Meta: Draupadi and Yudhishtira
Feb. 16th, 2019 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
toujours_nigelBecause avani008 is hosting a Mythological Couple Celebration Week over on tumblr, and my writer's block doesn't apply to Mahabharata meta and never has, I made a (bad) photoset and then wrote an essay. Under a cut because it's an essay.
I didn’t start out liking Yudhishtira; he’s difficult for kids to like, I think, because when you’re that age everything seems very clear-cut–right and wrong–and people who find their way to truth through a moral tangle seems very boring and–dare I say it–cowardly. The childhood favourites are Bhima or Arjuna: big roaring principled heroes, whose victories you can point to without thinking too much about it. Plus, I have always worshipped Draupadi, and I never thought he was good enough for her. He didn’t win her, and then he betrayed her. My favourite bits of the B.R. Chopra show were when she shouted him down, often the one person who didn’t treat him with deference. I loved it, I lapped it up.
As late as 2013 I was still writing fic that pretty obviously show my distaste for Yudhishtira. It took another year or two, and some much-belated growing-up for me to start appreciating the difficult, impossible situations in which Yudhishtira finds himself: a quiet man who wants nothing so much as to live in the sylvan, solemn company of sages, but must constantly strive to save not just his birthright or that of his brothers, but often their very lives. And it’s only in learning to love Yudhishtira that I’ve come to understand his marriage to Draupadi, which had always seemed absolutely incongruous in the past. Bhima/Draupadi I understood: two passionate people, always a little excessive; Draupadi/Arjuna was obviously romance and angst; even with the twins I figured a friends-with-benefits kind of marriage.
Draupadi and Yudhishtira are obviously a political match, but they’re also an intellectual match, something that is rare for both of them. She’s more practical than him, but Pandita Panchali can sit and talk neeti-sastra with him in a way his brothers aren’t interested in, that we know of. And that’s important because theirs is a political marriage, in the sense that it comes with a job offer: Draupadi is still Empress of Indraprastha when she’s not in Yudhishtira’s bed, even though none of her other husbands are ever the Emperor. Theirs is a marriage of two minds (obligatory Shakespeare mangling) and the years of peace and prosperity at Indraprastha are born of that marriage as much as Prativindhya, who grows with his civic twin. I know one of the reasons I never got interested in them as a couple was that these years are either elided in most adaptations, or we dwell on Arjuna’s Astonishing Adventures instead. And those are more interesting, and have their own narratival function, certainly, but Yudhishtira and Yajnaseni sit in Indraprastha and build it up, this upstart little kingdom they’ve hacked out of a forest, into an empire that rivals Magadh and threatens Hastinapura in terms of territory and wealth, certainly, but that’s brought in by Bhimarjuna ahead of the Rajasuya Yajna. The reputation that makes it such a good place in which to live, that brings people in from all across the country who haven’t had good lives where they started out, who seek refuge and protection, that’s down to Yudhishtira as Dharmaraja and Yajnaseni as Grihalakshmi.
So far, so domestic. They have the Rajasuya Yajna, and they’re at the top of their game, feted by friends and family, kids growing up, everything amazing. Then they go to Hastinapura and Yudhishtira fucks up. If you’ve lived with an addict who seems to have himself under control, and then suddenly spins out into a tire-fire and you’re dragged along helpless and terrified… yeah. We get the What the Hell, Hero? speeches after they’re in the forest, in exile, my favourite part of this marriage as a kid, because Draupadi calling people out on their bullshit was incredibly empowering for me as a girlchild who everyone told she was too shouty and judgy, but anyway. I’m not sure how Yudhishtira fixes this, but presumably he does, and I’m 99% sure he’s the one who has to, because Draupadi is very justifiably set on being Forever Furious about this. Even discounting Suthanu (though it’s interesting to me that she only has second children with Yudhishtira and Arjuna) as quasi-canonical, we get the episode of the Saugandhika, the golden lotus, which Draupadi decides to give Yudhishtira. The association of lotuses and mythical heroines and goddesses is of course a pronounced factor, and Draupadi is herself associated with blue lotuses, but it is a gift of great value, as evidenced by Bhima’s subsequent adventures in trying to acquire another. Admittedly I also love this episode as one of the moments when you get to see the polyamorous family in practice, because she takes the gift Bhima brings her and passes it on to Yudhishtira, and then asks Bhima to get her another, and this is regarded as very normal in kind if not scale. By the time they get to Matsya, they’ve reached an understanding, and we actually get one of my favourite speeches about Draupadi when they’re discussing disguises.
Yudhishthira said, “This is our beloved wife dearer to us than our lives. Verily, she deserveth to be cherished by us like a mother, and regarded like an elder sister. Unacquainted as she is with any kind of womanly work, what office will Krishna, the daughter of Drupada, perform?”
