Study guide
Nala and Damayanti
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Overview
- Source
- The Nalopakhyana ('Tale of Nala'), an episode of the Vana Parva or Aranyakaparvan (Book of the Forest), the third book of the Mahabharata; chapters 50–78 of the Poona critical edition
- Frame
- Told by the sage Brihadashva to Yudhishthira, the eldest Pandava, in exile after losing his kingdom at dice
- Date
- Uncertain; the Mahabharata took shape over several centuries, roughly between the fourth century BC and the fourth century AD, and the age of the episode within it is debated
- Language and metre
- Sanskrit, almost entirely in the shloka (anushtubh), the standard epic couplet
- Setting
- Nishadha, Nala's kingdom; Vidarbha and its capital Kundina, Damayanti's home; the forests of central India; Chedi; Ayodhya
- Main characters
- Nala, Damayanti, King Bhima, the gods Indra, Agni, Varuna and Yama, Kali and Dvapara, Pushkara, Karkotaka, Rituparna, Varshneya
- First European edition
- Franz Bopp, Nalus (London, 1819), Sanskrit text with a Latin translation
- Quote edition
- H. H. Milman, Nala and Damayanti (Oxford, 1835), in twenty-six books following the divisions of Bopp's text
- Themes
- Fidelity and the power of truth, fate and possession, dice and knowledge, disguise and recognition
Context
The story of Nala and Damayanti is one of the great love stories of India. It belongs to the Mahabharata, the vast Sanskrit epic of the war between the Pandavas and their cousins the Kauravas, but it stands apart from the main narrative as a self-contained episode. In the Vana Parva, the Book of the Forest, the five Pandava brothers and their wife Draupadi live in exile after Yudhishthira, the eldest, has gambled away the kingdom in a rigged game of dice. When Yudhishthira asks the sage Brihadashva whether any king has been more unfortunate than himself, the sage tells him the story of Nala, who also lost everything at dice and won it back (van Buitenen 1975) (Hiltebeitel 2001).
The frame matters. Nala's fall mirrors Yudhishthira's: both are virtuous kings with a weakness for dice, both are challenged by a kinsman, both lose their kingdom and go into the forest. The differences are pointed. Nala refuses to stake his wife; Yudhishthira staked Draupadi. Nala ends by mastering the science of dice, and at the close of the episode Brihadashva teaches the same science to Yudhishthira. The tale is offered as consolation, as example and as instruction (Brockington 1998) (Hopkins 1901).
The date of the episode is uncertain. The Mahabharata grew over many centuries, and scholars disagree whether the Nala story is an old independent tale absorbed into the epic or a composition shaped for its present place. Its language and style are relatively simple, its narrative tightly organised, and its themes of dice, exile, disguise and recovery closely parallel those of the main story. The standard text is now the critical edition prepared at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Poona (Sukthankar 1966) (Brockington 1998).
For Europe the Nala was a founding text of Sanskrit studies. Franz Bopp, one of the founders of comparative philology, published the Sanskrit text with a Latin translation in London in 1819. Because its Sanskrit is clear and its story absorbing, it became the usual first text for students of the language, in Monier-Williams's student edition and in Charles Lanman's Sanskrit Reader, where it stands first (Bopp 1819) (Monier-Williams 1879) (Lanman 1884). Friedrich Rückert's German version (1828) and Henry Hart Milman's English verse (1835) brought it to wider audiences, and Edwin Arnold included a version in his Indian Idylls (1883) (Rückert 1828) (Milman 1835) (Arnold 1883).
Milman, Professor of Poetry at Oxford and later Dean of St Paul's, rendered each Sanskrit couplet as a long trochaic line divided by a dash, imitating the break in the shloka. His version is accurate in its movement and often lively, though his diction is that of the 1830s and his spelling of names (Vahuca for Bahuka, Swayembara for svayamvara, Kesinia for Keshini) differs from modern usage. In India the tale has had many later lives, from Shriharsha's elaborate twelfth-century court epic Naishadhacarita to the Hindi oral epic Dhola (Handiqui 1934) (Wadley 2004) (Wadley 2011).
Plot overview
Nala, king of Nishadha, and Damayanti, princess of Vidarbha, fall in love by report, and a golden swan carries messages between them. At Damayanti's svayamvara the gods Indra, Agni, Varuna and Yama appear as suitors, first using Nala as their envoy and then taking his form. Damayanti identifies the real Nala by an act of truth and by the signs of mortality, and chooses him. The gods bless the marriage.
The demon Kali, angry that a mortal was preferred to the gods, waits twelve years, possesses Nala and, with Dvapara in the dice, makes him lose his kingdom to his brother Pushkara. Damayanti sends the children to her father. The couple wander into the forest with one garment between them, and Nala, driven by Kali, cuts it in half and abandons her as she sleeps.
Damayanti survives a serpent, a lustful hunter, wild beasts and a stampede of elephants, and finds refuge with the queen mother of Chedi, who turns out to be her aunt. Nala rescues the serpent king Karkotaka, whose bite deforms him, and becomes Bahuka, charioteer to King Rituparna of Ayodhya. Brahmins sent by Damayanti's father find her, and later find Nala through his reply to a message she has composed.
Damayanti announces a false second svayamvara. Nala drives Rituparna to Vidarbha in a single day and on the way learns the science of dice, at which Kali leaves him. Damayanti recognises him through the sound of his chariot, his tears, the gods' gifts, his cooking and his love for their children. The wind testifies to her fidelity, Nala resumes his form, and he wins back his kingdom from Pushkara in a single throw.
