Dangerous Encounters
37
the royal assembly of the Kurus. Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Bhīṣmadeva, Droṇācārya, and other elderly persons were present, and somehow or other Draupadī, the wife of the Pāṇḍavas, was placed as a bet. “Now if you lose,” the Kurus told the Pāṇḍavas, “Draupadī will no longer be your wife.” So when the Pāṇḍavas lost the game, Karṇa and Duḥśāsana immediately captured her. “Now you no longer belong to your husbands,” they told her. “You are our property. We can deal with you as we like.”
Previously, Karṇa had been insulted during Draupadī’s  svayaṁvara . In those days a very qualified princess would select her own husband in a ceremony called a  svayaṁvara . In modern America, of course, any girl may select a husband as she likes, although for a common girl this is actually not very good. But even in those times an uncommon, highly qualified girl who knew how to select a good husband was given the chance to do so. Even this, however, was limited by very strict conditions. Draupadī’s father, for example, placed a fish on the ceiling, and he stipulated that in order to qualify to marry his daughter, a prince had to shoot an arrow and pierce the eye of the fish, without directly seeing the fish but seeing only its reflection in a pot of water on the floor. When these conditions were declared, many princes came to compete, for responding to a challenge is a principle for a  kṣatriya , a heroic leader.
In the assembly for Draupadī’s  svayaṁvara , Karṇa was present. Draupadī’s real purpose was to accept Arjuna as her husband, but Karṇa was there, and she knew that if he competed, Arjuna would not be able to succeed. At that time it was not known that Karṇa was a  kṣatriya . He was born the son of Kuntī before her marriage, but that was a secret. Karṇa had been maintained by a carpenter, and therefore he was known as a  śūdra , a member of the lowest occupational division of society. Draupadī took advantage of this by saying, “In this assembly, only  kṣatriyas  may compete. I do not want any carpenter to come here and take part in the competition.” In this way, Karṇa was excluded.
Karṇa regarded this as a great insult, and therefore when Draupadī was lost in the game, he was the first to come forward. He was Duryodhana’s great friend, and he said, “Now we want to see the naked beauty of Draupadī.” Present at that meeting were elderly persons like Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Bhīṣma, and Droṇācārya, but they did not protest. They did not say, “What is this? You are going to strip a lady naked in this assembly?” Because they did not protest, they are described as  asat-sabhāyāḥ , an assembly of uncultured men. Only an uncultured man wants to see a woman naked, although nowadays that has become fashionable. According to the Vedic culture, a woman is not supposed to be naked before