Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c18.69

v2.c18.69

there, and speak? Even Bhīma, the man of fierce anger, drips most wonderfully with the milk and honey of gentleness and conciliatoriness. At last Draupadī, “eaten with sorrow,” speaks, and in deep disgust at Bhīma’s being so friendly disposed, with tear-stained eyes, she reminds Kṛṣṇa that their adversaries would come to no agreement earlier, even when this was deeply humiliating for the Pāṇḍavas. If Duryodhana would not give his cousins back their kingdom, then there could be no talk of peace. What was to the profit and credit of the Pāṇḍavas, of him, and of the whole estate of warrior nobles was this only: a crushing punishment for the irreconcilable ones. He that was a victim to greed must be chastened by the Kṣattriya. Then she tells at short length again of the insult done to her in spite of her high rank, in all essentials as in her earlier conversation with Kṛṣṇa.¹ “ ‘I was gripped by the hair, tortured and brought into the hall, while Pāṇḍu’s sons looked on, and thou wast still alive. I stood in the midst of the hall as a slave of the evil ones, and the Pāṇḍavas looked on without flaming forth or stirring a limb. If thou wouldst please me, if thou wouldst show me compassion, then must every drop of rage be poured out undiminished on the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra.’ Thus having spoken, she of the black eyes and lovely hips with her left hand grasped the loosely bound coil of her hair, curling at the ends, and glorious to see, deep-black, steeped in every perfume, endowed with every mark of good luck, shining like a great snake; and so the lotus-eyed one went up with the proud step of the elephant to him of the lotus eyes, and with tear-filled eyes the dark one spoke to him, the dark one: ‘Of this hair, dragged upwards by Duḥśāsana’s hand shalt thou, O lotus-eyed one, think on every occasion, if thou wouldst make peace with the foes. If Bhīma or Arjuna, those miserable wretches, have a wish for peace, O Kṛṣṇa, then will my old father fight beside his sons, the great chariot-fighters. And my five sons with the strength of heroes will fight with Abhimanyu at their head against the Kurus. But if I do not see Duḥśāsana’s black arm lying hewn off and covered with the dust, how is my heart to find rest? Thirteen years have gone by me in hoping and waiting, while I have been fostering my anger within me like a burning fire. My heart wounded by the arrows of Bhīma’s speech, is bursting asunder, for this strong-armed one now looks only to pious virtue’. When Kṛṣṇā of the long eyes had spoken these words in a voice choked with tears, she fell to weeping, trembling and sobbing loud. The lovely one with the long swelling hips moistened her close-set breasts, as the water flowed from her eyes like molten fire.” Kṛṣṇā comforts her and makes aloud to her the holy promise that, as she now weeps, so will one day the wives of their foes weep, all of whose kindred will then have been slain, and dogs and jackals will eat the bodies of Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s sons. “The Himālaya mountains may move from their place, the earth be shattered into a hundred fragments, the sky with its stars fall down—my word cannot stay unfulfilled” (cp. iii, 12.139 ff. ; 51.36 ff. ; 235.4 ff.).