situation where the woman has so much power, not unlike Ganga.
Arjuna agrees to be her husband for one night. She begets a child, Iravan. In the Tamil Mahabharata, Iravan plays an important role. He is sacrificed during the war due to which the Pandavas are victorious. Ulupi is furious about her son being killed. She goes to Chitrangada and asks to adopt her son to teach him archery. She makes Babruvan a great warrior. There’s a time after the Kurukshetra war when Arjuna goes to Manipur where he battles his son and is slain by him. Chitrangada then asks Ulupi to forgive their husband. Ulupi relents and uses a nagamani to bring Arjuna back to life.
These women play an important role in Arjuna’s life. When Arjuna kills Bhishma, Ganga curses him, saying that just as he has killed a man who was like a father to him, so will he suffer at the hands of his son.
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sp; What about the Kauravas’ wives? We hardly ever get to hear stories about them.
Not much has been said about them in the epic. The traditional loka kathas, folklore, mention one wife of Duryodhana—Bhanumati. The couple loves each other and is faithful to each other—so he is patnivrata and she is pativrata. Usually, in latter-day retellings, he is depicted as being very lecherous, especially due to his part in Draupadi’s vastraharan (disrobing), because they want to paint him as a complete villain.
Karna’s wife too does not find a mention in the Sanskrit epic. In loka kathas, there is a wife named Vaishali, and there isn’t much of a dramatic story there either.
Can you tell us the stories of Gandhari’s and Kunti’s deaths?
After the war, when Yudhishtira becomes king the elders stay in the palace with them. But slowly the Kaurava elders realize that they are not respected. Bhima makes fun of Dhritarashtra during mealtimes. When he hears him breaking a meat bone, Bhima tells him that’s how he broke Dhritarashtra’s sons’ bones in the war. After repeated insults, Gandhari suggests to her husband that they retire to the forest (vanavas). Kunti also decides to go with them.
A forest fire occurs while they are there. Dhritarashtra wants to run for his life, but Gandhari refuses, and says, ‘Let us accept it, accept death.’ Both Gandhari and Kunti die in this fire. It’s not a completely natural death, it’s accidental. You may call it a kind of suicide.
Devlok With Devdutt Pattanaik Page 12