PLATE FOUR
Here Queen Kuntī recalls an atrocity that the Kurus (Dhṛtarāṣṭra's sons) had perpetrated upon her beloved daughter-in-law Princess Draupadī. Once the Pāṇḍavas (Kuntī's sons) were invited to a chess match in the royal assembly of the Kurus. In the heat of the match, the Pāṇḍavas made the mistake of placing their wife Draupadī as a bet. "Now if you lose," the Kurus told the Pāṇḍavas, "Draupadī will no longer be your wife." When the Kurus cheated and won the game, two leading Kurus named Karṇa and Duḥśāsana immediately grabbed Draupadī. "Now you no longer belong to your husbands," they told her. "You are our property, and we can deal with you as we like. So now let us see your naked beauty." As Duḥśāsana began to forcibly unwrap Draupadī's  sārī , she tried to hold on to it. But what could she do? She was a helpless woman, and Duḥśāsana was a powerful warrior. So she wept in despair and prayed to Kṛṣṇa, "O Lord, please save my honor"—but she was still trying to save herself by holding on to her  sārī . Then, realizing how impossible it was to save herself in this way, she let go and raised her arms in utter surrender: "My dear Lord Kṛṣṇa, if You like You can save me—or if You like You can let me be disgraced. The decision is in Your hands." Then the Lord responded to her prayers and supplied unlimited cloth for the  sārī . Duḥśāsana could not come to the end of it, and finally, with heaps of cloth stacked in the room, he became exhausted and realized that he would never see her naked. ( pp.  37–38)