#yajnaseni

[h0bg0blin-meat]

Have you read Yajnaseni? I don't know how favourable to my favorite guy arjuna it's going to be in the future but for now it is giving me stuff like this

Arjun sat near me. Like an intimate friend he began saying, "The desire to marry you sprang from two causes. The first was your name itself, 'Krishnaa!' Your name resembled that of my beloved sakha, Krishna. So I fell in love with your name. Secondly, you are learned and a poet. I have heard that you have written much about my sakha. Can I hear some?"

&

“Krishna is dear to me, and Krishna is dear to Krishnaa; therefore, Krishnaa is exceedingly dear to me.”

And there are many more, I found it so cool, especially cuz many people avoid writing krishna and arjuna's bond

Dayum this is beautiful but also hilarious

Draupadi: ... So ... You basically like me cuz I remind you of your boyfriend?

Arjun: OKAY HE'S NOT MY BOYFR-

Draupadi: Gurl it's blasphemous to lie on pride month.

Krishna, out of nowhere: Facts.

Arjun: ...WHERE'D YOU COME FROM

Pls keep reading and updating me!

[yudrilsthira]

maybe she incarnated on earth for Arjuna.... but she joined Tumblr, for me

[musingsonthemahabharata]

excerpt from an audio-translation I worked on with a colleague of mine; we translated Draupadī's imposing speech as rendered in modern Mahābhārat retellings. Draupadī utters this speech after she is dragged to the royal hall by her hair, and is assaulted & sexually harassed by the men of the Kuru dynasty. she renounces her status as a wife; in the Sanskrit Mbh, symbolically, by refusing to tie her hair again, while in modern renderings, explicitly, by directly renouncing her husbands who passively watched her humiliation.

in this sequence, Draupadī curses the Kurus. the curse bears similarities across the Sanskrit & modern tellings; that just as she bled in the sabhā (royal court / hall), so will all the men bleed on the battlefield, and just as she wept with her hair untied, so will their women cry before their corpses with their hair dishevelled (tied hair was the marking of a wife / bride, untied hair, of a widow).

photo: Pooja Sharma as Draupadī. Pooja is my Draupadī.

[teanicolae]

a joy to present my PhD work at the School of Divinity [Edinburgh] yesterday on my first research panel 😊 i talked about the gendered politics inscribed in the body of Draupadī, the Mahābhārata's heroine. i argued that it is significant that a text such as the Mahābhārata, which holds so much religious, cultural and spiritual weight, includes the story of a sexually assaulted woman, and, moreover, one of divine origin, because it offers women subjected to gendered violence the opportunity to unearth psychological comfort in Draupadī's story, and the opportunity to shed shame and fears of impurity rooted in varied internalisations of social or religious messages. through the prism of shared experience, the trauma is voiced and processed, which percolates in the social stratum, where, by claiming and reimagining Draupadī's symbol, women ask for and enact socio-political change. i am exploring this movement in my thesis. ❤️‍🔥

astounding to listen to & learn from the presentations of the colleagues who shared the panel with me, and to engage with the work differently during the q&a portion; openings to approach the work differently, freshly, in ways i wouldn't be prone to without external stimulus.

thank you @ishitahp for the photos & video! 🫶

[h0bg0blin-meat]

Haha nice to know you liked it, I haven't finished it yet but the book is like that from the moment Arjuna was introduced.

There are many for more ex

“Arjun is not only my younger brother but my intimate friend. Our bodies are separate, but our souls are one” well, you can ignore the brother part if you want to but by that logic subhadra and arjuna shouldn't have married

And,

Before leaving, Krishna quietly spoke to my heart, "Krishnaa! Krishna is ever love-mad, hungry for affection. Never put a knot in the bonds of love in which sakha Arjun has bound me. I have the right to share in your love for Arjun. I am a partner in all the victories and defeats of Arjun, in all that he gets and loses. Before eating, Arjun offers the food to me. Without offering it to me, Arjun does not even touch water. But I do not eat the food Arjun offers; I only consume his craving. In the same manner despite belonging to Arjun, my relationship with your subtlest essence is eternal and immortal. Never forget this."

Angry because you did not get Krishna?

>you will win Krishna's very life-breath."

Arjun is Krishna's very life. If Arjun is yours, that means Krishna's soul is yours and you have got Krishna.

Inka na alag hi chalta rehta hae istg

[musingsonthemahabharata]

Kṛṣṇa and Draupadī Discuss Karma

One of my favourite interpolations from modern tellings of the Mahābhārata is a conversation between Draupadī and Kṛṣṇa that occurs after Draupadī's sexual assault and attempted disrobing by the Kauravas.

Clutching his feet, Draupadī sobs: "Govind, why? Why did this happen to me? What sins did I commit? I am reaping the fruit of which actions of mine?”

Picking her up and caressing her hair, Arya tells her: "What happened was neither because of your ‘bad’ karma, nor did you reap the fruit of your past actions. It was the Kauravas who reaped the fruit of their past actions by engaging in such a grave misdeed. Sakhī, this is the meaning of karma."

"But I am the one experiencing agony, Govind."

"Then relinquish it, Sakhī. Although what happened was not the result of your 'bad' karma, the way you transform following these events will be your karma."

This is such a beautiful and profound exchange which offers rich nuances to the teaching of karma. Oftentimes, when events we perceive as terrible happen to us, we create a story of unworthiness around them; we wonder if we are being punished, if the root cause is our evilness, if God or the universe are rejecting or dooming us. A question that rests on these lines that is often asked would be the common: “why do bad things happen to good people”. A first layer to this, in my view, is a deconstruction of 'bad' and 'good' as solid concepts. The second layer is the understanding that any event 'just' happens aleatorily, rises and falls, and karma is not a simplistic cause-effect reaction.

Karma encapsulates, in my understanding, the ingrained patterns held within us through which we act, react, and process the world around us and the events that occur in our lives. There is freedom from karma in finding new ways of reacting, engaging, processing.

Finally, a significant teaching encased in this interpolation is that the way someone treats us, ultimately, is a reflection of their karma (ingrained patterns), and not a reflection of our ingrained patterns. We cannot control another's patterns, but we can aim to understand and rewire ours accordingly.

The magnificent art: @beauty_of_art_aditi.

[musingsonthemahabharata]

Arjuna's consorts!

[musingsonthemahabharata]

pt. 1 of the main characters from the Mahābhārata series! will expand more on the Pāṇḍavas in the next post.

*last painting credit: Giampaolo Tomassetti!