Book by book
Book 1: The Swan Messenger
1–64
Summary
Nala, king of Nishadha, is handsome, learned in the Vedas, a master of horses and fond of dice. In Vidarbha, King Bhima has no children until the sage Damana grants him a daughter, Damayanti, and three sons. Each of the two young people hears the other praised and they fall in love unseen.
Nala catches a golden swan in a palace garden. The bird begs for its life and promises to praise him to Damayanti; it flies to Vidarbha, lets the princess catch it, and tells her that Nala is the peer of no one but her.
Analysis
The opening frames the whole tale as a love of report before sight, a familiar motif in Sanskrit narrative. The talking swan, the first of many animal and divine go-betweens, makes the match seem destined. Note the address 'O son of Kunti': the story is being told to Yudhishthira, and the frame never quite disappears. Nala's love of dice is listed among his virtues in the first lines, a quiet signal of what is to come.
Hearing so each others virtues--all unseen they 'gan to love.
Love by hearsay: the lovers are joined by report long before they meet.
If the peerless wed the peerless--blessed must the union be.
The swan states the poem's ideal of a perfectly matched couple, an ideal the rest of the story will test.
Book 2: The Svayamvara Proclaimed
1–62
Summary
Damayanti pines; her father understands and proclaims a svayamvara, the ceremony at which a princess chooses her own husband from assembled suitors. Kings flock to Vidarbha. In heaven, Indra asks the sages Narada and Parvata why no warrior kings are arriving; on hearing of Damayanti, Indra, Agni, Varuna and Yama decide to go as suitors themselves. On the way they see Nala and ask him to carry a message for them.
Analysis
The scene in Indra's heaven shows the gods as a court with their own appetites. The svayamvara is the one institution in the epic that gives a woman formal choice, and the arrival of the gods turns that choice into a test of whether a mortal woman may refuse heaven. Note the speaker's tag 'Vrihadasva spake': Milman keeps the frame narrator, the sage Brihadashva, visible inside the tale.
Damayanti, ever after--she the swan's sweet speech had heard-- With herself she dwelt no longer--all herself with Nala dwelt.
A neat chiasmus in Milman's rendering of love-sickness: she is no longer her own but entirely Nala's.
Book 3: Nala as the Gods' Envoy
1–50
Summary
Nala has promised to serve the gods before he knows what they want. They reveal themselves and order him to persuade Damayanti to choose one of them. He protests that a lover cannot plead for rivals, but is held to his word. Made invisible by Indra's power, he enters her guarded apartments; the maidens are struck dumb by his beauty, and he tells Damayanti who he is and why he has come.
Analysis
The dilemma sets truthfulness against desire. Nala keeps his promise even though it works against his own love; the story's repeated concern with the binding force of a spoken word begins here. The entry into the women's quarters unseen also anticipates his later hidden presence, in disguise, near Damayanti.
How can man, himself enamoured--for another plead his cause?
Nala's protest states the conflict between love and the duty created by a promise.
Book 4: Damayanti's Refusal of Heaven
1–62
Summary
Damayanti offers herself to Nala and threatens poison, fire, water or the noose if he rejects her. Dutifully, he praises the gods and warns her that offending them means death. She insists that she will choose only him, and proposes a solution: he should come to the svayamvara together with the gods, and she will name him before them all, so that no blame falls on him. Nala reports the conversation to the gods faithfully.
Analysis
Damayanti, not Nala, finds the way out of the dilemma; her resourcefulness is a constant of the poem. Nala's report to the gods, word for word, is another proof of his truthfulness. The threat of suicide is a conventional sign of a heroine's resolve in Sanskrit narrative and recurs later in her laments.
Thus engaged to plead for others--for myself I may not plead.
Nala separates his role as messenger from his role as lover; he will speak for himself only when the mission is over.
Book 5: The Choice among Five Nalas
1–95
Summary
At the svayamvara Damayanti finds five identical Nalas: the four gods have taken his form. Unable to tell them apart, she appeals to the gods by an act of truth: as she has never swerved in word or thought from Nala, let them show him to her. The gods reveal their marks: they do not sweat, do not blink, cast no shadow, their garlands are unfaded and their feet do not touch the ground. The real Nala stands on the earth, sweating, blinking, with a wilting garland. She chooses him. The gods bless the marriage with eight gifts, and the couple live happily and have two children, Indrasena and Indrasen.
Analysis
This is the most famous scene in the episode. The 'act of truth' (satyakriya), a solemn statement of one's own truthfulness that compels a result, makes Damayanti's fidelity a force in the world. The signs of divinity are signs of absence: the gods do not sweat, blink or touch the earth. Damayanti chooses the creature who does, the mortal body with its dust and shadow. The episode has often been read as an affirmation of human love over divine perfection (Doniger 1999) (Hiltebeitel 2001).
By this truth I here adjure ye--oh, ye gods, reveal my lord;
The refrain of Damayanti's act of truth: her fidelity is the guarantee she offers the gods.
With unmoistened skins the Immortals--saw she, and with moveless eyes; Fresh their dust-unsullied garlands--hovered they, nor touched the earth.
The marks of the gods, defined by what they lack. Nala is known by his sweat, his blinking and his shadow.
Book 6: Kali's Vow
1–30
Summary
Returning to heaven, the gods meet Kali and Dvapara, who are on their way to the svayamvara. Told that Damayanti has already chosen a mortal, Kali curses her. The gods reply that they approved the choice and praise Nala's virtues. Kali, unappeased, resolves to enter Nala and drive him from his kingdom, and asks Dvapara to enter the dice.
