Discussion Week 2 : Amba's oath to destroy Bhishma

We are discussing important tracks from our epic, Mahabharat in a chronological order from last week onwards.

This week, we will discuss about

"Kashi Princess Amba's oath to destroy Bhishma".

You are open to share excerpts from different versions of MB written by various authors, and also MB related shows aired on TV.

Tagging a few, others are also welcome to share your thoughts on the same.

P.S. I will share my thoughts on this topic in a few days since I am and will remain quite busy for the next few days (reserving my next post for the same).

It is really pity how she got dragged into something she didn't deserve. Neither her lover accepted her nor Vichitravirya got married to her. Bhishma refused as well and that poor lady was left all alone. I'm glad how in her next birth she was able to fulfil her revenge but somewhere her story couldn't 'touch' my heart.

Retellings have butchered Ambā's character by making her willing to marry Vicitravīrya, going back and forth between Śālva and Vicitravīrya, and trying to break Bhīṣma's vow by forcing him to marry her!

None of this is in the critical edition, where Ambā only wants Śālva, and as soon as he tells her to leave, she gets the idea to punish Bhīṣma.

Udyogaparvan 173.1-8:

Bhīṣma uvāca:

Bhīṣma narrated:

sā niṣkramantī nagarāc cintayām āsa Bhārata

pṛthivyāṃ n'āsti yuvatir viṣamasthatarā mayā

bāndhavair viprahīnā'smi Śālvena ca nirākṛtā

As she exited the city, she reflected, descendant of Bharata! On earth there is no young woman in a rougher situation than I; I am deprived of my family and rejected by Śālva.

na ca śakyaṃ punar gantuṃ mayā vāraṇa-s'āhvayam

anujñātā'smi Bhīṣmeṇa Śālvam uddiśya kāraṇam

And it's not possible for me to return to the elephant-synonym (Hāstinapura); Bhīṣma permitted me when I indicated Śālva as the reason.

kiṃ nu garhāmy ath'ātmānam atha Bhīṣmaṃ durāsadam

āhosvit pitaraṃ mūḍhaṃ yo me 'kārṣīt svayaṃvaram

Well, do I blame myself now, or Bhīṣma the unassailable? Or even my stupid father who decided my svayaṃvara?

mam'āyaṃ svakṛto doṣo yā'haṃ Bhīṣma-rathāt tadā

pravṛtte vaiśase yuddhe Śālv'ārthaṃ n'āpataṃ purā

tasy'eyaṃ phala-nirvṛttir yad āpannā'smi mūḍhavat

This is my own mistake, because I didn't jump from Bhīṣma's chariot then, while the deadly fight was happening, for Śālva's sake, already. This frustration is its consequence, that I am stupidly in trouble.

dhig Bhīṣmaṃ dhik ca me mandaṃ pitaraṃ mūḍha-cetasam

yen'āhaṃ vīrya-śulkena paṇya-strīvat praveritā

Shame on Bhīṣma! And shame on my slow, stupid-minded father, who tossed me for valour to buy, like a woman-for-pay.

dhiṅ māṃ dhik Śālva-rājānaṃ dhig Dhātāram ath'āpi ca

yeṣāṃ durnīta-bhāvena prāptā'smy āpadam uttamām

Shame on me! Shame on the Śālva king! And shame on the Maker too! All of us being unreliable, I've reached this supreme trouble.

sarvathā bhāga-dheyāni svāni prāpnoti mānavaḥ

anayasy'āsya tu mukhaṃ Bhīṣmaḥ Śāṃtanavo mama

Always, one's own fair share is what a human gets. But the start of this injustice to me is Bhīṣma, Śaṃtanu's son.

sā Bhīṣme pratikartavyam ahaṃ paśyāmi sāṃpratam

tapasā vā yudhā vā'pi duḥkha-hetuḥ sa me mataḥ

ko nu Bhīṣmaṃ yudhā jetum utsaheta mahī-patiḥ

So, at present I'll look for vengeance against Bhīṣma, either by penance or even by battle. I think he caused my pain. Well, which ruler of the earth would be eager to defeat Bhīṣma in battle?

It was really horrible how nobody really listened to her. I mean, Parashuram did go fighting Bhishma, but nobody really got her to calm down and explore an actually productive solution.

Even as Shikhandi, nobody really paid him/her much attention until when they needed them to do a very morally questionable job which was the result of some very poor counselling from their previous life.

Originally posted by: metacrisis

It was really horrible how nobody really listened to her. I mean, Parashuram did go fighting Bhishma, but nobody really got her to calm down and explore an actually productive solution.

