Madri

Marriage and exile

Madri was the daughter of the king of the Madra Kingdom and the sister of Shalya. Bhishma, a prominent statesman of the Kuru Kingdom and the grandsire of the royal family, traveled to Madra to secure Madri's hand in marriage for Pandu, the king of the Kuru Kingdom. The Madra king consented, but in accordance with Madra family custom, Bhishma presented him with a dowry, consisting of wealth, gold, elephants, and horses. Bhishma then brought Madri to Hastinapura, the capital of Kuru, where she was married to Pandu.^[11][12]

Pandu had a first wife, Kunti, with whom Madri shared an amicable relationship, despite an underlying rivalry between the two.^[13] Shortly after his marriage, Pandu embarked on a series of military conquests to expand his kingdom’s influence. Following these successful campaigns, he went to tapovana (forest of austerities) south of Himalayas, accompanied by both his wives, Kunti and Madri. During the expedition in a forest, he observed a pair of deer in the act of coitus and desiring to hunt them, shot arrows at them. Upon approaching, he realized that the deer were, in fact, the sage Kindama and his wife, who had assumed the form of deer to enjoy privacy. As he lay dying, the sage pronounced a curse upon Pandu, decreeing that he would die instantly should he ever engage in sexual relations. Disturbed by the gravity of his actions and seeking repentance, Pandu chose to relinquish his royal duties and live an ascetic life in the forest. Both Kunti and Madri accompanied him in his self-imposed exile. After travelling to various pilgrim sites, they settled in the Shatashringa forests under the care of sages who lived there.^[11][14]

Birth of Nakula and Sahadeva

Kunti, the first wife of Pandu, possessed a mantra granted by the sage Durvasa prior to her marriage, which allowed her to summon any deity of her choice and bear a child by them. She had kept this boon a closely guarded secret. During his exile, Pandu, hindered in fulfilling his religious duties due to his lack of an heir, discussed the matter with Kunti, urging her to "raise offspring in this time of distress." He cited six types of sons as recognised by religious doctrines, with an additional six types in a supplementary list. At this juncture, Kunti disclosed her boon, though she initially resisted using it. Only after Pandu’s fervent pleas did Kunti invoke her boon, resulting in the birth of her three sons—Yudhishthira, Bhima, and Arjuna—each fathered by a different god chosen by Pandu after an interval of one year each.^[11] When Pandu requested Kunti to bear more children, Kunti firmly refused, stating that doing so would diminish her dignity and reduce her to the status of a prostitude.^[12]

Madri, in a private moment with Pandu, expressed that she felt overshadowed by Kunti, as her position seemed secondary to Kunti’s in both Pandu’s affections and household dynamics, a feeling intensified by Madri’s awareness of her own superior birth. She conveyed her grief over being childless and requested that Pandu seek Kunti’s assistance to allow her to become a mother. However, Madri was hesitant to approach Kunti directly, referring to her as her 'rival'. Upon Pandu's request, Kunti generously shared the boon with Madri, who invoked the twin-gods, the Ashvins, to beget Nakula and Sahadeva at once. The Kaunteyas (lit. 'sons of Kunti') and Madreyas (lit. 'sons of Madri') are raised together in the hermitage, and they are collectively referred to as the Pandavas.^[11]

After some time, Madri, through Pandu, asked Kunti for the assistance to bear more children. However, Kunti firmly refused the request, expressing her frustration by noting that Madri had "deceived" her by using a single mantra to gain two sons. She voiced her regret, fearing that Madri might end up with more children than herself, and admitted she would have also summoned the Ashvins to obtain twins had she known. Concluding her response, Kunti insisted that Pandu "not come to [her] again" with requests to give Madri the mantra.^[12][15]