Some of it is a bit… odd, but it illuminates the way Yudhishtira regards her when he’s not around any of the things to which he’s addicted. A wife is your mother, sister, friend, disciple, colleague, all in one, and Draupadi–because she’s his co-ruler even when she’s not actively his wife–is definitely all these and more. (I also have feelings about Yudhishtira who is used to riding herd over a bunch of rowdy young men reacting to this fiery girl he’s suddenly married to, but this is already an essay.) I also enjoy that he thinks Draupadi–a noted cook–is unacquainted with womanly work, because that’s not what he sees of her. I’m sure Bhima knows exactly what domestic skills Draupadi has, but to Yudhishtira she’s a fellow scholar (also I think this contradicts episodes of him helping her care for the Brahmins while they’re in exile, but eh). This is not always a good thing, because–though he speaks a good game about how delicate and sheltered she is–Yudhishtira’s expectations about Draupadi’s ability to get herself out of trouble are (while kinda justified) not always in line with reality, as we see in Matsya, where he reacts poorly when she runs into court chased by Kichaka. Yudhishtira never does feel himself physically capable, and actively needs to be sheltered by his brothers. That Draupadi gets past this to cup Yudhishtira’s blood when Virata hits him is pretty remarkable and as a kid I was super unsure why she was helping him at all buuut anyway. Then there’s the stunning reveal of the Pandavas, with Yudhishtira enthroned, flanked by his brothers, and with Draupadi on his lap. Emperor and Empress, forever.
But also the marriage changes, or it exhibits its symbolic aspects more fully in the Kurukshetra period, as it has to. Both of them are not just multifaceted as people, but in their significances. He’s the mortal iteration of Dharma, who is also Yama; she is sprung from fire and while she has been nurturing her chief work is of destruction. So they end up, Emperor and Empress, probably with more territory than fifteen years ago, and a violently depopulated people. His cousins are dead, her brothers are dead, her sons are dead, their daughter is married off, their one grandchild isn’t actually theirs, and they’re stuck taking care of people who have every reason to hate them. Because their name is Death and Destruction, and they rule a land of wailing.
I love it, I love it so much. I’m sorry, this isn’t a happy note to end on, so, uh. I also think they have a surprisingly robust sex life that is drowned in the same labyrinthine philosophical argumentation that characterises every other part of their lives. I think Yudhishtira grovels for years during Vanavas (as he should) and never quite realises that it’s the way he’s helping in their daily life that reconciles Draupadi to their ongoing marriage. I think that the happiest day of his life is when Suthanu is born, because she’s a sign of renewed hope for him, a child he can be good to and for. I think Yudhishtira and Draupadi are–through their decades of being family–always surprised by overt signs of mutual affection because she thinks he’s too intellectual to have human emotions and he thinks she’s too in love with the others.
avani008 is hosting a Mythological Couple Celebration Week over on tumblr, and my writer's block doesn't apply to Mahabharata meta and never has, I made a (bad) photoset and then wrote an essay. Under a cut because it's an essay.I didn’t start out liking Yudhishtira; he’s difficult for kids to like, I think, because when you’re that age everything seems very clear-cut–right and wrong–and people who find their way to truth through a moral tangle seems very boring and–dare I say it–cowardly. The childhood favourites are Bhima or Arjuna: big roaring principled heroes, whose victories you can point to without thinking too much about it. Plus, I have always worshipped Draupadi, and I never thought he was good enough for her. He didn’t win her, and then he betrayed her. My favourite bits of the B.R. Chopra show were when she shouted him down, often the one person who didn’t treat him with deference. I loved it, I lapped it up.
As late as 2013 I was still writing fic that pretty obviously show my distaste for Yudhishtira. It took another year or two, and some much-belated growing-up for me to start appreciating the difficult, impossible situations in which Yudhishtira finds himself: a quiet man who wants nothing so much as to live in the sylvan, solemn company of sages, but must constantly strive to save not just his birthright or that of his brothers, but often their very lives. And it’s only in learning to love Yudhishtira that I’ve come to understand his marriage to Draupadi, which had always seemed absolutely incongruous in the past. Bhima/Draupadi I understood: two passionate people, always a little excessive; Draupadi/Arjuna was obviously romance and angst; even with the twins I figured a friends-with-benefits kind of marriage.
Draupadi and Yudhishtira are obviously a political match, but they’re also an intellectual match, something that is rare for both of them. She’s more practical than him, but Pandita Panchali can sit and talk neeti-sastra with him in a way his brothers aren’t interested in, that we know of. And that’s important because theirs is a political marriage, in the sense that it comes with a job offer: Draupadi is still Empress of Indraprastha when she’s not in Yudhishtira’s bed, even though none of her other husbands are ever the Emperor. Theirs is a marriage of two minds (obligatory Shakespeare mangling) and the years of peace and prosperity at Indraprastha are born of that marriage as much as Prativindhya, who grows with his civic twin. I know one of the reasons I never got interested in them as a couple was that these years are either elided in most adaptations, or we dwell on Arjuna’s Astonishing Adventures instead. And those are more interesting, and have their own narratival function, certainly, but Yudhishtira and Yajnaseni sit in Indraprastha and build it up, this upstart little kingdom they’ve hacked out of a forest, into an empire that rivals Magadh and threatens Hastinapura in terms of territory and wealth, certainly, but that’s brought in by Bhimarjuna ahead of the Rajasuya Yajna. The reputation that makes it such a good place in which to live, that brings people in from all across the country who haven’t had good lives where they started out, who seek refuge and protection, that’s down to Yudhishtira as Dharmaraja and Yajnaseni as Grihalakshmi.