Analysis
Kali and Dvapara are named after two throws of the Indian dice game (and also two of the four world ages); Kali is the losing throw and the age of decline, not the goddess Kali. Their resentment gives a cosmic cause to the disaster that follows, and invites the question, much discussed, of how far Nala is responsible for his own ruin (Lüders 1907) (Biardeau 1985).
I my wrath can curb no longer--I henceforth in Nala dwell;
Kali's declaration makes the coming catastrophe a case of possession.
Book 7: The Dice Game
1–37
Summary
Kali waits twelve years for a flaw. One evening Nala, after relieving himself, performs his evening prayers without washing his feet, and Kali enters him. Kali incites Nala's brother Pushkara to challenge him to dice, with Dvapara in the dice. Nala, unable to refuse a challenge, loses steadily. Ministers and citizens come to restrain him, Damayanti begs him to receive them, but he does not answer and plays on for months.
Analysis
A minor ritual lapse opens the way for possession: the poem's universe is one in which purity matters. The game repeats in miniature the dicing of Yudhishthira in the Sabha Parva, which the listener in the frame has just suffered. The counsellors' verdict, 'Tis not he', puts the theme of a man no longer himself at the centre of the story.
Nala after act uncleanly--the ablution half performed, Prayed at eve, with feet unwashen--Kali seized the fatal hour.
The ritual omission that gives Kali his entry.
Book 8: The Children Sent Away
1–50
Summary
Seeing that Nala will not listen, Damayanti acts. Through her nurse Vrihatsena she calls the council, then summons the charioteer Varshneya and asks him to drive the children to her family in Kundina, the capital of Vidarbha. He does so with the council's consent, leaves children, chariot and horses there, and takes service as a charioteer with King Rituparna of Ayodhya.
Analysis
Damayanti's prudence contrasts with Nala's frenzy: she manages the crisis as a ruler would. Varshneya's move to Ayodhya is a plot thread that pays off much later, when he recognises Nala's driving.
Yoke the much-loved steeds of Nala--fleet of foot, as thought, are they, In the chariot place our children--to Cundina's city go.
Damayanti's practical decision saves the children before the final losses.
Book 9: Exile and the Stolen Garment
1–71
Summary
Nala loses his whole kingdom. Pushkara invites him to stake Damayanti; Nala, silent with grief, refuses and leaves with one garment, Damayanti following. Pushkara forbids anyone to help him on pain of death. Starving in the forest, Nala throws his garment over some golden birds, which fly off with it and announce that they are the dice. Nala points out the roads to Vidarbha, hinting that Damayanti should go home; she refuses to leave him.
Analysis
Nala's refusal to stake Damayanti is the decisive difference from Yudhishthira, who staked Draupadi. The birds that are the dice make Nala's humiliation complete: even his last garment is taken. Damayanti's words that no medicine is like a wife state the ideal of the wife as companion in suffering.
Lo, we are the dice, to spoil thee--thus descended, foolish king! While thou hadst a single garment--all our joy was incomplete.
The dice speak in person, mocking the king they have stripped.
Like a wife, in every sorrow--this the wise physicians own, Healing herb is none or balsam--Nala, 'tis the truth I speak.
Damayanti claims the wife's role as the only remedy for misfortune.
Book 10: The Desertion
1–58
Summary
Nala refuses to go to Vidarbha in disgrace. The couple, sharing one garment, reach a shelter and fall asleep. Nala, sleepless and driven by Kali, reasons that she will be safer without him. He finds a sword, cuts the garment in half, and leaves; he returns again and again to look at her, until Kali drags him away.
Analysis
Milman's image of the swing captures the psychology of the scene: Nala is torn between love and the demonic compulsion that drives him. The poem never lets the reader forget that he is not fully himself, but it also gives him his own rationalisations, so that the question of responsibility remains open.
Nala, thus his heart divided--into two conflicting parts, Like a swing goes backward, forward--from the cabin, to and fro.
The simile of the swing gives Nala's divided will a physical form.
Book 11: The Serpent and the Hunter
1–78
Summary
Damayanti wakes alone and laments, first thinking Nala is hiding in jest. She curses whoever has brought this on him. A huge serpent seizes her; a hunter kills it and feeds her, then tries to seduce her. She curses him and he falls dead like a tree struck by lightning.
Analysis
Damayanti's curse on the cause of Nala's suffering will be felt by Kali, who later says he has burned inside Nala because of it. Her second curse shows the power of a chaste woman's truth, the same power that won the svayamvara: her fidelity protects her where no husband does.
As my pure and constant spirit--swerves not from Nishadha's lord, Instant so may this base hunter--lifeless fall upon the earth.
A curse framed like an act of truth: her fidelity is the condition of its effect.
Book 12: Damayanti in the Wilderness
1–259
Summary
The longest book. Damayanti wanders through a forest full of beasts and robbers, appealing to a tiger and to a great mountain, to whom she recites her lineage and Nala's virtues. She reaches a grove of ascetics, who foretell her reunion with Nala and then vanish with their hermitage. She questions an Asoka tree, then joins a caravan of merchants bound for the kingdom of Chedi.
Analysis
The lament to the mountain and the questioning of the tree are among the episode's lyrical high points. Damayanti is mistaken by the hermits and the merchants for a goddess of the forest or river; her beauty survives her degradation. The vanishing hermitage marks this stretch of the story as a journey through a half-enchanted world.
Of the beasts art thou the monarch--all this forest thy domain,
Damayanti addresses the tiger as a king, asking for news of her husband or for death.
Truly be thou named Asoca--as the extinguisher of grief.
A pun on the name of the tree: a-shoka, 'without sorrow'.