Even as Shikhandi, nobody really paid him/her much attention until when they needed them to do a very morally questionable job which was the result of some very poor counselling from their previous life.

Śālva was the only character who didn't listen to Ambā, right?

Several characters tried to get Ambā to calm down. They suggested options for her to live a comfortable life, which she rejected. At one point, she was given a choice between marriage to Śālva and vengeance against Bhīṣma, and she refused to decide for herself. After that, she didn't desist from vengeance, even after Gaṅgā cursed her.

Ambā is chaperoned by old brāhmaṇas and followed by a nurse when Bhīṣma sends her to Śālva. In the passage that I quoted above, when Ambā says that she can't return to Hāstinapura, we can infer that her entourage is ready to return. Bhīṣma has an obligation to maintain Ambā, and maybe marry her to Vicitravīrya (although he refuses to do so at Udyogaparvan 178.9-11), or Ambā could plead with Bhīṣma to challenge Śālva to battle and force him to marry her, but Ambā says no. Maybe she even parts ways with her chaperones, because Ambā spends the night at an āśrama, surrounded by tāpasas.

Udyogaparvan 173.10: Ambā tells the tāpasas everything (sarvam) just as it had happened to her (yathā vṛttam ātmani), at length (vistareṇa) and without leaving out anything (nikhilena). That's a lot of listening to her!

Udyogaparvan 173.18: When Ambā wants to perform penance, the tāpasa Śaikhāvatya reassures her with examples (dṛṣṭānta), precedents (āgama), and reasons (hetu), pacifies her, and discusses with the other tāpasas whether to take her to her father or Bhīṣma or Śālva. They tell her, "Go to your father, he'll decide what to do next, and you'll live there comfortably; no other option is as correct as your father. A woman's options are her husband in smooth times or her father in rough times. If you live in the woods alone, royals will proposition you, so don't think like this!"

Ambā replies that she can't go back to the Kāśi city, where she'll be disrespected by her family. She insists on penance to prevent similar misfortune in her next lifetime.

Udyogaparvan 174.17-18: Ambā's maternal grandfather Hotravāhana Sṛñjaya listens to the story from the tāpasas, and stands up, trembling. He seats Ambā on his lap, reassures her, and asks her to tell him her misfortune completely (kārtsnyena) from the beginning (āditaḥ). She tells him just as it had happened (yathā vṛttam), at length (vistareṇa). Hotravāhana supports Ambā's decision not to go to her father, and he trembles as he tells her, "I'll cut out your pain, follow me, Rāma Jāmadagnya will kill Bhīṣma for you and put you on even ground again."

Then Akṛtavraṇa arrives. Hotravāhana tells him Ambā's story, and Ambā confirms it, adding, "I am not eager to return to my city, for fear of disrespect, and for shame, great hermit whose wealth is penance! Whatever Lord Rāma advises, most honest brāhmaṇa! that is my work above all work, so I think, Lord!"

Udyogaparvan 176.1-4: Akṛtavraṇa says, "You have two grievances, fair one (Bhadre)! For which one will you have revenge, powerless one (Abale)? My calf (Vatse)! Tell me that. If you want the lord of Saubha assigned to your will, fair one (Bhadre), the great-natured Rāma will assign him, desiring your welfare. Or, if you wish to see that river's son Bhīṣma defeated in battle by the wise Rāma, the descendant of Bhṛgu will do that too, after hearing Sṛñjaya's word and yours too, clean-smiling one (Śucismite)!"

So far, every one of these male strangers is being totally sympathetic to Ambā and respectful of her feelings. None of these pious men is treating her like property or a disgrace. They care about her as a person, not an unmarriageable problem. However, when Ambā admits that Bhīṣma wasn't aware of her love for Śālva when he abducted her, and asks Akṛtavraṇa to decide what is the right approach with either Bhīṣma or Śālva, the story takes a turn for the worse. Akṛtavraṇa says that Śālva would bow to Rāma's command and marry her, if Bhīṣma hadn't taken her to the elephant-synonym (Hāstinapura); after being won and taken by Bhīṣma, she is suspect for Śālva. Ambā agrees, saying that she wants to get Bhīṣma killed in battle, but Bhīṣma or Śālva or whomever Akṛtavraṇa blames for causing her pain, that one should be punished.

