Kindama's Curse

Classical

The whole Pandava lineage is a workaround for one curse.

Pandu was a king who loved the hunt, and the trouble began on a day he was riding the southern slopes of the Himalaya. He saw a stag and its mate and loosed five golden-feathered arrows at them. The stag was not a stag. It was the sage Kindama, who had taken an animal's shape because he was too modest to make love in the company of people.

As he lay dying, Kindama did not curse at once. He argued. What Pandu had done was cruel, he said, and worse for being done at that moment, and he had struck at a creature that was not on its guard. Pandu defended himself the way a king might: hunting was the royal custom, and even the sage Agastya had once hunted deer for a sacrifice. Kindama did not accept that. A hunter should not strike prey that cannot see him coming, he said, and lovers should be left alone. Then, as a small mercy, he added that because he had been a Brahmin, Pandu had killed one only by mistake and would not carry that particular sin.

The curse itself is short and exact. Pandu would die the moment he joined with his wife in love, and she would follow him into the world of the dead. The grief Pandu had brought on Kindama in his happiest hour would one day find him in his own. Then the sage died.

Pandu sat there in sorrow. He blamed his own father's death and his own birth on the same weakness, and he decided to give up the world. He told his wives he would shave his head, beg for his food and live as a celibate. Kunti and Madri begged to go with him, and he agreed to a forest life in bark clothing on fruit and roots. He gave his jewels and robes, and the ornaments of his wives, to Brahmins, and sent his attendants back to Hastinapura to say that the king had gone to the woods. Dhritarashtra grieved at the news. Pandu and his wives wandered through the mountains, past Gandhamadana and Hansakuta, and settled at Shatashringa to do penance.

The curse was not the end of Pandu's wishes, only their reshaping. When he heard that the sages were going to a great gathering in Brahma's world, he wanted to go with them. They warned him the climb north was too harsh for a man with wives. Pandu answered that a man without a son cannot enter heaven and must pay his debt to his ancestors, and the sages told him that fate held a worthy son for him. So, privately, he asked Kunti to bear children by a man of equal or higher standing. He reminded her that in the old days women were not bound to one husband, and he named Swetaketu as the one who made the stricter rule. Kunti then told him of the mantra the ascetic Durvasa had given her as a girl: any god she called with it would come and give her a child. Pandu asked her to call Dharma first, because a son of Dharma would never stain the family with sin. Kunti walked around him in respect and agreed.

That is how a hunter's mistake rearranged a dynasty. Yudhishthira was fathered by Dharma, Bhima by Vayu, Arjuna by Indra, and Madri's twins by the Ashvins. When the sages later bring the sons and Kunti to Hastinapura, the eldest of them tells the waiting Kurus the whole story, and tells them Pandu died seventeen days before and that Madri had gone onto his funeral pyre with him. The curse had come true.

Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Kindama, Kunti, Madri, Pandu, Pāṇḍu

Bound to

Kunti's mantra and Karna's birth curse→payoff

Arjuna's Urvashi curse becomes his Virata disguise mirror

Vichitravīrya's death and the niyoga: Vyāsa fathers Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Pāṇḍu and Vidura origin

The divine births of the Pāṇḍavas curse

Pāṇḍu's death and Mādrī's sati curse

Where this comes from

CE · Mahabharata, Critical Edition 1.109 1.109
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Adi Parva, Sambhava Parva continued (hunt and curse; page shows no section number)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Adi Parva, Section CXIX (Pandu resolves to renounce, goes to Shatasringa)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Adi Parva, Section CXX (Pandu asks Kunti to beget sons)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Adi Parva, Section CXXII (old customs, Durvasa's mantra)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Adi Parva, Section CXXVI (sages bring the sons to Hastinapura)

Another telling

Hunting in a forest, Pandu shoots a pair of deer mating, who turn out to be the sage Kindama and his wife. The dying sage curses that if Pandu ever approaches his wife in union he will die. Pandu argues from Agastya's ruling on hunting. He retires to the forest; Kunti's mantra gives sons; Pandu later forgets the curse with Madri and dies, Madri joining his pyre.

commentary · Wikipedia: Pandu (cites Ramankutty, Curse as a motif in the Mahabharata)

See it on the tree · All stories

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