Book 13: The Elephants and the Queen of Chedi
1–150
Summary
Wild elephants trample the caravan at night. The survivors blame the strange woman who joined them, and Damayanti flees, asking what sin, perhaps from a former life, has earned such misfortune. She reaches the city of King Subahu of Chedi, where his mother takes her in. Damayanti accepts service only on strict terms: no leftover food, no washing of feet, no talk with men, and freedom to see Brahmins searching for her husband.
Analysis
The merchants' accusation shows how a woman alone is treated as a portent. Damayanti's reflections on karma and fate give voice to a question the epic poses repeatedly. Her terms of service protect her status and purity while she lives in disguise, a parallel to Nala's own disguise in Ayodhya.
In some former life committed--expiate I now the sin.
Damayanti tries to explain undeserved suffering by the doctrine of karma.
That I eat not broken victuals--wash not feet with menial hand:
Her conditions guard her caste and chastity in service.
Book 14: Karkotaka
1–52
Summary
In the forest Nala hears a voice from a fire: the serpent king Karkotaka, cursed by Narada to lie motionless until Nala should free him. Nala carries him out; the serpent tells him to count his steps and bites him at the tenth. Nala's body becomes deformed, so that no one will recognise him, and Kali inside him will be tortured by the poison. Karkotaka tells him to go to Rituparna of Ayodhya as the charioteer Bahuka (Milman's 'Vahuca'), to trade his skill with horses for the king's skill at dice, and gives him two garments to restore his form.
Analysis
The bite is a paradox: an injury that heals, a disguise that protects. Karkotaka plans the rest of the plot, and the tale's machinery of curses now begins to work in Nala's favour.
Through my power thy form is altered--lest thou should'st be known of men.
The disguise that will dominate the second half of the poem.
Book 15: Bahuka in Ayodhya
1–38
Summary
Nala enters Ayodhya and offers himself as horse-master and cook. Rituparna hires him as master of horse, with Varshneya and Jivala as companions. Every evening Nala recites a verse asking where she is now, worn by hunger and thirst. When Jivala asks about it, Nala tells, as if of another man, the story of a foolish husband who left a faithful wife.
Analysis
Nala's evening verse becomes the key to his identity: speech gives him away where his body cannot. Telling his story in the third person is both a confession and a concealment, a device the poem uses again when he answers the Brahmin's message.
Where is she, by thirst and hunger--worn, and weary, pious still, Thinking of her unwise husband--in whose presence is she now!
Nala's nightly refrain, the verse of a man who knows he is to blame.
Book 16: Sudeva Finds Damayanti
1–79
Summary
Bhima sends Brahmins across the world in search of Nala and Damayanti, with rewards for success. The Brahmin Sudeva recognises Damayanti in Chedi despite her wasted appearance, compares her in a string of similes to an uprooted lotus and an eclipsed moon, and speaks to her. Princess Sunanda sees her weeping and calls her mother.
Analysis
Sudeva's speech is a classic set piece of Sanskrit poetic description: a long chain of comparisons for beauty in eclipse. The search parties of Brahmins carry the plot as messengers; the Brahmin's learning, memory and travel serve the work of recognition.
Like a lotus flower uprooted--with the mire and dirt around:
One of Sudeva's similes for Damayanti's ruined beauty.
To the unadorned, a husband--is the chiefest ornament;
A maxim about the wife's dependence on her husband that the story both affirms and tests.
Book 17: The Mole and the Message
1–99
Summary
Sudeva identifies Damayanti by a lotus-shaped mole between her eyebrows. Sunanda washes away the dust and the queen mother recognises her own niece: she and Damayanti's mother are sisters. Damayanti returns to Vidarbha and her children. She asks her parents to find Nala and gives the Brahmins a message to repeat everywhere: 'Where did you go, gambler, cutting off half my garment?' They are to note anyone who replies.
Analysis
Recognition by a bodily mark is common to many traditions; here it prepares for the larger problem of recognising Nala, whose body has been changed. Damayanti's message is a riddle that only the guilty man can answer, and it is her design, not her father's, that will bring Nala back.
Whither went'st thou then, oh gamester!--half my garment severing off, Leaving me within the forest--all forsaken, thy beloved.
Damayanti's coded message, designed to provoke the one man who knows its meaning.
Yet her beauty is not faded--clouded o'er with toil and mire Though she be, it shines apparent, like the native unwrought gold.
Sudeva's argument that true beauty survives disfigurement.
Book 18: Parnada's Report and the Second Svayamvara
1–54
Summary
The Brahmin Parnada returns from Ayodhya: there the charioteer Bahuka, short-armed and deformed, wept and answered that noble women do not grow angry even when abandoned. Damayanti, sure that this is Nala, secretly sends Sudeva to tell Rituparna that she will hold a second svayamvara at sunrise the next day.
Analysis
The false svayamvara is Damayanti's boldest stratagem. It depends on a calculation only she could make: no one but Nala can drive a chariot that far in a single day. The ruse also risks offending the norm it seems to break, the fidelity of a wife, and Nala will accuse her of it.
In the breastplate of their virtue--noble women live unharmed.
Bahuka's reply, in which Nala praises Damayanti while seeming to speak of noble women in general.
When the sun is in his rising--she a second lord will choose:
The bait of Damayanti's stratagem.
Book 19: The Journey to Vidarbha
1–74
Summary
Rituparna asks Bahuka to drive him to Vidarbha in one day. Nala is tormented by doubt about Damayanti's fidelity but agrees. He chooses four thin horses whose good marks only he can read; Rituparna protests, then yields. Once yoked, the horses fly through the air. Varshneya, watching the driving, wonders whether Bahuka is Matali, Indra's charioteer, or Nala himself.