Death

During spring—the season linked with erotism in Hindu tradition—in the forest of Shatashringa, Pandu was deeply influenced by the intensity of the atmosphere. One day, while walking alone with Madri in this setting, Pandu saw her in translucent clothes and succumbed to desire. Despite Madri’s repeated protests, Pandu made love to her, forgetting the curse placed upon him by the sage Kindama, which forbade him from intimate relations on penalty of death. The curse took immediate effect, and Pandu fell dead in Madri’s arms.^[11] Upon Pandu’s death, Madri cried out in sorrow, summoning Kunti but asking her to come alone, leaving the children behind. Kunti, seeing Pandu and Madri together, blamed Madri for the incident. Madri explained that despite her resistance, Pandu’s overwhelming desire fulfilled the curse's terms. Kunti sorrowfully noted that Madri was "fortunate" to have seen Pandu's face radiant in intimacy—a moment Kunti herself had never experienced^[12][11] Following this, Kunti, as the senior wife, claimed the religious duty to accompany Pandu in death, believing it her responsibility to follow him to the afterlife. She asked Madri to relinquish his body and take on the task of raising their children. In the Southern recension of the Mahabharata, Pandu's death occurred on the day of Uttara Phalguni Nakshatra, coinciding with Arjuna's birthday.^[8]

Madri, however, resisted Kunti’s request, stating that she felt bound to Pandu by an unfulfilled union, as he had approached her in desire at the time of his death. Madri expressed her wish to follow Pandu into the afterlife to fulfill his desire,^[16] also fearing she might not be able to raise Kunti’s children with equal dedication and affection. She appealed to Kunti to care for her own children, Nakula and Sahadeva, in her absence, trusting in Kunti’s ability to provide for them impartially. During Pandu's funeral, Madri jumped into Pandu's burning pyre, thus performing the act of sati.^{[note 1][12][16][18]}

However, this account is contradicted by the very next stanza, which states that her dead body and that of her husband were handed over by sages to the Kaurava elders in Hastinapura for the funeral rites.^[19]

The Svargarohana Parva (the final book of the Mahabharata) mentions that in the afterlife, Madri resides in the heavenly realm of the god Indra.^[11]

Sati

Madri’s sati (the act of immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre) has been studied by scholars as a way to gain insights into the practice of sati during the ancient epic period. However, her case stands out as an exceptionally rare instance in the Mahābhārata, where widows—aside from a few in later-added chapters—do not perform sati.^{[24][18][25][26]} Traditionally, it is believed that Madri committed sati by mounting Pandu’s funeral pyre, based on a specific verse (1.117.28) from the Mahābhārata. Yet a subsequent verse (1.117.30-31), found in all manuscript traditions, offers an alternative account. In this version, after Pandu’s death, sages bring both Pandu’s and Madri’s bodies to Hastinapura for proper funeral rites, contradicting the claim that Madri perished with Pandu on the pyre. Nilakantha, a prominent 17th-century commentator on the Mahābhārata, tried to reconcile these conflicting verses by suggesting that the word "sarīra" (typically meaning "body") in the second verse actually refers to "asthi" (bones or remains). By this interpretation, Madri did indeed immolate herself with Pandu, and the “bodies” brought to Hastinapura were, in fact, their ashes or charred remains, not their intact corpses.^[6] This interpretation, while considered the most compelling explanation, has not gained widespread acceptance.^[19][25]

While the scene is included in the Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata, V. S. Sukthankar, the General Editor of the Critical Edition, expressed his dissatisfaction with Nilakantha’s interpretation, drawing on the views of Edward Washburn Hopkins. Although Sukthankar did not explicitly argue that the verses were spurious, he acknowledged the internal contradictions and the challenge of reconciling the two accounts. Building on Sukthankar and Hopkins, scholar M. A. Mehendale contends that the conflicting accounts are due to textual conflation from an interpolation, where an external narrative was inserted into the text without consideration for internal consistency. He rejects Nilakantha’s explanation and, based on internal and external evidence, suggests that the verses regarding Madri’s self-immolation are likely spurious.^[19] Devdutt Pattanaik argues that such inconsistencies reflect later cultural and textual interpolations during the medieval period. Pattanaik points to further contradictions in Mahābhārata episodes, such as the account of Krishna’s death, where some of his wives perform sati while others choose asceticism, and other episodes in which widows, like those of the Kauravas or figures from the other epic Ramayana like Tara and Mandodari, do not immolate themselves. These discrepancies suggest that later writers may have modified the scenes to reflect medieval values that promoted widow immolation as a mark of honor and loyalty. Regarding the alternative account, Pattanaik suggests that if Madri’s body was indeed delivered to Hastinapur, it is likely she died immediately alongside Pandu due to the curse placed on him by Kindama, since Pandu's arrows had killed both the sage and his wife.^[25]