So far, so domestic. They have the Rajasuya Yajna, and they’re at the top of their game, feted by friends and family, kids growing up, everything amazing. Then they go to Hastinapura and Yudhishtira fucks up. If you’ve lived with an addict who seems to have himself under control, and then suddenly spins out into a tire-fire and you’re dragged along helpless and terrified… yeah. We get the What the Hell, Hero? speeches after they’re in the forest, in exile, my favourite part of this marriage as a kid, because Draupadi calling people out on their bullshit was incredibly empowering for me as a girlchild who everyone told she was too shouty and judgy, but anyway. I’m not sure how Yudhishtira fixes this, but presumably he does, and I’m 99% sure he’s the one who has to, because Draupadi is very justifiably set on being Forever Furious about this. Even discounting Suthanu (though it’s interesting to me that she only has second children with Yudhishtira and Arjuna) as quasi-canonical, we get the episode of the Saugandhika, the golden lotus, which Draupadi decides to give Yudhishtira. The association of lotuses and mythical heroines and goddesses is of course a pronounced factor, and Draupadi is herself associated with blue lotuses, but it is a gift of great value, as evidenced by Bhima’s subsequent adventures in trying to acquire another. Admittedly I also love this episode as one of the moments when you get to see the polyamorous family in practice, because she takes the gift Bhima brings her and passes it on to Yudhishtira, and then asks Bhima to get her another, and this is regarded as very normal in kind if not scale. By the time they get to Matsya, they’ve reached an understanding, and we actually get one of my favourite speeches about Draupadi when they’re discussing disguises.
Yudhishthira said, “This is our beloved wife dearer to us than our lives. Verily, she deserveth to be cherished by us like a mother, and regarded like an elder sister. Unacquainted as she is with any kind of womanly work, what office will Krishna, the daughter of Drupada, perform?”
Some of it is a bit… odd, but it illuminates the way Yudhishtira regards her when he’s not around any of the things to which he’s addicted. A wife is your mother, sister, friend, disciple, colleague, all in one, and Draupadi–because she’s his co-ruler even when she’s not actively his wife–is definitely all these and more. (I also have feelings about Yudhishtira who is used to riding herd over a bunch of rowdy young men reacting to this fiery girl he’s suddenly married to, but this is already an essay.) I also enjoy that he thinks Draupadi–a noted cook–is unacquainted with womanly work, because that’s not what he sees of her. I’m sure Bhima knows exactly what domestic skills Draupadi has, but to Yudhishtira she’s a fellow scholar (also I think this contradicts episodes of him helping her care for the Brahmins while they’re in exile, but eh). This is not always a good thing, because–though he speaks a good game about how delicate and sheltered she is–Yudhishtira’s expectations about Draupadi’s ability to get herself out of trouble are (while kinda justified) not always in line with reality, as we see in Matsya, where he reacts poorly when she runs into court chased by Kichaka. Yudhishtira never does feel himself physically capable, and actively needs to be sheltered by his brothers. That Draupadi gets past this to cup Yudhishtira’s blood when Virata hits him is pretty remarkable and as a kid I was super unsure why she was helping him at all buuut anyway. Then there’s the stunning reveal of the Pandavas, with Yudhishtira enthroned, flanked by his brothers, and with Draupadi on his lap. Emperor and Empress, forever.
But also the marriage changes, or it exhibits its symbolic aspects more fully in the Kurukshetra period, as it has to. Both of them are not just multifaceted as people, but in their significances. He’s the mortal iteration of Dharma, who is also Yama; she is sprung from fire and while she has been nurturing her chief work is of destruction. So they end up, Emperor and Empress, probably with more territory than fifteen years ago, and a violently depopulated people. His cousins are dead, her brothers are dead, her sons are dead, their daughter is married off, their one grandchild isn’t actually theirs, and they’re stuck taking care of people who have every reason to hate them. Because their name is Death and Destruction, and they rule a land of wailing.
I love it, I love it so much. I’m sorry, this isn’t a happy note to end on, so, uh. I also think they have a surprisingly robust sex life that is drowned in the same labyrinthine philosophical argumentation that characterises every other part of their lives. I think Yudhishtira grovels for years during Vanavas (as he should) and never quite realises that it’s the way he’s helping in their daily life that reconciles Draupadi to their ongoing marriage. I think that the happiest day of his life is when Suthanu is born, because she’s a sign of renewed hope for him, a child he can be good to and for. I think Yudhishtira and Draupadi are–through their decades of being family–always surprised by overt signs of mutual affection because she thinks he’s too intellectual to have human emotions and he thinks she’s too in love with the others.