Analysis
The journey dramatises expertise. Nala's science of horses (ashvahridaya) is described in technical terms, and Varshneya's reasoning is a step-by-step attempt at recognition, defeated only by the changed body. Nala's suspicion of Damayanti, a flaw of character rather than of possession, prepares the final test.
Is it Matali, the chariot--of the king of heaven that drives?
Varshneya's question: expert driving points to a god or to Nala.
Book 20: The Science of Dice
1–89
Summary
Rituparna's upper garment falls and Nala refuses to turn back. Passing a Vibhitaka tree, Rituparna states at a glance the number of its leaves and fruit. Nala stops, cuts a branch, counts, and finds him right. Rituparna explains that he knows the science of dice and numbers, and they exchange skills: dice for horses. As soon as Nala masters dice, Kali leaves his body, vomiting Karkotaka's poison, and begs for mercy; Nala spares him and Kali enters the Vibhitaka tree.
Analysis
This is the hinge of the plot. The science of dice (akshahridaya) is presented as knowledge of number and probability, not luck. The Vibhitaka is apt: its nuts were used as dice in ancient India, as already in the Rigveda's hymn of the gambler (Lüders 1907). Kali's promise that those who praise Nala's name will be free from fear of Kali makes the story itself a protective recitation.
I of dice possess the science--and in numbers thus am skilled.
Rituparna's claim, which makes dicing a matter of knowledge.
Soon as he in dice grew skilful--Kali from his body passed:
Mastery of dice frees Nala from the demon of the dice.
Book 21: The Sound of the Chariot
1–71
Summary
They arrive in Kundina at evening. Nala's old horses in Bhima's stables, the peacocks and the elephants all respond to the rumble of the chariot, and Damayanti feels it is Nala. Bhima receives Rituparna, who finds no svayamvara and says only that he has come to pay his respects. Damayanti, seeing only Rituparna, Varshneya and the deformed Bahuka, is perplexed and sends her maid Keshini (Milman's 'Kesinia') to question the driver.
Analysis
The recognition proceeds through the senses: first sound, then speech, then wonders, taste and touch. The comic embarrassment of Rituparna, who has come to woo and must pretend he has not, lightens the tension before the recognition scenes.
All her heart was thrilled with wonder--at that old familiar sound.
Damayanti recognises Nala by the sound of his driving before she sees him.
Book 22: Keshini Questions Bahuka
1–62
Summary
Keshini asks Bahuka who he is and why they have come. He answers guardedly and says that no one knows where Nala is, since he wanders hidden, having lost his proper form. Keshini repeats Damayanti's message; Bahuka weeps and gives the same answer as before about noble women who do not resent abandonment.
Analysis
The dialogue form, with speaker headings in Milman, gives the scene the character of an interrogation. Nala's tears betray what his words conceal, and the repetition of his earlier answer confirms the identity Damayanti suspects.
Only Nala's self of Nala--knows, and his own inward soul,
An almost riddling statement of self-concealment: only Nala knows Nala.
Book 23: Signs of the Gods' Gifts
1–55
Summary
Damayanti sends Keshini to watch Bahuka without offering him fire or water. Keshini reports wonders: doorways rise for him, empty vessels fill at his look, grass bursts into flame in his hand without burning him, and crushed flowers revive. These are the gifts of the gods at the wedding. Damayanti then tastes his cooking and knows it is Nala's. She sends the children to him; he embraces them and weeps, then sends Keshini away.
Analysis
The gods' wedding gifts of Book V now work as proofs of identity. Recognition by taste is a striking feature of this tale, in which Nala's skill as a cook is part of his royal accomplishment.
Of the food prepared by Nala--well the flavour did she know; Tasting it she shrieked in transport--"Nala is yon charioteer."
Recognition through taste, the most intimate of the senses used in these books.
Book 24: The Wind as Witness
1–105
Summary
With her parents' consent Damayanti receives Bahuka in her chamber. She asks who but Nala could abandon a sleeping wife. He answers that Kali caused his fall, and accuses her of planning a second marriage. She explains the stratagem and calls on the wind, the sun and the moon to take her life if she has sinned. The wind declares her innocent; flowers fall and divine music sounds. Nala puts on Karkotaka's garment, regains his form, and they are reunited after three years of separation.
Analysis
The scene balances accusation and defence. Nala blames Kali for his crime and suspects Damayanti of a crime she has not committed; the asymmetry has struck many readers. Damayanti's oath before the elements, answered by the wind, is a final act of truth that echoes the svayamvara of Book V. Comparison with the testing of Sita in the Ramayana is natural, but here the husband's suspicion is answered by the gods without an ordeal by fire (Hiltebeitel 2001) (Brockington 1998).
Gaming that I lost my kingdom--'twas not mine own guilty deed, It was Kali wrought within me--hence it was I fled from thee;
Nala's defence: the possession theory of his fall in his own words.
She hath done or thought no evil--Nala, 'tis the truth we speak:
The wind's testimony clears Damayanti.
Book 25: Rituparna's Departure
1–38
Summary
Nala and Damayanti are welcomed by Bhima, and the city celebrates. Rituparna, learning who his charioteer was, apologises for any slight; Nala assures him of his friendship and gives him the science of horses. Rituparna returns home with another charioteer.
Analysis
The exchange of skills is completed with courtesy on both sides. The book restores the bonds of hospitality and alliance that the dice had broken.
