Gāndhārī

Gāndhārī was the daughter of Subala, king of Gāndhāra, and the sister of Śakuni. She was married to Dhṛtarāṣṭra, the blind king of Hastināpura. When she learned that her husband was blind, she bound a cloth over her own eyes and never took it off for the rest of her life.

She was the mother of one hundred sons, the Kauravas, whose eldest was Duryodhana, and of one daughter, Duśśalā. Her lifelong blindness was a form of tapas (austerity). The tapas gave her great power, including a gaze so strong that it could affect anyone she finally looked at.

Origin and marriage

Gāndhārī was the princess of Gāndhāra. She was born to Subala and was the sister of Śakuni. She was known for her beauty, her intelligence and her devotion to dharma.

Dhṛtarāṣṭra was the eldest son of the Kuru line, but his blindness had kept him from direct kingship. When Gāndhārī was chosen to be his wife, she made her own decision about how to stand with him. She reasoned that she should not enjoy what her husband could not. She should not use her eyes freely when his were dark. Before she was even brought to Hastināpura, she bound a cloth over her eyes. No one commanded this. It was her own resolve, born of her dharma towards her husband. The Ādi Parva tells this.

The hundred sons

Gāndhārī bore Dhṛtarāṣṭra one hundred sons. The eldest was Duryodhana. She also bore one daughter, Duśśalā, who was later given in marriage to Jayadratha of Sindhu. The hundred sons are together called the Kauravas. They stand against the five Pāṇḍavas, and this is the central conflict of the Mahābhārata.

The power of her tapas

By binding her eyes for life, Gāndhārī gathered a very great store of tapas, the spiritual energy that comes from long, willing self-restraint. The Mahābhārata refers to this tapas again and again as a real source of power. The gaze she had held back for a lifetime became a force. When it was finally turned on a being, it could give near-invulnerability or do great harm. Her life was one long act of willing renunciation.

Her warning before the second dice game

In Chapter 75 of the Anudyūta Parva (part of the Sabhā Parva), Dhṛtarāṣṭra had given way once more to Duryodhana’s demand for a second dice game. Gāndhārī came before her husband and gave the plainest warning of the Sabhā Parva.

She recalled every omen around Duryodhana’s birth. There were the cries of jackals and celestial portents. There were voices that had told Dhṛtarāṣṭra even then that this son would destroy the Kuru line. She reminded him that every elder and ṛṣi had advised him to abandon the child at birth, and that he had refused out of love for his firstborn.

Then she told him: “Even now, the course can be corrected. Send the Pāṇḍavas back. Restore what was taken. A king who cannot restrain his own son cannot restrain his kingdom. The war that is coming will kill every child of ours.”

Dhṛtarāṣṭra had already allowed the game. He did not take back his word, and the second dice game went ahead. Her warning is the last moment in the text when the disaster of Kurukṣetra could have been prevented, and it was not.

Meeting the Pāṇḍavas

In Chapters 14 and 15 of the Strī Parva, Vidura’s long counsel had partly steadied Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s mind. The Pāṇḍavas then came to Hastināpura and approached Gāndhārī and Dhṛtarāṣṭra to offer their respects. Gāndhārī received them in deep grief. Her sons were dead, and she knew the war had come about as it did.

When Bhīma came before her, her calm was strained. She had heard that Bhīma killed Duryodhana by striking below the belt, against the rules of mace combat, and she had not forgotten it. Even in her grief she spoke the truth of dharma: that act had been adharma. She did not curse Bhīma, but her words made her judgment clear. Kṛṣṇa saw the danger, because Gāndhārī’s tapas was strong enough that even an angry glance from her could harm a man. He guided Bhīma’s gaze away from her, and the moment passed.

Divine sight and the walk over the battlefield

Vyāsa came to the bank of the Gaṅgā. He understood Gāndhārī’s grief and her wish to see her sons one last time, and he gave her divine sight (divya-dṛṣṭi). This was a great vara (boon). The woman who had blinded herself for a whole lifetime could now see the whole Kurukṣetra battlefield as it lay, full of the dead.

