Sita and Draupadi: What their similarities and differences tell us
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s book, The Forest of Enchantment, starts with Valmiki handing over his composition — Ramayana — to Sita. Sita praises him for his poetry, sublime descriptions and perfect rhythm, but berates him for overlooking her despair as she sat under the ‘sorrow tree’ in the darkness of the forest.
Says she, “You don’t even know of my exhilaration…”.
In addition, Sita’s disappointment with the composition was that it was patriarchal in its soul — and disregarded the heartbreaks that are at the core of a woman’s life, the unexpected alliances she forms, the rise of gut-wrenching desires and the impact of social negotiations where a woman invariably has to give up on something valuable in order to hold close something else that she treasures.
Sita, thereafter, writes her own story — starting from the point where she was found in the furrows of the earth.
The Forest of Enchantment comes after Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions, which gives voice to another important female character — Draupadi — and charts her story without the trappings of patriarchy.
In a way, Divakaruni is attempting to rewrite stories that have always celebrated men.
She writes in an altogether different perspective and voice, and for readers who are well-versed with the stories, the altered way of looking at the very same events gives them a sense of their own selves.
Sita and Draupadi become internalised and the stories lose their mythical components as each woman reader begins to identify with the frustrations, forced circumstances, physical and emotional hardships that these two women underwent.
Ramayana and Mahabharata, two epics that form the core of the Indian (Hindu) fabric, have heroines who have much in common. From the way they emerge to the way they wed, right up to their exile to the forest, there are several similar elements.
Sita was found by the childless King Janaka of Mithila, half buried in the earth. Janaka was tilling the soil and preparing it for a yajna for a child. In his pursuits, he found the baby girl half-sunk in the soil. The kind king Janaka did not give the child away (as was the custom). He hugged the baby girl and experienced a hitherto unknown sense of bliss. He named her Sita and she grew up as princess in the kingdom.
Of course, other versions of the Ramayana have attempted to explain her appearance in Mithila. The Kamban Ramayana, Iramavataram, is very similar to Valmiki’s version. However, in the Ramayan Manjari, North Western and Bengal versions of the Valmiki epic, King Janaka had looked up to the skies and on his sighting the celestial nymph Menaka, had expressed his desire to have a child.
Sita apparently was his spiritual child born out of Menaka.
The Tamil Uttarakantam talks of how Sita, earlier Vedavati, was reborn to wreak vengeance on Ravana. In her past birth, she was Kushadvaja’s daughter, whose penance to obtain Vishnu as her consort had been thwarted by Ravana, who had apparently molested her.
Alternatively, the Jain version Vasudevahindi, which is built around Valmiki’s original version, states that it was prophesied that Mandodari’s firstborn would bring death to her father Ravana. Mandodari had thereby set the child adrift — and King Janaka of Mithila had come to find her.
Draupadi was born out of a yajna performed by her father King Drupada. Two full-grown children had sprung out of the holy fire. The girl was named Draupadi and the boy, Drishtadyumna.
Draupadi had several names like Yajnaseni, Panchali, Krishnaa and Parshati — the last through her mother Prishati, who had become fearful that the children would not acknowledge her as their true mother and had prayed to the fire god Agni to obliterate the children's memories and make them accept her as their mother. Agni blessed her and the two children knew Prishati as their mother.
The weddings of both women are also similar — Sita and Draupadi found their respective husbands in a swayamvara, where participants had to prove their skills in archery in order to win the hands of the princesses.
Ram and Arjuna, with their superior skills in archery, won the princesses.
At that time, marriages were often political alliances, and a king often married several times in order to fortify his kingdom and make it more bountiful. However, the weddings in the epics weren’t arrangements and the women did fall in love with their men. Thereafter, their lives took different trajectories. While Ram remained Sita’s husband, the sole man in her life, Draupadi had to enter into a polyandrous arrangement where she became the wife of all the five Pandavas.
In ancient times, it was sinful for the younger brother to marry before the older brother. To be able to inherit and perform the last rites of the parents, the eldest son had to be married.
Moreover, the rules prescribed that while the younger brothers had access to the older brother’s wife, the reverse was not true. Thus, Draupadi’s marriage to Arjuna would have stripped Yudhisthira of his social, religious and filial obligations. Therefore, not only would the Arjuna-Draupadi marital alliance be socially and morally unacceptable, it would also sow seeds of discord within the brothers.
Kunti, with her astuteness and her own complex life experiences, had the vision to see that Draupadi could break the united force of Pandu’s sons.
