13 / The Marriage of Sāmba
Duryodhana, the son of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, had a marriageable daughter by the name of Lakṣmaṇā. She was a very highly qualified girl of the Kuru dynasty, and many princes wanted to marry her. In such cases, the  svayamvara  ceremony is held so that the girl may select her husband according to her own choice. In Lakṣmaṇā's  svayamvara  assembly, when the girl was to select her husband, Sāmba appeared. He was the son of Kṛṣṇa by Jāmbavatī, one of the chief wives of Lord Kṛṣṇa. This son Sāmba is so named because he was a very bad child, and he always lived close to his mother. The name Sāmba indicates a son who is very much his mother's pet.  Ambā  means mother, and  sa  means with. So this special name was given to him because he always remained with his mother. He was also known as Jāmbavatīsuta for the same reason. As previously explained, all the sons of Kṛṣṇa were as qualified as their great father, Lord Kṛṣṇa. Sāmba wanted the daughter of Duryodhana, Lakṣmaṇā, although she was not inclined to have him. Therefore Sāmba kidnapped Lakṣmaṇā by force from the  svayamvara  assembly.
Because Sāmba took Lakṣmaṇā away from the assembly by force, all the members of the Kuru dynasty, namely, Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Bhīṣma, Vidura, Ujahan and Arjuna, thought it an insult to their family tradition that the boy, Sāmba, could possibly have kidnapped their daughter. All of them knew that Lakṣmaṇā was not at all inclined to select him as a husband and that she was not given the chance to select her own husband; instead she was forcibly taken away by this boy. Therefore, they decided that he must be punished. They unanimously declared that he was most impudent and that he had degraded the Kurus' family tradition. Therefore, all of them, under the counsel of the elderly members of the Kuru family, decided to arrest the boy but not kill him. They concluded that the girl could not be married to any boy other than Sāmba since she had already been touched
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