‘Plenitude of the Singular: Draupadi in Literature and Life’

‘Draupadi's disrobing’ as a motif in the Sanskrit Mahabharata has been dealt with in a subjunctive mood of storytelling by Vyasa. This enables the appropriation of the episode by many literary authors who have deployed the figure of Draupadi through the popular theme of her disrobing, to express the socio-political concerns of their times. Through the many ‘sideshadows’ of Draupadi, thus constructed in the literary space in varied genres, she has traversed the realms of the divine, the mortal and the mythic. Through her differential treatment suiting the contexts of her authors, she has been able to go beyond her mythic and literary renderings and evoke a political agency of the mortal woman via her reclamation of her body. Analysed in this article through the genres of novel, short story and a poem are Draupadi's literary interpretations in the colonial and post-colonial times. Through an understanding of Jung's archetypal feminine, Draupadi has been depicted as a mould which has been filled in and redecorated as per her times and contexts for the literature.