My surpassing skill in horses--all is thine that I possess;
Nala completes the bargain of Book XX.
Book 26: The Return Match
1–76
Summary
After a month Nala returns to Nishadha with a small force and challenges Pushkara to play again, staking everything, including Damayanti, or to fight. Pushkara, sure of victory, boasts of winning Damayanti. Nala wins everything in a single throw, but spares his brother, gives him a city and sends him home with friendship. Nala brings Damayanti home and rules in glory.
Analysis
The ending restores the kingdom through the same game that lost it, now played with knowledge rather than under possession. Nala's mercy to Pushkara, like his mercy to Kali, completes his recovery of royal virtue. In the frame, Brihadashva then reassures Yudhishthira that he too will recover his kingdom, and teaches him the science of dice; the story is offered as both consolation and instruction (van Buitenen 1975).
'Twas achieved by mightier Kali--that thou didst not, fool, perceive.
Nala tells Pushkara that his earlier victory was Kali's work, not his own skill.
Pushkara, thou art my brother--may'st thou live an hundred years!
Mercy rather than revenge closes the tale.
Characters
Nishadha
- Nala
- King of Nishadha, son of Virasena, also called Punyashloka ('of holy fame'). Handsome, learned, truthful and a master of horses, he has a weakness for dice. Possessed by Kali, he loses his kingdom and abandons Damayanti, then lives in disguise as the deformed charioteer Bahuka. His recovery comes through knowledge, mercy and his wife's ingenuity rather than through battle.
- Pushkara
- Nala's brother, incited by Kali to challenge him at dice. He wins the kingdom, forbids anyone to help Nala, and later boasts of winning Damayanti. Defeated in the return match, he is forgiven.
- Varshneya
- Nala's charioteer, who takes the children to Vidarbha and then serves Rituparna. He half recognises Nala by his driving.
Vidarbha
- Damayanti
- Daughter of King Bhima of Vidarbha, the most beautiful woman in the three worlds. She chooses a mortal over four gods, keeps her fidelity through abandonment and danger, and devises the plans that save her children and bring Nala back. Her acts of truth and curses show the moral power the epic grants to a faithful wife, but she is also the most resourceful mind in the story.
- Bhima
- King of Vidarbha, Damayanti's father (not to be confused with the Pandava Bhima). He holds her svayamvara and later sends Brahmins across the world to find his daughter and son-in-law.
- Keshini
- Damayanti's maid (Milman's 'Kesinia'), who questions and observes Bahuka and brings back the evidence that leads to the recognition.
Gods
- Indra, Agni, Varuna and Yama
- The four world-guardians who come as suitors to the svayamvara, send Nala as their messenger and take his form. Once Damayanti has chosen, they bless the match generously and defend Nala against Kali.
Demons
- Kali
- The personification of the losing throw at dice and of the age of decline, distinct from the goddess Kali. Angry at Damayanti's choice, he possesses Nala and causes his ruin, until Karkotaka's poison and Damayanti's curse torment him and Nala's mastery of dice drives him out into the Vibhitaka tree.
- Dvapara
- Kali's companion, named after the throw of two, who enters the dice to ensure Nala's defeat.
Serpents
- Karkotaka
- The king of serpents, freed by Nala from a curse. His bite disfigures Nala to hide him and poisons Kali within him; he directs Nala to Rituparna and gives him the garments that restore his form.
Ayodhya
- Rituparna
- King of Ayodhya, of the line of Ikshvaku, master of the science of dice and numbers. He employs Nala as Bahuka, exchanges his science of dice for Nala's science of horses, and parts from him as a friend.
Brahmins
- Sudeva and Parnada
- Brahmin messengers. Sudeva finds Damayanti in Chedi and carries the news of the second svayamvara; Parnada brings back Bahuka's revealing answer from Ayodhya.
Frame
- Brihadashva
- The sage (Milman's 'Vrihadasva') who tells the story to Yudhishthira and, at the end, teaches him the science of dice.
Themes
Fidelity and the Power of Truth
Damayanti's fidelity is not passive endurance. In the svayamvara, in her curse on the hunter and in her final oath before the wind, sun and moon, her truthfulness acts on the world: gods reveal themselves, a man falls dead, the wind speaks. The poem draws on the Indian idea of the act of truth, in which a solemn declaration of one's own integrity compels the result it names.
The ideal of the devoted wife (pativrata) is plain throughout, and maxims about wifely dependence are spoken by several characters. Yet the plot repeatedly makes Damayanti the agent and Nala the one who must be found, tested and forgiven (Doniger 1999) (Wadley 2011).
Fate, Possession and Responsibility
Nala's fall is caused by Kali, who enters him through a ritual lapse. The story thus places the cause of disaster outside the hero, and Nala himself appeals to this when he says the gambling was not his own deed. But the poem also notes his love of dice from the first lines, gives him reasons for leaving Damayanti, and lets Damayanti ask what sin brought her suffering. The interplay of fate (daiva), demonic agency and human weakness is one of the main questions the tale raises (Biardeau 1984) (Biardeau 1985).
Dice and Knowledge
Dice destroy Nala when he plays possessed and restore him when he plays with knowledge. Rituparna's science of dice is a science of number: he can count leaves at a glance. The exchange of the science of dice for the science of horses gives the tale a structure of expert knowledge traded between kings, and the frame passes that science on to Yudhishthira (Lüders 1907) (Handelman 1997).
Disguise and Recognition
Both lovers live in disguise in foreign courts, Damayanti as a maid in Chedi, Nala as a deformed charioteer. The second half of the poem is a sequence of recognitions through mole, verse, sound, speech, marvels, taste and touch, ending in the restoration of Nala's true form. The svayamvara of Book V, where Damayanti must pick the real Nala among false ones, is the model for the whole.