Therefore, through a stratagem by Ved Vyasa, Draupadi was married to all the brothers — although, in her heart, she loved Arjuna more.
Ultimately, she pays the price of this love, as she falls on the path to Heaven. In her final moments, she realises that her heart had pined after a man who had never been hers. Arjuna had loved many women, Ulupi, Subhadra, Chitrangada — but his deepest affections were reserved for Vasudev Krishna.
In that moment of introspection, Draupadi realised that it was Bhima, and never Arjun, who had loved her with all his might, fought to save her honour, risked all to see her smile.
In fact, at the very end, Draupadi, with her last breath, says, “In our next birth, be the eldest, Bhima; under your shelter we can all live in safety and joy.”
Ramayana and Mahabharata are considered epics. Sita and Draupadi are the central female characters whose actions — of stepping outside the social constraints (Lakshman Rekha) by Sita; and of laughing heartily at the slip-up of a man and thereafter quibbling in a court of men over the legal issue of whether Yudhisthira being a slave could wager her in a game of dice by Draupadi — lead to wars and guarantee the hardest punishment to these women.
Sita is abducted by Ravana. Draupadi is dragged to court and disrobed. Misogynistic accounts call both of them ‘Kritya’ — a blood-thirsty demonic female who starts a quarrel which men fight out. So, Sita was the Kritya of the Satyayug, Draupadi of the Dwaparyug.
Sita or Draupadi — the similarities are unmistakable in the humiliations, condemnations and difficulties they endure. These two, along with others like Ahalya, Damayanti, Mandodari, Surpnakha, articulate through their lives the hardships that comes to women irrespective of their social status.
Yet, the scope of the Mahabharata outpaces that of the Ramayana.
In the former, no person is ideal. Almost all characters are shaded. In that sense, Mahabharata is about human weakness, and the tests they have to stand up to individually and collectively. The one who triumphs stands to enjoy the comfort of his soul — the rest perish in confusion and guilt.
Ramayana, on the other hand, is about idealism, the extraordinary. Rama was the ideal man — Maryada Purushottam. Sita was the ideal woman. All characters are ideals in their life choices. Even Ravana is the ideal villain.
Mahabharata in that respect hardly has any extraordinary characters. However, in their ordinariness lies the extraordinariness.
Ramayana is about one man, Ram. All characters are arranged around him. The abduction of Sita and the war with Ravana allow us to see the greatness of Ram as a warrior. Unlike the Pandavas, who gain strong allies in Draupadi’s father and brother, Ram grants Sita a status. He gets a beautiful and devoted wife. He needs nothing more. In securing Draupadi, the Pandavas gain much more.
In the Mahabharata, we learn about kinship details and several subplots allow us to examine bloodlines. In the Ramayana, there are very sketchy details and like a cinematic telling of a love story, the epic sticks to the two basic characters and does not give too much about the social and filial forces that could have shaped these people.
So Sita’s exile for the first time was like a continual honeymoon, unmarked by hatred and suffering. There were deer and swans and lotuses, quiet and peaceful hermitages and the serene Godavari forming a scenic backdrop. She was free to love and her time in the forest provides the idyllic template to many a modern-day romantic setting. In the forest, Sita matured in her love.
In the same forest, Draupadi burnt inwardly. She could hardly get any time to rest even in the forest. From morning to night, she would be busy making preparations for religious rites to be performed by Yudhisthira and looking after guests — Brahmins who dropped by their humble home.
Draupadi fumed inwards, desirous of revenge in every wakeful moment. Her state was brought on by her husbands, and so she is described as ‘Nathavati Anathavat’ (a widow despite having husbands).
Sita’s trials seem to belong to a romantic, unreal world. A courageous husband, a beautiful heroine joined in love, then separated and finally reunited find expressions in the Kavya tradition. The grief of separation, the trials and tribulations of love all serve as superb elements of a true love story.
Draupadi’s sons are cruelly beheaded by Ashwatthama in the war, Sita helps in bringing Luv-Kush to Rama and thereafter goes into the earth, from which she had sprung up.
This was certainly a departure from the classic formula. Yet, it is this tragic end that has rendered Sita as a goddess, for goddesses do not provide proof of innocence.
Draupadi unfortunately had to endure the limits of violence, shame, distress. She gave her loyalty to each Pandava for 12 months before moving to the next, yet, her own heart in its standing up for individual truth was seen as an act of sin, condemning her to a fall from the heights of embellished human acceptance and deification.
Also read: Could women in ancient India really choose their grooms?