With this sight, Gāndhārī walked over the battlefield in Chapters 16 to 25 of the Strī Parva, which the text calls the Strī Vilāpa Parva. Kṛṣṇa walked beside her. She went among the fallen warriors and sang a lament for each one.

• She mourned Duryodhana, Duḥśāsana, Vikarṇa, Durmukha, Citrasena, Vividingśati, Duḥsaha and the other Kaurava brothers.
• She mourned Abhimanyu in the lap of Uttarā, the weeping princess of Matsya.
• She mourned Karṇa, and spoke of his dignity and courage.
• She mourned Jayadratha beside her own daughter Duśśalā. The sight of her widowed daughter moved her to grief beyond all the others.
• She mourned Bāhlīka, Śalya, Bhagadatta, Bhīṣma, Droṇa, Bhūriśravas, Somadatta and Śakuni.

Through all of this, Gāndhārī named the way each warrior died. A kṣatriya who fell facing the enemy had died with honour and had gained vīra śayana (the hero’s bed). Of each she said: “He fell in the manner suited to kṣatriyas.” This too was a teaching of dharma inside her lament: the way a kṣatriya dies is a matter for honour, not shame.

Gāndhārī’s śāpa on Kṛṣṇa

In Chapter 25, after the walk over the field, Gāndhārī turned to Kṛṣṇa. She said that Kṛṣṇa could have prevented the war. The Yādavas were strong, and his wisdom had no equal. She pointed to the time he went from Upaplava as the Pāṇḍavas’ messenger of peace, when Duryodhana refused even five villages and the peace effort failed. She said that if Kṛṣṇa had truly wished for peace, he could have made it happen, and he chose not to.

With the full force of her tapas, Gāndhārī spoke her śāpa (curse). In thirty-six years Kṛṣṇa would see the Yādavas destroy one another and die by each other’s hands. He would wander alone in the forest and die in obscurity, from the arrow of an ordinary hunter. The Yādava women would weep over their dead, as the Kuru women now wept on that field.

Kṛṣṇa received the śāpa with a slight smile (īṣad-smita). He did not deny her account. He agreed that he had the power to prevent the war, that the Yādavas would destroy themselves, and that his own death would be as she said. He said: “There is no one else who could accomplish the destruction of the Yādavas — I myself shall accomplish it.” So in the text this śāpa does not bind Kṛṣṇa. It is something that Kṛṣṇa himself wills to happen. It is fulfilled in the Mausala Parva.

The śāpa fulfilled in the Mausala Parva

The śāpa was fulfilled in the thirty-sixth year of Yudhiṣṭhira’s rule. Terrible portents multiplied at Dvārakā. Kāla roamed the houses in dreadful forms. Animals gave birth to unnatural young. The Pāñcajanya conch wailed of its own accord. Agni burned to the left. Rāhu seized both the moon and the sun, so that an eclipse fell on the thirteenth day of the dark fortnight. Kṛṣṇa saw that the time had come. He remembered the words Gāndhārī had spoken in her grief after her sons were slain. He knew that her words had now arrived, and he chose to make them true rather than turn them away. This is in the Mausala Parva, Chapter 2.

At the end, Kṛṣṇa sat alone in the forest. The Vṛṣṇis had destroyed one another at Prabhāsa, and Balarāma had departed. Kṛṣṇa held in mind all that Gāndhārī had once said, together with the words of Durvāsa, and understood that the hour for him to leave his body had come. So the brāhmaṇa śāpa and Gāndhārī’s śāpa were fulfilled as one. This is in the Mausala Parva, Chapter 4.

One of Kṛṣṇa’s queens was also named Gāndhārī. She entered the fire at Dvārakā after his departure. She is a different person from Gāndhārī the wife of Dhṛtarāṣṭra. This is in the Mausala Parva, Chapter 4.

