In the previous episode, we had witnessed the birth of Drshtadhyumna and Draupati from the “Yaaga” that King Drupada offered out of vengeance towards Guru Dhronaachaarya. He was desperately looking out for ways to kill Guru Dhronaachaarya for the insult that he had obtained after facing defeat in the hands of Arjuna and Co. Even though Guru Dhronaachaarya was diplomatic in giving back half of his kingdom, King Drupada did not expect that he would face such a situation ever in the hands of Guru Dhronaachaarya. King Drupada’s ego was such that he did not want to receive anything from a “poor” friend. This became an insult in his mind and he was fuming within himself for many months together. After a lot of thinking, King Drupada decided that war is not going to be the affair through which he could win over Guru Dhronaachaarya. He should do something else cleverly and with a trick in it. It is at this time, he conducted a huge spiritual offering and from that, two children were born. One was Drshtadhyumna and the other was Draupati.
We had also witnessed yesterday that Draupati had another name called “Krishnaa”. This should not be confused with Bhagawan Krishna. The phrase “Krishna” means “Black” color. For the masculine gender, the name would be “Krishnaha”, and for the feminine gender it would be “Krishnaa”. Readers should not confuse between both. What we’re seeing here in the case of Draupati is “Krishnaa”. She was named so because she was extremely black in color during her birth, as she came out of the “Homa-Kunda” (Sacrificial fire offering). This is where Sanskrit as a language is extremely significant. If we change one alphabet here or there, the entire meaning of the word will change. This becomes a problem in the modern day when people go behind something called “Numerology”, wherein people say that if we’ve to have a certain “luck” factor, we should have a certain number of alphabets in our names. According to that, they would add or eliminate an alphabet from our name. This entire concept might be true for names in English or any other language, but not for native languages of Sanskrit or Tamil. Basically, numerology is a foreign concept and not Indian. We should understand this first. Now we would see that there is a fundamental error that all of us make – How can a foreign concept be applicable to Indian names? If we keep English names like Peter or John or whatever, then perhaps numerology might be applicable. But if we have names like Rama, Krishna, Shiva, etc. how on earth would numerology be applicable? We’ve seen how meanings change with the change of one alphabet in Sanskrit. We’ve to be very careful not to fall into such traps.
Moving on further, both these children were born to King Drupada. Draupati had another name also, called as “Yaagnyaseni” because, she was born out of the “Yaaga” that King Drupada had performed. Readers might remember that we spoke about a person called “Shikandi” who was neither a male nor a female. We might remember that Amba wanted to marry the king of “Shaalva Desha”, but he refused to marry her because Bhishmaachaarya was in the picture. However, Bhishmaachaarya was not ready accept Amba when she came back to him. Both of them made Amba go back and forth and finally she got angry and avenged to give Bhishmaachaarya a befitting lesson, isn’t it? We should not forget any instance that we had discussed earlier. Else, we would not be able to understand the sequence later on. This Shikandi is the person who is none other than Amba in the re-birth after Amba jumped into the fire and killed herself. She had the garland that was given by Bhagawan Muruga, which she had hung in front of the kingdom of King Drupada. Earlier, King Drupada refused to fight Bhishmaachaaraya because he knew of Bhishmaachaarya’s might.
Now, this same Amba takes re-birth from the same Homa-Kunda from which Drshtadhyumna and Draupati were born. However, King Drupada was scared of Shikandi for some reason and he chased him away to the forest later on. This Shikandi is the person who is going to kill Bhishmaachaarya. Similarly, it is Drshtadhyumna who is going to kill Guru Dhronaachaarya and Draupati is the person who is going to marry all the five Paandava brothers, and is going to be an instrument for all these people to kill their targets! We shall witness how all these are going to conspire in the coming episodes.
Thus, as per the agreement, Guru Dhronaachaarya would retain part of the kingdom that is south of river Ganges, and King Drupada would rule the part of the kingdom that is north of river Ganges. After a few years, King Drupada establishes a new kingdom for himself on the banks of river Ganges called “Kaampilya Desha”. So for today, let us understand until this point and let us wait till the next episode to take this discussion further! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 