In order to appreciate today's quote, one must have a fair amount of familiarity with the Indian epic Mahabharata (महाभारत). And if one does meet this criterion, they might start seeing what they know in a new light.
One of the principal characters in this saga is Draupadi (द्रौपदी), the common wife of the five Pandava (पाण्डव) brothers of Hastinapura (हस्तिनापुर) whose hostilities with their cousins, the hundred Kauravas (कौरव), drive the central narrative. An unnamed poet imagines a situation in which Duryodhana (दुर्योधन), the eldest of the Kauravas, tries to shame Draupadi for having five husbands, and she snaps right back at him with the following words.
Devanagari text:
One of the principal characters in this saga is Draupadi (द्रौपदी), the common wife of the five Pandava (पाण्डव) brothers of Hastinapura (हस्तिनापुर) whose hostilities with their cousins, the hundred Kauravas (कौरव), drive the central narrative. An unnamed poet imagines a situation in which Duryodhana (दुर्योधन), the eldest of the Kauravas, tries to shame Draupadi for having five husbands, and she snaps right back at him with the following words.
Devanagari text:
श्वश्रूश्वश्रूपती द्वौ च श्वश्रूपतिचतुष्टयम्|
ममापि पतयः पञ्च पतिवर्धि कुलं मम||
Harvard-Kyoto transliteration:
zvazrUzvazrUpatI dvau ca zvazrUpaticatuSTayam|
mamApi patayaH paJca pativardhi kulaM mama||
mamApi patayaH paJca pativardhi kulaM mama||
– Anonymous
Loose translation: My mother-in-law's mother-in-law has two husbands; my mother-in-law has four; I have five – (evidently,) the number of husbands a woman has increases (with every generation) in our family line.
Source: Early 20th century anthology Udbhata Shloka Maalaa, Additional Verses (परिशिष्टश्लोकाः), Verse 69. I don't think this composition is very old.
Explanation: This is Draupadi's way of pointing out to Duryodhana that even before she married into his (extended) family, he had no shortage of female relatives who had been intimate with multiple men. This would imply that her status as a polyandrous woman had more to do with the values and traditions of her detractor's family than with her own character or preferences. Indeed, Draupadi never took five husbands of her own accord, and was compelled to do so by a strange sequence of events that the author(s) of the original epic and later commentators have gone to great lengths to justify / explain away.
However, to make complete sense of Draupadi's rejoinder, we must slightly extend the meaning of the word 'husband' (पति) to include any man one has slept with but is not necessarily married to. Draupadi's mother-in-law's mother-in-law and Duryodhana's step-grandmother Ambalika (अम्बालिका) was married to King Vichitravirya (विचित्रवीर्य) of Hastinapura who died issueless; so, in keeping with contemporary social customs, Vichitravirya's mother Satyavati (सत्यवती) summoned her eldest son Vyasa (व्यास), who was himself sired by Parashara (पराशर) before she became queen consort to King Shantanu (शान्तन्तु), to impregnate Ambalika as well as her sister and co-wife Ambika (अम्बिका) in order to save the dynasty from extinction. This is how Pandu (पाण्डु), Ambalika's son and Draupadi's (legal) father-in-law, was born. This explains the alleged biandry of Draupadi's grandmother-in-law.
Pandu had a curse put on him by a rishi that he would die if and when he engaged in lovemaking. So, his wife Kunti (कुन्ती), Duryodhana's aunt through marriage and one of Draupadi's two mothers-in-law, had to use a spell to invoke the deities Dharma (धर्म), Vayu (वायु), and Indra (इन्द्र) to 'bless' her with male progeny who would carry Pandu's name. Long before her marriage to Pandu, however, she had borne a son of the sun god Surya (सूर्य) when she was experimenting with said spell. So, technically, five men could claim to be Kunti's 'husbands'. Why, then, would Draupadi speak of just four? Presumably, the above conversation happened before the battle of Kurukshetra (perhaps during the infamous episode of the game of dice in which men of the Kaurava camp are known to have tortured Draupadi, both physically and mentally, in many ways) so that neither Duryodhana nor Draupadi would know of Kunti and Surya's tryst. However, poets who enjoyed putting such interesting twists on well-known mythological themes sometimes made their characters act in certain situations as if they knew things they were not supposed to know at that point in the original story. In that case, this could be an allusion to the possibility that Pandu and Kunti never got to consummate their marriage, implying that Kunti had been intimate with the above four gods only.
