Turīya·Sūtrathe thread to the fourth

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STORIES · THE MAHĀBHĀRATA · Sabhā

The game of dice: Yudhiṣṭhira stakes and loses everything

Classical

The Pāṇḍavas arrived at Hastināpura, were received by Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Gāndhārī, slept well, and next morning went into the new hall, where the gamblers greeted them. Bhīṣma, Droṇa, Kṛpa and Vidura sat behind the kings with heavy hearts. Yudhiṣṭhira opened with a stake of pearls from the churning of the ocean, set in gold, and asked Duryodhana what he would set against them. Duryodhana said he had plenty and was not proud of it, and Śakuni would throw for him. Śakuni threw and said, "Lo, I have won!" From there the stakes rose in a steady drumbeat. Yudhiṣṭhira staked jars of gold coins and inexhaustible gold and silver, his tiger-skin chariot with eight white horses, a hundred thousand young women trained in many arts, thousands of male attendants, a thousand elephants, chariots, horses given to Arjuna by the Gandharva Citraratha, ten thousand carriages and sixty thousand warriors, and four hundred chests of jewels.

Each time Śakuni threw and claimed the win. At this point Vidura spoke to Dhṛtarāṣṭra, saying his words were bitter medicine for a dying man. He reminded him that Duryodhana had howled like a jackal at his birth, a sign that he would destroy the Bharata race, and told the king to cast him out as the Bhojas had cast Kaṃsa. He called gambling the root of quarrels, and urged Dhṛtarāṣṭra to win the Pāṇḍavas themselves rather than their wealth. No one listened, and the game went on. Yudhiṣṭhira staked all his herds from the Parṇāśā mountain to the Sindhu, then his city, his lands and every subject but the Brahmins, then the princes' ornaments.

Then he staked his brothers, one by one. Nakula was lost, then Sahadeva, whom he praised for justice and learning. Śakuni tried to split the brothers, saying Bhīma and Arjuna were Yudhiṣṭhira's favourites, and Yudhiṣṭhira rebuked him for it. Next he staked Arjuna, and then Bhīma. Each was lost. Śakuni asked if anything remained. Yudhiṣṭhira staked himself, and lost. Then Śakuni, calling it a sin to be left with something unspent, urged him to stake Draupadī to win himself back. Yudhiṣṭhira described her beauty and virtue and staked her; Śakuni threw, and won. The old men of the court cried shame, and Bhīṣma, Droṇa and Kṛpa sweated. Vidura held his head in despair. Dhṛtarāṣṭra could barely hide his joy and kept asking, "Has he won?"

Karṇa and Duḥśāsana laughed aloud, and Śakuni, elated, took up the dice again. The dice game follows a rising order that the text keeps clearly. First property, then army, then kingdom, then the brothers in order of increasing value to Yudhiṣṭhira, then himself, then Draupadī. Each time he loses, the next stake has to be something that he still believes he can win back. The point of the structure is to show what a compulsion looks like from the inside. Yudhiṣṭhira later says he could not refuse a challenge made in the assembly, which is a Kṣatriya rule, and he blames fate. Śakuni's dice, which in folk tellings are made from his father's bones, are not mentioned as magical in this text; Vidura simply calls him skilled in tricks.

Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Yudhiṣṭhira, Śakuni, Duryodhana, Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Vidura, Bhīṣma, Droṇa, Kṛpa, Karṇa, Duḥśāsana

Bound to

Śakuni's plan: Dhṛtarāṣṭra agrees to the dice match origin

Shakuni's dice from his father's bones mirror

Duryodhana born of Kali, braying like a donkey mirror

Draupadī dragged to the hall: the disrobing origin

Nala, Kali's possession and Karkotaka's disguise mirror

Places: Hastināpura (the new assembly hall), Indraprastha

Where this comes from

See it on the tree · All stories

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