The story

The brothers had gone hunting in four directions, and Draupadi stood alone at the door of the hermitage.

It was the Kamyaka forest, late in the exile. The Pandavas had gone out for game to feed the brahmanas who lived with them, and had left her in the care of the sage Trinabindu and of Dhaumya, the family priest. She waited at the threshold with one hand on the branch of a kadamba tree.

A royal procession came through the trees. Jayadratha, king of Sindhu and Sauvira, was on his way to the Shalva country to find a bride. He saw Draupadi and forgot about the bride. He sent his friend Kotikashya to ask who she was, and the text says Kotikashya approached her the way a jackal approaches a tigress.

She answered with complete courtesy. She named her father and her five husbands, said where each had gone, and told the visitors to unyoke their horses and wait, because Yudhishthira loved guests. When Jayadratha himself walked in with six companions, she still offered him water for his feet and a seat, and promised him fifty deer for his morning meal.

He had not come for a meal. The Pandavas, he told her, were beggars without a kingdom, and a sensible woman does not stay with a husband whose fortune has gone. She should climb into his chariot and be his queen. Her answer turned from courtesy to contempt. He was plucking the whiskers of a sleeping lion, she said, treading on the tail of a cobra. The text adds that she kept him talking on purpose, waiting for her husbands.

When he seized her by her upper garment, she shoved him so hard that he fell like a tree cut at the root. But there were many of them. In the end she bowed at Dhaumya's feet and climbed into the chariot rather than be dragged. Dhaumya told Jayadratha that a kshatriya may not carry off a woman without first defeating her warriors, and when that failed, he followed the chariot on foot.

Out in the forest, Yudhishthira heard the birds and beasts crying harshly, and a jackal howled on their left as they turned for home. At the hermitage, Draupadi's foster-sister lay weeping on the ground. She showed them the tracks: fresh, with the broken branches not yet wilted.

They caught the army in a cloud of dust. Jayadratha saw the banners and asked Draupadi which chariot carried which husband. She told him, one by one, and it is one of the great speeches the epic gives her. That is Yudhishthira, who would spare even an enemy who came to him for refuge; go to him with your hands joined and your weapons down. That is Bhima, who never forgets an injury. That is Arjuna, who never gives up dharma for desire or fear. If you leave this field alive, she told him, count it as being born a second time.

The fight was short. Nakula cut an elephant's trunk off at the root, Bhima killed Kotikashya, and Arjuna cut down the twelve Sauvira princes. Jayadratha set Draupadi down in the rout and ran for the forest.

Yudhishthira then gave an order: the man was not to be killed, for the sake of Duhshala, Dhritarashtra's daughter, who was Jayadratha's wife, and for the sake of Gandhari. Draupadi answered at once. If they wished to please her, he must die. A man who carries off another's wife or kingdom does not deserve his life, even if he begs for it.

Bhima and Arjuna went after him. Arjuna shot his horses from a krosha away, a distance of about two miles, and called after him: was this the courage with which he had hoped to take a woman by force? Bhima caught him by the hair and beat him senseless, until Arjuna reminded him of Yudhishthira's words. Bhima complained that the king was always too tender, and that Arjuna was always holding them back with childish scruples. Then, with a crescent-headed arrow, he shaved Jayadratha's head, leaving five tufts of hair. The price of his life, Bhima said, was that he must announce in every court and assembly that he was a slave. Jayadratha agreed.

They brought him back bound and covered in dust. Yudhishthira laughed when he saw him and said to release him. Draupadi agreed: the man was the king's slave now, Bhima had given him five tufts, and he could go. Yudhishthira freed him with contempt and a blessing together. He was no slave, the king said, and must never do such a thing again; and he wished that Jayadratha's mind would grow in dharma.

Jayadratha left in silence, with his head down. He went to Gangadvara, where the Ganga leaves the mountains, and did fierce penance to Shiva. Shiva accepted his offering and gave him a boon. Jayadratha asked to defeat all five Pandavas in battle. Shiva refused. You will hold them back in battle, the god told him, all except Arjuna, whom Krishna protects. That boon waits through the rest of the exile. It returns on the thirteenth day of the war, when Jayadratha holds the gap behind Abhimanyu inside the wheel.

Back at the hermitage, Yudhishthira asked the sage Markandeya whether any man had been more unlucky than he. Markandeya answered with the long story of Rama, whose wife was also carried off.

In the dice hall, Draupadi was seized while her husbands sat as slaves and could not move. Here they are free, they come at a gallop, and the man who seized her is the one made to call himself a slave. But the epic does not let the reversal settle the account. The mercy Yudhishthira showed that day is the reason Jayadratha is alive to stand in a gap at Kurukshetra.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Jayadratha — The king of the Sindhus who seized Draupadi in the forest, won a boon to hold back four Pandavas, and used it at the gap behind Abhimanyu.
• Draupadi — Won in a contest she had no say in, married to five men on a careless word, and the only person in the hall who asks a question of law.
• Yudhishthira — The eldest Pandava, called the king of dharma, who gambles away his brothers, his wife and himself without anyone forcing his hand.
• Bhima — The strongest of the brothers, whose two vows in the assembly hall turn a property dispute into something that can only end in bodies.
• Arjuna — The archer the whole war is arranged around, who arrives at its opening unable to lift his bow because of who is standing on the other side.
• Nakula — The fourth Pandava, Madri's son, whom Yudhishthira chooses to bring back to life ahead of his own full brothers at the yaksha's lake.
• Theme: Kinship and enmity
• Theme: Curse and consequence

Elsewhere in this parva

• Arjuna and the hunter — Arjuna starves himself for four months to meet Shiva, and the god comes as a hunter who beats him senseless before giving him his weapon.
• Nala and Damayanti — A sage consoles a king who lost everything at dice with the story of another who did, and then teaches him the dice.
• Bhima and the old monkey — Bhima goes to fetch a flower for Draupadi and cannot lift the tail of an old monkey lying across the path, who is his brother Hanuman.
• The cattle expedition — Duryodhana rides out to mock his cousins in exile, is captured by gandharvas, and is freed by the Pandavas, which he cannot forgive.
• Savitri and Satyavan — A princess marries a man fated to die within the year, follows Death into the forest, and talks him out of her husband
• Karna's earrings — Warned in a dream by the Sun, Karna sees through Indra's disguise and still cuts off the armour that made him unkillable
• The yaksha's questions — Four brothers drink before answering and fall beside the lake, and the fifth is asked what a man must be before he may drink

Questions to explore

• Why does Yudhishthira spare Jayadratha after he carries off Draupadi, and was the mercy a mistake?
• Why does Shiva's boon to Jayadratha exclude Arjuna, and how does it shape the thirteenth day of the war?
• Draupadi demands Jayadratha's death and then agrees to let him go — what changed her mind?