Soon enough, she bucks tradition by simultaneously wedding all five famous Pandava brothers, who have been denied their rightful kingdom, and finds herself the happy mistress of the much-envied palace of illusions. Born from fire and marked with the prophecy that she will change the course of history the strong-willed Panchaali declares early on that she won’t spend her life merely supporting the men around her. Recasting the Indian epic Mahabharata from the perspective of Princess Panchaali, novelist Divakaruni offers a vivid and inventive companion to the renowned poem. This paper will try to situate this narrative in the larger tradition of multiple readings of Mahabharata. It will try to trace the feminist assertion and subversion in the epic through her role and her engagement with the male characters. It will look at Mahabharata from a feminist perspective with special emphasis on the character of Draupadi.
This paper will relook at Mahabharata from one of the many possible perspectives. The multiplicity of characters and their stories rendered Mahabharata a peculiar complexity. It gave us interesting characters like Amba/Shikhandi which brought forth the fluidity of human sexuality. While it gave us heroes in the fringe like Eklavya and Karna whose destinies were decided by their caste backgrounds, it also gave us strong female characters like Kunti and Draupadi. The very grand range of the Mahabharata provides scope for reading it from a diverse perspective – be it from a gender perspective, a caste based analysis or a materialistic interpretation. But it is also a saga of multiple stories – stories of exclusion, of deprivation and oppression, of domination and treachery. Of these Mahabharata is the tale of a war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas who were cousins on the question of empire. India has two such Sanskrit epics among many other excellent works by other renowned poets – Mahabharata and Ramayana. And ancient epics, mythological texts are also a crucial part of it. A country's culture is enriched by its literature along with other things.
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