Additional notes: Snippets like these can be viewed as precursors to modern-day 'fan theories' and 'fanfics' based on popular works of fiction.
It is also noteworthy how Draupadi like a dutiful daughter-in-law calls the Kuru dynasty "my family" (कुलं मम) even as she is arguing with a scion of the same lineage.
Source: Early 20th century anthology Udbhata Shloka Maalaa, Additional Verses (परिशिष्टश्लोकाः), Verse 69. I don't think this composition is very old.
Explanation: This is Draupadi's way of pointing out to Duryodhana that even before she married into his (extended) family, he had no shortage of female relatives who had been intimate with multiple men. This would imply that her status as a polyandrous woman had more to do with the values and traditions of her detractor's family than with her own character or preferences. Indeed, Draupadi never took five husbands of her own accord, and was compelled to do so by a strange sequence of events that the author(s) of the original epic and later commentators have gone to great lengths to justify / explain away.
However, to make complete sense of Draupadi's rejoinder, we must slightly extend the meaning of the word 'husband' (पति) to include any man one has slept with but is not necessarily married to. Draupadi's mother-in-law's mother-in-law and Duryodhana's step-grandmother Ambalika (अम्बालिका) was married to King Vichitravirya (विचित्रवीर्य) of Hastinapura who died issueless; so, in keeping with contemporary social customs, Vichitravirya's mother Satyavati (सत्यवती) summoned her eldest son Vyasa (व्यास), who was himself sired by Parashara (पराशर) before she became queen consort to King Shantanu (शान्तन्तु), to impregnate Ambalika as well as her sister and co-wife Ambika (अम्बिका) in order to save the dynasty from extinction. This is how Pandu (पाण्डु), Ambalika's son and Draupadi's (legal) father-in-law, was born. This explains the alleged biandry of Draupadi's grandmother-in-law.
Pandu had a curse put on him by a rishi that he would die if and when he engaged in lovemaking. So, his wife Kunti (कुन्ती), Duryodhana's aunt through marriage and one of Draupadi's two mothers-in-law, had to use a spell to invoke the deities Dharma (धर्म), Vayu (वायु), and Indra (इन्द्र) to 'bless' her with male progeny who would carry Pandu's name. Long before her marriage to Pandu, however, she had borne a son of the sun god Surya (सूर्य) when she was experimenting with said spell. So, technically, five men could claim to be Kunti's 'husbands'. Why, then, would Draupadi speak of just four? Presumably, the above conversation happened before the battle of Kurukshetra (perhaps during the infamous episode of the game of dice in which men of the Kaurava camp are known to have tortured Draupadi, both physically and mentally, in many ways) so that neither Duryodhana nor Draupadi would know of Kunti and Surya's tryst. However, poets who enjoyed putting such interesting twists on well-known mythological themes sometimes made their characters act in certain situations as if they knew things they were not supposed to know at that point in the original story. In that case, this could be an allusion to the possibility that Pandu and Kunti never got to consummate their marriage, implying that Kunti had been intimate with the above four gods only.
Additional notes: Snippets like these can be viewed as precursors to modern-day 'fan theories' and 'fanfics' based on popular works of fiction.
It is also noteworthy how Draupadi like a dutiful daughter-in-law calls the Kuru dynasty "my family" (कुलं मम) even as she is arguing with a scion of the same lineage.
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