Gods and Mortals
The gods are generous but also rivals of men. Damayanti's choice of a mortal over the gods is the source of both her glory and Kali's grudge. The signs that distinguish gods from men, sweat, shadow, blinking, contact with the earth, make mortality itself the object of her love.
Motifs
Messengers
The tale moves by messengers: the swan, Nala as envoy of the gods, Varshneya, the Brahmins Sudeva and Parnada, and Keshini. Each message is a test, and the coded message Damayanti gives the Brahmins is the instrument of recognition.
The Single Garment
Stripped of all but one garment, which the dice-birds then steal, the couple share Damayanti's cloth until Nala cuts it in half. The half-garment becomes the sign of the desertion in Damayanti's message and the image of her suffering.
Acts of Truth and Curses
Damayanti's oaths at the svayamvara and at the reunion, her curses on Kali and on the hunter, and Narada's curse on Karkotaka show the power of words to bind and to act.
The Svayamvara
The bride's choice appears twice: once real, in which she chooses among five Nalas, and once feigned, as the bait that brings Nala back.
Symbols
The Golden Swan
The swan, a bird associated with purity and discernment in Indian tradition, unites the lovers before they meet and stands for the ideal match.
The Dice
The dice embody Dvapara and come to life as birds. They stand for chance and for the passion of gambling, but also, once mastered, for a science of number.
The Vibhitaka Tree
The tree whose nuts served as dice in ancient India. Kali takes refuge in it when he leaves Nala, so that the source of the dice becomes the demon's home.
Karkotaka's Garments
The heavenly cloth that restores Nala's form reverses the cutting of the shared garment: clothing marks both loss and recovery of identity.
Critical debates
The Episode and its Frame
Earlier scholars often treated the Nala as an independent tale loosely inserted into the Mahabharata. More recent readers stress how closely it mirrors Yudhishthira's story and how its lesson of dice-knowledge is handed on to him in the frame. The question touches the larger debate about whether the epic is a compilation of accreted material or a designed whole (Hopkins 1901) (Brockington 1998) (Hiltebeitel 2001).
Who Is to Blame?
Kali possesses Nala, yet Nala has a known weakness for dice, makes his own decision to abandon Damayanti, and later doubts her. Readers disagree whether the possession excuses him or rather dramatises the inner disorder of a man who loses control. Madeleine Biardeau's study of the episode treats its handling of fate and divine action within the epic's religious world (Biardeau 1984) (Biardeau 1985).
Damayanti as Ideal Wife or Agent
Damayanti has long been held up as the model of the faithful wife. Feminist and comparative readings point out that she chooses her husband against the gods, manages the crisis of the dice, survives alone, and devises the stratagem of the second svayamvara, while Nala remains passive and hidden. Wendy Doniger reads her choice among doubles alongside other myths of false and true husbands (Doniger 1999) (Wadley 2011).
The Meaning of the Dice
The Nala reflects the importance of dicing in ancient Indian kingship and ritual. Heinrich Lüders's study of the ancient Indian dice game used the episode, with its Vibhitaka nuts and its science of counting, as evidence for how the game was played. Later scholars have explored the cosmological and religious meanings of dice in Indian myth (Lüders 1907) (Handelman 1997).
A Classroom Classic
From Bopp's edition onward, the Nala was the standard first text for European students of Sanskrit. Its use as a primer shaped Western ideas of Sanskrit literature, privileging an episode of clear style and romantic plot over the epic's longer didactic books (Bopp 1819) (Monier-Williams 1879) (Lanman 1884) (Winternitz 1927).
Translating the Shloka
Milman chose long trochaic lines split by a dash to imitate the two halves of the shloka; Rückert used German verse, and Arnold a looser English line. Each choice involves compromises between fidelity, readability and the expectations of contemporary poetry readers, and the Victorian diction of the English versions colours their image of the original (Milman 1835) (Rückert 1828) (Arnold 1883) (van Buitenen 1975).
Many Nalas
The tale has been retold in Indian languages and forms over many centuries: Shriharsha's ornate Sanskrit Naishadhacarita, regional poems, and the north Indian oral epic Dhola, in which Raja Nal has a very different life. These versions raise the question of how far the epic episode should be seen as one telling among many (Handiqui 1934) (Wadley 2004) (Wadley 2011).
Key passages
If the peerless wed the peerless--blessed must the union be.
The swan tells Damayanti that she and Nala are uniquely matched. The line states the ideal of a perfect union which the dice, the desertion and the long separation will test, and which the ending restores.
How can man, himself enamoured--for another plead his cause?
Nala protests against the gods' commission. He will nonetheless obey, because he has given his word. The line opens the tale's concern with the binding force of truthful speech, which will later work in his favour.
By this truth I here adjure ye--oh, ye gods, reveal my lord;
The refrain of Damayanti's act of truth before the five identical Nalas. She stakes her fidelity, rather than her powers of observation, and the gods respond by revealing their marks. Truth here is an active power.
With unmoistened skins the Immortals--saw she, and with moveless eyes; Fresh their dust-unsullied garlands--hovered they, nor touched the earth.
The signs of divinity are signs of what the gods lack: sweat, blinking, dust, contact with the ground. By choosing the man who has them, Damayanti chooses mortality, and the episode becomes a celebration of human love.
Nala after act uncleanly--the ablution half performed, Prayed at eve, with feet unwashen--Kali seized the fatal hour.
