Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c3.s1.t2.99

c3.s1.t2.99

The lady, named Kaṇhā just above the gāthā,³ says the gāthā, not content with the five husbands sinned with a hunchbacked man. This incident is then further explained in the prose portion. Kaṇhā was the posthumous daughter of a king of Kosala who had been killed in a battle and whose pregnant queen had been carried away by a certain Brahmadatta of Kāsī. They arranged a svayamvara or choice marraige for her in Benares. Just at that time the five sons of King Pāṇḍu, Ajjuna, Nakula, Bhīmasena, Yudhiṭṭhila and Sahadeva, who had completed their education at Takkasilā and who were now travelling about the country, came to Benares. They attended the Svayamvara and Kaṇhā chose all of them as her husbands. Now, sometime after she fell in love with her hunchbacked servant. This unchasteness, disloyalty and depravity of hers were exposed by the eldest prince Ajjuna, whereupon the five brothers in sheer disgust renounced the world to pass their remaining lives in the Himālayas.