Hinduism 
Panchkanya
Women of Substance – 23

A common feature these maidens share is “motherlessness.” The births of Ahalya, Satyavati and Draupadi are unnatural, none having a mother. We know nothing of Tara’s mother. Mandodari’s mother is Hema, who remains just a name. The motherless Gandhakali and Pritha, as adolescents, are left by their foster-fathers to the mercies of two eccentric sages and become unwed mothers with no option but to discard their first born. Pritha’s mother is never mentioned even when she is given away by her father. As Kunti, she finds no foster-mother either and her only succour is an old midwife. If Draupadi had hoped to find her missing mother in her mother-in-law, she is tragically deceived as Kunti thrusts her into a polyandrous marriage that exposes her to salacious gossip reaching a horrendous climax in Karna calling her a public woman whose being clothed or naked is immaterial. As if that were not enough, Kunti urges her to take special care of her fifth husband, Sahadeva, as a mother! No other woman has had to face this peculiar predicament of dealing with five husbands now as spouse, then as elder or younger brother-in-law (to be treated like a father or as a son respectively) in an unending cycle.

Simultaneously, we notice that Ahalya, Satyavati and Draupadi are not known for maternal qualities. Ahalya’s son abandons her and lives comfortably in Janaka’s court, expressing relief that she is finally acceptable in society following Rama’s visit. Valmiki has not a word to say about the mother-son relationship between Ahalya and Shatananda. Vyasa is abandoned by both parents and attributes his survival to chance. Draupadi’s five sons are mere names and are not even nurtured by her. She sends them to Panchala and follows her husbands into exile to ensure that the wounds of injustice and insult inflicted upon them remain ever fresh. Indeed, scholars, beginning with Bankimchandra over a hundred years ago, have questioned the very fact of her maternity since, unlike the other Pandava progeny (Ghatotkacha, Abhimanyu, Babhruvahana) the five sons are nothing more than names and might have been interpolated. The Draupadi Cult specifically states that her sons were not products of coitus but were born from drops of blood that fell when, in her terrifying Kali form, her nails pierced Bhima’s hand.[[1]]

These kanyas remain quintessentially virgins and, except for Kunti, hardly ever assume the persona of mother. In this, as in much else of her flaming character, Draupadi reminds us of the ancestress of the Kuru clan, Devayani, wilful, assertive of her demands, her father’s darling, with no mention of her mother, soliciting Kacha, virtually hijacking Yayati into marriage, flouncing off in fury to get her father curse Yayati with senility, and showing no evidence of any maternal role beyond producing a couple of sons. Indeed, the similarity goes deeper. In the Maitrayani and Taittiriya Samhitas, Devayani is the name of the fire-altar. Yajnaseni gets her name from having been born from this altar.

This feature of being rejected-and-rejecting-in-turn that is a recurring leit motif with the kanya is not just of antiquary interest. It recurs in one of the most significant explorations of the Bengali woman’s struggle to step into the modern age by experimenting with new ways of motherhood: Ashapurna Debi’s trilogy Pratham Pratisruti, Subarnalata and Bakul Katha. The heroine, significantly named Satyabati, is “abandoned” by her father who gives her away in child-marriage at the age of eight. When she gives birth to her son, she simultaneously receives news of her mother’s death. She struggles to educate her children in a new urban milieu of a nuclear family, but her daughter Subarna is also married off at the age of eight. Thereupon Satyabati physically turns away from the wedding, abandoning her daughter on the threshold of motherhood, repeating the desertion she herself had experienced. The pattern repeats itself when Subarna, receiving news of her mother’s death, finds herself unable to think of her own daughter.

– Continued 

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