Draupadī Vastraharaṇa

Vastraharaṇa (vastra is garment, haraṇa is taking away) is the most shattering event of the Dyūta Parva in the Sabhā Parva of the Mahābhārata. At Duryodhana’s command, Duḥśāsana drags Draupadī by the hair into the full assembly of the Kuru court. She is in her monthly period and wears a single garment. The elders Bhīshma, Droṇa, Kṛpa and Vidura sit in anguished silence. At this moment of complete helplessness Draupadī calls on Kṛshṇa, and Bhagavān Kṛshṇa answers with an unending stream of garments that Duḥśāsana cannot strip away.

The command and the dragging

Draupadī had been staked and lost, and her famous question on dharma had left the assembly stunned. Then Duryodhana lost patience. He ordered his brother Duḥśāsana to go into the inner rooms himself and bring her to the assembly.

Duḥśāsana went. Draupadī had taken shelter in the inner chambers among the other women of the royal household. He found her and dragged her out by the hair. She was in her monthly period and wore only one garment (eka-vastra). She struggled, she called on the queens to see what was being done to her, and she called on dharma. But Duḥśāsana had no shame.

He dragged her into the open sabhā before the assembled kings, elders and warriors. The text describes her state in painful detail: her single blood-stained garment, her hair loose and wild, and her body trembling with anger. The greatest warriors and the wisest men of Bhārata sat in silence.

The silence of the assembly

Bhīshma sat still. Droṇa sweated and looked away. Kṛpa covered his face. Vidura wept within himself and could not look. Somadatta wrung his hands. Bhūriśravas looked down at the ground. Yuyutsu, Dhṛtarāshtra’s son by a Vaiśya wife, turned away in shame. Sañjaya later told that even Kṛtavarmā turned his eyes away.

Only Karṇa and Duḥśāsana showed delight.

Draupadī cried out to the assembly. She was the daughter-in-law of the Kuru house, she was a sādhvī (a virtuous wife) who had lived wholly by dharma, and she asked how this could be allowed. She called on the assembly’s duty. She asked her question again: was she truly staked? Her husbands were now dāsas (slaves), but had they been dāsas when they staked her? If Yudhishṭhira had already lost power over himself, the stake was not valid.

The elders gave no answer. The assembly was held back by competing duties and by the difficulty of the question she had put.

Duryodhana then made matters plainer still. He bared his left thigh, a deep insult to a king’s wife, and invited Draupadī to sit on it.

Draupadī’s call to Kṛshṇa

Her husbands were enslaved, her body was in Duḥśāsana’s grip, the elders were silent and the assembly was helpless. In this moment of complete extremity, Draupadī gave up all trust in human protection and called on Kṛshṇa.

She called Him by His names: Govinda, Dvārakāvāsī (He who lives in Dvārakā), brother of Balarāma, protector of those who take refuge in Him. She asked where He was. Why had His promise to protect His devotees become empty words in this hour? She had no other refuge. There was no one else. She called with the full force of her surrender.

Kṛshṇa heard. Though He was not present in the assembly, Bhagavān Kṛshṇa answered. Duḥśāsana began to tear at her garment and tried to pull away the single cloth she wore. In its place an unending stream of garments appeared. For every length of cloth that Duḥśāsana pulled away, another came. He pulled and pulled until a heap of cloth had piled up around him and he fell back exhausted. Draupadī stayed fully clothed. The text says that the heap of discarded garments rose to the height of a small mountain.

Bhīma’s oaths

Bhīmasena had watched all of this, from the dragging to the vastraharaṇa, in burning anguish. He saw Draupadī pulled by the hair, in one garment, in her monthly period, before the whole court. Something broke in him. He made two oaths of terrible solemnity.

The first oath. On the battlefield he would tear open Duḥśāsana’s chest and drink his blood. He would not die before he had done this. He declared it before the whole assembly.

The second oath. He would smash Duryodhana’s thigh, the very thigh that Duryodhana had bared in insult to Draupadī. He would break it with his gadā (mace), and Duryodhana would die of that blow.

The text describes his rage in his body. Fire poured from his ears and nostrils, as fire pours from a fire-mountain at the end of a kalpa (an age of the world). The narrator says he looked like Yama at the dissolution of the age. Arjuna and Yudhishṭhira had to hold him back with their hands to stop him from attacking at once.

Bhīshma’s reply

Draupadī appealed to Bhīshma directly to answer her question. He replied: “Dharma is subtle. I am not able to answer your question with certainty. A righteous man who has lost power over himself may or may not keep the right to stake his wife. The precedents of the śāstras are not the same.” He accepted that he could not answer her, and said that only Yudhishṭhira could. Yudhishṭhira sat in silence.

This reply has been read in two ways. One reading holds that Bhīshma truly could not settle the question of dharma. Another holds that his duties to the throne bound him, so that he could not take a side that went directly against the result of the dice game.

Dhṛtarāshtra’s intervention

The silence broke only when omens began. Jackals howled inside the fire-sanctuary, donkeys brayed loudly from every side, and birds called with fearful cries. Dhṛtarāshtra, who had sat through the whole event hearing everything, was now struck with dread. He stepped in and stopped the proceedings. He offered Draupadī three vara (boons), to acknowledge the wrong that had been done. The Dyūta Parva tells how she accepted two of them and refused the third.

Surrender to Bhagavān Kṛshṇa

The vastraharaṇa is the Mahābhārata’s supreme account of śaraṇāgati, complete surrender to Bhagavān Kṛshṇa. Every human support had failed Draupadī. Her husbands were enslaved. The elders were silent. No human hand rose to protect her. Only when she let go of all trust in human help and called directly on Kṛshṇa did protection come. It came in a way that could not be mistaken. It did not come through any human agent but directly and visibly, through an endless stream of garments.

The Nīlakaṇṭha commentary says that this was not an ordinary miracle but a showing of the principle that Bhagavān Kṛshṇa is the refuge of those who have surrendered completely. In the Śrīvaishṇava tradition, Draupadī’s cry is studied as the model act of prapatti (surrender).

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Dyūta Parva, Chapter 68
• Nīlakaṇṭha commentary on the Mahābhārata