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Hinduism
Panchkanya
Women of
Substance – 17
Madri, Ambika, Ambalika, Gandhari and Subhadra present the exact opposite:
the “married” woman who is dependent on what others think and
therefore does what she may not actually approve of. Ambika and Ambalika
silently accept their mother-in-law’s command to receive the repulsive
Vyasa. Madri immolates herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. Gandhari
blinds herself so that she does not exceed her husband. “She is not
one-in-herself, but acts as a female counterpart or syzygy to some
male.”[[1]]
On the other hand, “The woman who is psychologically virgin is not
dependant in this way. She is what she is because that is what she is. The
woman who is virgin, one-in-herself, does what she does—not because of
any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be approved, even by herself;
not because of any desire to gain power over another to catch his interest
or love, but because what she does is true… she is not influenced by the
considerations that make the non-virgin woman, whether married or not,
trim her sails and adapt herself to expediency dependent on what other
people think. Her actions may, indeed, be unconventional.”[[1]]
Does this not describe Ahalya, Satyavati and Kunti?
What of Draupadi? Like Ahalya
and Sita, Draupadi is ayonija, not born of woman. Where Ahalya is
the Tilottama prototype and Sita is ploughed up from a furrow, Draupadi is
invoked by a sacrificial rite to wreak vengeance. Actually, she arrives as
a bonus because Drupada was performing the yajna for obtaining a
son who would take revenge on Drona and had not asked for a daughter at
all. Like Athena, she springs full-grown, in the bloom of youth, from the yajna
vedi, not requiring the matrix of a human womb, ignoring the absence
of Drupada’s queen who is unable to respond to the priest’s summons
because her toilet is incomplete. She is the only kanya whose
appearance is described in detail and is therefore worth noting:
“eye-ravishing Panchali,
black-and-smiling-eyed…
Shining coppery carved nails,
Soft eye-lashes,
Swelling breasts
Shapely thighs…
neither short
nor tall, neither dark nor pale,
with wavy dark-blue hair,
eyes like autumn-lotus leaves,
fragrant like the lotus…
extraordinarily accomplished,
soft-spoken and gentle…
She is the last to sleep,
the first to wake
even earlier than the early-rising
cowherds and shepherds.
Her sweat-bathed face is lovely,
like the lotus, like
the jasmine; slim-waisted like
the middle of the sacred
vedi, long-haired, pink-lipped,
and smooth-skinned.” (Adi
Parva 169.44-46, Sabha 65.33-37)
–
Continued
Panchkanya Pages : 1 |
2 | 3 | 4
| 5 | 6 | 7 |
8 | 9 | 10 |
11 | 12 | 13 |
14 | 15
16 | 17 | 18 |
19 | 20 | 21 |
22 | 23 | 24 |
25 | 26 | 27
Now also in Hindi at
http://www.hindinest.com/visheshank/01stri/panchkanya1.htm
Now also in French at http://www.neurom.ch/mbh/kanya.pdf
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