At Bhīṣma’s funeral

Gāndhārī went with Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Yudhiṣṭhira to Kurukṣetra for Bhīṣma’s last hour, fifty-eight nights after his fall. She saw his departure by yoga. She joined Dhṛtarāṣṭra and the rest of the gathering in walking around the funeral pyre in the apasavya way (counter-clockwise). Then she went with the whole company to the Gaṅgā. There Gaṅgā Devī herself rose weeping from the river to mourn her son. This echoes Gāndhārī’s own great lament for Bhīṣma in the Strī Parva. The source is the Anuśāsana Parva, Bhīṣma Svargārohaṇa Parva, Chapter 168.

The Āśramavāsika Parva: leaving for the forest

The Āśramavāsika Parva tells of Gāndhārī’s last years. In the month of Kārtika, she performed the Udavasanīya iṣṭi (a fire rite) with Dhṛtarāṣṭra and took the vow of vānaprastha (forest life) with him. They left Hastināpura while the Kaurava and Pāṇḍava women wept aloud. All along the way she kept her eyes bound, as she had chosen to do for life. She walked with her hand on Kuntī’s shoulder, and Dhṛtarāṣṭra kept his hand on Gāndhārī’s shoulder. This is in Chapter 15.

Yudhiṣṭhira and the Pāṇḍavas could not persuade Kuntī to give up her wish to join them in the forest. Dhṛtarāṣṭra then asked Gāndhārī to step in and turn Kuntī back. He said he was well pleased with this daughter-in-law’s service, and that she could practise tapas while staying in the kingdom. Gāndhārī gave the king’s words in full and added her own pleading, but she could not change Kuntī’s mind. This is in Chapter 18.

At the āśrama of the rājarṣi Śatayūpa near Kurukṣetra, Gāndhārī practised the same hard tapas as Dhṛtarāṣṭra. She wore bark garments and skins, as Kuntī did. Her body grew thin from the discipline, and her actions, mind, speech and gaze were fully mastered. Nārada, Parvata, Devala and Vyāsa came to the āśrama. Nārada foretold that when Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s tapas was complete, Gāndhārī would go with him to the realm of Kubera. After that she would travel the divine lokas with him in the kāmagamana vimāna (a flying vehicle that goes where one wishes). This is in Chapters 19 and 20.

The Bhāgavatam gives a different account of Gāndhārī’s end: she followed Dhṛtarāṣṭra into the yoga-fire that consumed him at Saptasrotas.

Later the Pāṇḍavas came in state to visit the āśrama. Gāndhārī was joined again with Yudhiṣṭhira and his brothers, who bowed before her and Dhṛtarāṣṭra together. She and the king received the whole Pāṇḍava household, including Draupadī, Subhadrā and Uttarā, with fresh affection. This is in Chapters 24 and 25.

Named as a peacemaker in the Aśvamedhika Parva

Years after Kurukṣetra, Śakuni’s son faced Arjuna in Gāndhāra during the Pāṇḍava Aśvamedha. Arjuna spared the young prince’s life. He told him that he lived only because Gāndhārī was dear to Kuntī’s heart. Even in her widowhood and grief, her name was a reason for peace between the two houses. This is in the Aśvamedhika Parva, Chapter 84.

The Āśramavāsika Parva: her last years, her departure and the śrāddha

For fifteen years after the war, Gāndhārī lived at Hastināpura beside Dhṛtarāṣṭra as a tapasvinī (a woman of austerity). She slept on the ground, wore deerskin and kept japa (silent repetition of a name or mantra). Again and again she paid the debt of śrāddha (rites for the dead) to her dead sons through gifts to brāhmaṇas. Yudhiṣṭhira and Kuntī honoured her as one of their own family. This is in the Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapters 1 and 2.

