Pāṇḍu's death and Mādrī's sati

Classical

Years passed on the mountain slope and Pāṇḍu watched his five sons grow. He felt the strength return to his arms. One day in spring, when every tree had flowered and bees hummed over the lotus pools, Pāṇḍu was walking alone in the forest with Mādrī, who wore a thin, nearly transparent dress. Seeing her, he was overcome by desire and could not hold himself back. Mādrī, trembling, resisted him as hard as she could, but he grasped her. The text says he forgot the curse as if fate had blinded him, and he embraced her as if he wanted to end his own life. As the curse had said, he died in her arms. Mādrī held his body and cried out.

Kuntī ran from the hermitage with the children, and Mādrī begged her to come alone and leave the children behind. Kuntī reproached Mādrī: how could Pāṇḍu, always so careful, have approached her? Mādrī answered that she had resisted in tears but he could not control himself, as if he wanted to prove the curse true. Then both women claimed the right to follow him in death. Kuntī said she was the elder wife and the chief merit was hers. Mādrī said that her husband's wish had been unfulfilled when he died, so she must follow him. Mādrī's argument was also about the boys. She said that if she lived, she could never raise Kuntī's sons as her own, and sin would touch her for it.

Kuntī, she said, could raise hers as if they were her own. Kuntī gave way. Mādrī climbed onto the funeral pyre of her husband. The ascetics of the mountain, taking Kuntī, the five boys and the two bodies, carried them to Hastināpura, where Bhīṣma, Vidura and Dhṛtarāṣṭra met them at the city gate. The oldest of the sages told the Kurus what had happened. He said Pāṇḍu had died seventeen days before. He asked that the funeral rites be done and the first annual śrāddha be offered to Pāṇḍu, and then he and the other sages vanished from sight. Dhṛtarāṣṭra ordered a royal funeral. Kuntī performed Mādrī's rites, and the five boys were taken into the royal household. They would grow up beside the hundred sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, with the rivalry that followed.

Two details of this episode are often missed. First, the text does not blame Mādrī: she resists, and Pāṇḍu himself seems to seek the curse. Second, Mādrī's choice to die is argued as a duty about the children. She says she could not raise Kuntī's sons as her own and would sin if she failed, but that Kuntī, the senior wife, can raise hers as if they were Kuntī's. It is one of the few places in the epic that tells of a woman going onto her husband's pyre, and it is shown as a personal choice made between two women, not as the rule. Kuntī is left, widowed at a young age, to bring five boys into a court that will not welcome them.

Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Pāṇḍu, Mādrī, Kuntī, Yudhiṣṭhira, Bhīma, Arjuna, Nakula, Sahadeva, Bhīṣma, Vidura, Dhṛtarāṣṭra

Bound to

Kindama's Curse curse

The divine births of the Pāṇḍavas origin

Bhīma poisoned and thrown into the Gaṅgā: the Nāga realm and the elixir origin

Places: Mountain of the Hundred Peaks, Hastināpura, Gaṅgā bank

Where this comes from

read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (Roy edition, archive.org full text) Adi Parva, Section CXXV (Pāṇḍu's death; Mādrī's sati)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Adi Parva, Section CXXVI (the sages bring the family to Hastināpura)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Adi Parva, Section CXXVII (funeral rites for Pāṇḍu and Mādrī)

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