Kali has waited twelve years for this ritual slip. The disaster has a cosmic cause, a demon's grudge, but it needs a human opening. The passage is central to debates about Nala's responsibility.
Like a wife, in every sorrow--this the wise physicians own, Healing herb is none or balsam--Nala, 'tis the truth I speak.
Refusing to leave Nala for her father's house, Damayanti claims the wife's role as companion in suffering. The irony is that Nala, to spare her, will leave her that very night.
Nala, thus his heart divided--into two conflicting parts, Like a swing goes backward, forward--from the cabin, to and fro.
The simile of the swing gives physical form to Nala's divided will as he deserts his sleeping wife. Love draws him back; Kali drives him on. The scene is both an act of betrayal and a portrait of a man not in possession of himself.
In the breastplate of their virtue--noble women live unharmed.
Nala's answer to Damayanti's message, spoken in disguise. He praises the patience of abandoned wives and so implicitly accuses himself. Damayanti hears in it the voice of her husband.
I of dice possess the science--and in numbers thus am skilled.
After counting the leaves and fruit of the Vibhitaka tree at a glance, Rituparna reveals that dicing is a matter of knowledge. Once Nala learns this science, Kali leaves him: what destroyed him through passion now saves him through understanding.
Gaming that I lost my kingdom--'twas not mine own guilty deed, It was Kali wrought within me--hence it was I fled from thee;
Nala's defence at the reunion. In the same speech he suspects Damayanti of seeking a second husband; the contrast between his self-excuse and his suspicion is resolved only when the wind testifies to her innocence.
Questions for study
How does the frame story, told to Yudhishthira after his own dice game, shape the meaning of the tale?
Compare the two kings' falls, Nala's refusal to stake his wife, and the transmission of the science of dice at the end.
Why does Damayanti choose a mortal over the gods, and what does the svayamvara scene suggest about the value of mortality?
Look at the signs that distinguish the gods from Nala in Book V.
Is Nala responsible for his fall?
Weigh Kali's possession against Nala's love of dice in Book I, his reasoning in Book X and his defence in Book XXIV.
How does the poem present the power of truthful speech?
Consider Nala's promise to the gods, Damayanti's act of truth, her curses, and the wind's testimony.
In what ways is Damayanti the active agent of the plot?
List her decisions: the svayamvara strategy, the children, the coded message, the false second svayamvara, the tests of Bahuka.
What role do dice and numbers play in the story?
Contrast the possessed game of Book VII with Rituparna's science in Book XX and the return match in Book XXVI.
Trace the stages of recognition in Books XVI–XXIV. Why are so many senses involved?
Mole, verse, sound, speech, marvels, taste, touch, and finally the restored form.
How do the wilderness books (XI–XIII) develop Damayanti's character?
Look at her laments to the tiger and the mountain, her curse on the hunter, and her reflections on karma.
Why might the Nala have become the first text for European students of Sanskrit, and what effect might that have had on Western views of Indian literature?
Think of its style, length and romantic plot, and of what it leaves out of the Mahabharata.
How does Milman's long trochaic line, divided by a dash, affect the experience of reading the poem in English?
Read a passage aloud and consider the effect of the caesura and the repetition of epithets.
Further reading
- Arnold, Edwin. Indian Idylls, from the Sanskrit of the Mahâbhârata. London: Trübner, 1883.
- Biardeau, Madeleine. 'Nala et Damayantī, héros épiques' (part 1). Indo-Iranian Journal 27 (1984): 247–274.
- Biardeau, Madeleine. 'Nala et Damayantī, héros épiques' (part 2). Indo-Iranian Journal 28 (1985): 1–34.
- Bopp, Franz, ed. and trans. Nalus, carmen sanscritum e Mahàbhàrato. London: Cox and Baylis, 1819.
- Brockington, John. The Sanskrit Epics. Leiden: Brill, 1998.
- Doniger, Wendy. Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
- Handelman, Don, and David Shulman. God Inside Out: Śiva's Game of Dice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
- Handiqui, Krishna Kanta, trans. The Naishadhacarita of Śrīharsha (Cantos I–XXII). Lahore: Motilal Banarsi Dass, 1934.
- Hiltebeitel, Alf. Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader's Guide to the Education of the Dharma King. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
- Hopkins, E. Washburn. The Great Epic of India: Its Character and Origin. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901.
- Lanman, Charles Rockwell. A Sanskrit Reader, with Vocabulary and Notes. Boston: Ginn, Heath, 1884.
- Lüders, Heinrich. Das Würfelspiel im alten Indien. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1907.
- Milman, Henry Hart, trans. Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems, Translated from the Sanscrit into English Verse. Oxford: D. A. Talboys, 1835.
- Monier-Williams, Monier, ed. Nalopákhyánam: Story of Nala, an Episode of the Mahá-bhárata. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879.
- Rückert, Friedrich, trans. Nal und Damajanti: Eine indische Geschichte. Frankfurt am Main: J. D. Sauerländer, 1828.
- Sukthankar, Vishnu S., et al., eds. The Mahābhārata, for the First Time Critically Edited. 19 vols. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1933–1966.
- van Buitenen, J. A. B., trans. The Mahābhārata, vol. 2: Book 2, The Book of the Assembly Hall; Book 3, The Book of the Forest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
- Wadley, Susan Snow. Raja Nal and the Goddess: The North Indian Epic Dhola in Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
- Wadley, Susan S., ed. Damayanti and Nala: The Many Lives of a Story. New Delhi: Chronicle Books, 2011.
- Winternitz, Maurice. A History of Indian Literature. Vol. 1. Trans. S. Ketkar. Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1927.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.