Dhṛtarāṣṭra told her that Vyāsa had given his own approval for him to go to the forest. Gāndhārī asked him directly when he meant to ask Yudhiṣṭhira’s leave and go. This brought on Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s formal request. He asked also that a mahādāna (great gift) first be given to free from the preta state (the state of a restless departed spirit) their sons who had died in the “evil dice game”. This is in Chapter 8.

Gāndhārī stood beside Dhṛtarāṣṭra as he took leave of the people of Kurujāṅgala and asked their forgiveness together with him. She stayed at his side to hear the reply of the bahvṛca brāhmaṇa Sāmba, who spoke for the citizens. He said that the destruction of the war had been daiva (fate) and no fault of the Kuru kings. This is in Chapters 9 and 10.

Next came the ten-day dāna-yajña (a rite of giving) that Dhṛtarāṣṭra performed for Bhīṣma, Droṇa, Somadatta, Bāhlīka, Bhūriśravas, Duryodhana, their hundred sons, Jayadratha and their kinsmen. The gifts were reckoned as owed jointly to the pitṛs (ancestors) of Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Gāndhārī, and to their sons and grandsons. This is in Chapters 11 to 14.

The plea for darśana, the vision at the Gaṅgā, and her death

Vyāsa offered a vara to the household after he revealed that Vidura was Dharma himself. Gāndhārī asked first that Dhṛtarāṣṭra be shown his slain sons and grandsons. She also named Kṛṣṇā (Draupadī) and Subhadrā among the grieving daughters-in-law whose sorrow moved her. This is in Chapter 29.

Vyāsa then told them that Gāndhārī’s husband was, in his true nature, a wise gandharva king who was also named Dhṛtarāṣṭra. He told them that every fallen warrior, her own hundred sons among them, had been a deva in part (aṃśa). Duryodhana was Kali. Her brother Śakuni was Dvāpara. Duḥśāsana and the rest of her sons were rākṣasas. Vyāsa then led the whole company to the Gaṅgā. There he called the fallen host, and they rose restored to youth and splendour. Gāndhārī, given the power of divine knowledge (divya-jñāna-bala), saw all her sons and kinsmen for one joyful night, before they went back to their lokas. This is in Chapters 31 to 33.

Two years later Gāndhārī died with Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Kuntī in a forest fire at Gaṅgādvāra. Nārada told Yudhiṣṭhira of it. Yudhiṣṭhira and the Pāṇḍavas then performed tarpaṇa (offerings of water) and the full śrāddha rites for her at the Gaṅgā. This is in the Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapters 29, 31 to 33, 37 and 39.

The Svargārohaṇa Parva: the loka of Kubera

The destination that Nārada had foretold for Gāndhārī came to pass as he said. Sauti tells of the final fates of the heroes. The renowned Gāndhārī, wife of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, reached the hard-to-reach lokas of Kubera, the lord of wealth, when her puṇya (merit) was spent. She went there with her husband. His tapas in the forest and her own lifelong austerity of the bound eyes had ripened into this shared celestial home. The queen whose life had been one long act of willing renunciation received a place among the blessed. This is in the Svargārohaṇa Parva, Chapter 5.

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Ādi Parva, Sambhava Parva
• Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Anudyūta Parva, Chapter 75
• Mahābhārata, Strī Parva, Chapters 1–26 (Chapters 14–15, 16–25 and 22 are cited above)
• Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Bhīṣma Svargārohaṇa Parva, Chapter 168
• Mahābhārata, Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapters 1–2, 8, 9–10, 11–14, 15–20, 24–25, 29, 31–33, 37, 39
• Mahābhārata, Aśvamedhika Parva, Chapter 84
• Mahābhārata, Mausala Parva, Chapters 2, 4
• Mahābhārata, Svargārohaṇa Parva, Chapter 5
• Bhāgavata Purāṇa (the account of Gāndhārī following Dhṛtarāṣṭra into the yoga-fire at Saptasrotas)