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STORIES · THE MAHĀBHĀRATA · Sabhā

Bhīma's oaths and Dhṛtarāṣṭra's boons to Draupadī

Classical

As Duḥśāsana stopped, tired and ashamed, the mass of clothes lay in front of him. Bhīma, squeezing his hands, his lips trembling, swore in front of all the kings: if he did not tear open the breast of that wicked son of Dhṛtarāṣṭra in battle and drink his blood, he would not reach the world of his ancestors. The hall applauded him and cursed Duḥśāsana. Vidura called for an answer to Draupadī's question and told the old story of Prahlāda, his son Virocana and Sudhanvan. Prahlāda was asked to decide a dispute between his son and Sudhanvan, and decided against his own son, because dharma demanded it. Vidura said that anyone who knows the answer in an assembly and withholds it shares the sin. No one answered. Karṇa told Duḥśāsana to take Draupadī to the inner apartments.

He told Draupadī she was a slave, and that she could choose another husband. Duryodhana, trying to encourage Karṇa and insult Bhīma, bared his left thigh and showed it to Draupadī. Bhīma, red-eyed, said that if he did not break that thigh in the great battle, he would not go to the heaven of his forefathers. Sparks seemed to come from his body. Vidura said the great disaster for the Bharatas had been sent by Destiny, and that a stake placed by a man who had already lost himself was like wealth in a dream. Arjuna said Yudhiṣṭhira had been their lord before the game; let the Kauravas decide whose master he was after losing himself. Then a jackal howled in Dhṛtarāṣṭra's fire-chamber, and the asses and fearful birds answered. Vidura and Gāndhārī understood the omen. Bhīṣma, Droṇa and Kṛpa called out blessings.

They told the king. Dhṛtarāṣṭra scolded Duryodhana for insulting the Pāṇḍavas' wife and turned to Draupadī. He told her to ask any boon, as she was the best of his daughters-in-law. Draupadī asked first that Yudhiṣṭhira be freed from slavery, so that her son Prativindhya would not be called a slave's child. Dhṛtarāṣṭra granted it and offered a second. She asked for Bhīma, Arjuna and the twins to be freed with their chariots and bows. He granted that, and offered a third. She refused: greed destroys dharma, she said, and a Kṣatriya woman should ask two boons. Her husbands, freed, would win prosperity by their own deeds. Karṇa said no famous beauty had ever done what she did: she had been the boat that saved the Pāṇḍavas in a boatless sea. Bhīma was enraged to hear his brothers called saved by their wife.

Yudhiṣṭhira, at last, calmed him and went to the king with joined hands. This section sets up the end of the epic. The two oaths, to drink Duḥśāsana's blood and to break Duryodhana's thigh, are both fulfilled at Kurukṣetra, in the Karṇa Parva and the Śalya Parva. Draupadī's famous vow to keep her hair loose until it is washed in Duḥśāsana's blood is not made in this scene; she speaks of her unbound hair later in the epic, and regional retellings give the vow its familiar form. Dhṛtarāṣṭra's boons are as telling. He is moved by omens, not by justice, and Draupadī, who asks only for her husbands' freedom, takes less than she is offered. In doing so she wins what the assembly could not, and the Pāṇḍavas walk out free, though they carry the shame and the anger.

Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Bhīma, Duryodhana, Duḥśāsana, Karṇa, Draupadī, Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Vidura, Gāndhārī, Arjuna, Yudhiṣṭhira

Bound to

Draupadī dragged to the hall: the disrobing origin

Duryodhana's thigh: Maitreya's curse and the Danava armour mirror

Gandhari's blindfold, and the gaze that almost made Duryodhana invulnerable mirror

Duryodhana born of Kali, braying like a donkey mirror

The second dice game and the exile pact origin

Places: Hastināpura (the assembly hall)

Where this comes from

See it on the tree · All stories

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