Udyogaparvan 176.32, 177.6-7: Rāma offers to order Bhīṣma to do the right thing. Rāma offers to assign Śālva to marry Ambā. Rāma does not want to fight, and offers to order Bhīṣma to apologize to Ambā. She declines; she only wants Bhīṣma killed. Akṛtavraṇa exhorts Rāma, and Rāma challenges Bhīṣma to take back Ambā or die.

The text describes Ambā as painfully lusty for Śālva (Anaṅga-śara-pīḍitā; Udyogaparvan 172.8). She had a chance to force him to marry her, after which she could have hoped to convince him to reciprocate her love. Śālva's unwillingness to accept a wife who had belonged to another man was only one idea of dharma. Other fictional examples and the available writings on dharma tell us that society didn't value a man's consent above other interests. When a woman asked a kṣatriya to make her his, he was honour-bound to do it. If an unfaithful wife came back home, her husband was duty-bound to maintain her. And if a husband didn't copulate with his wife when she bathed after her monthly period, that was considered tantamount to genocide.

If Ambā didn't want to force Śālva, and since Bhīṣma refused to marry her to Vicitravīrya, Ambā could have chosen any other kṣatriya who might value an alliance with Kāśi. Or, even if no one was willing to marry Ambā (as Rāma implies at Udyogaparvan 178.6 and Bhīṣma compares an infatuated woman to a snake at Udyogaparvan 178.21), both Bhīṣma and her father had an obligation to maintain her.

Śālva and Bhīṣma and Ambā were just not interested in "an actually productive solution."

Some characters only exist to fulfill a plot, an inglorious and complicated one, here.

This one's a clear exhibit of you choose your fate and it's inescapable just like Bhishma's oath. A person/character is the consequence of the choice made by them, conscious or otherwise.

I know people listened to her, like physically. I meant to say that these wise people found Amba at her lowest, yet they left the final decision to a clearly traumatized girl. She wasn't thinking clearly, and no one thought to give her a little more time to process what just happened.

Given the era's sentimentalities, I understand that the men were trying their best to solve the problem, and I do speak from a more modern perspective that all of them could have tried a little harder to get Amba some much-needed help, mental-health-wise.

It looks like no matter the actual situation, Amba thought that she was done for good no one would accept her after this, and she moved forward with her vendetta based on this assumption. She fully believed that her life was irreparably ruined, hence her anger at Bhishma for starting this.

Definitely, the productive solution here would've been to convince Amba to give herself a second chance and try to find another man who would truly value her. It's just sad that she was pushed to the point of suicide instead.

I have few Q.

Why didn’t Amba shout and proclaim her love for Salva when she was abducted in front of all?

Why Bhishma abducted all 3 sisters for his 2 step brothers? Two would have enough, right? 😆

Also, why didn’t Bhishma leave Amba there itself when she was unwilling to comply compared to her sisters?

But, what happened to Amba was unfortunate. She didn’t get her lover back neither take revenge as Amba from Bhishma for ruining her life. Her grit and determination is commendable as she did get boon to destroy Bhishma and she did suicide to take re-birth and fulfil her revenge.

Originally posted by: Swetha-Sai

Why didn’t Amba shout and proclaim her love for Salva when she was abducted in front of all?

Ambā asks herself the same question: why didn't I jump? If you were an adolescent girl and a mighty warrior in his fifties was lifting you into his chariot while making a speech, would you be able to speak over him? If you were in a chariot with warriors shooting at the man who was carrying you off, would you duck for cover, or would you tap his shoulder while he was trying to fight back?

These days, we might say that Ambā was in shock or traumatized. When she finally speaks to Bhīṣma, she is described as embarrassed (savrīḍā).

Originally posted by: Swetha-Sai

Why Bhishma abducted all 3 sisters for his 2 step brothers? Two would have enough, right? 😆

Citrāṅgada was already dead, so all three girls were abducted by Bhīṣma for Vicitravīrya alone.

Why all three? The text doesn't give a reason outright, but when Bhīṣma challenges the assembled kings, "Try with all your strength, all of you, to free them. I am forcibly taking them away as you watch!" it's obvious that he wants to provoke a fight by not leaving even one of the girls for whom the kings came all the way to Kāśipurī.

At several places in Ādiparvan, it seems that Vicitravīrya had only one widow named Kausalyā.

At Anuśāsanaparvan 44.37-54, Bhīṣma tells a different version of the story, in which he brought two girls for Vicitravīrya after defeating the Māgadhas, Kāśis, and Kosalas. One girl had been held by the hand (signifying a saptapadī marriage ceremony), so Bhīṣma's "father" Bāhlīka (Śaṃtanu's brother) told Vicitravīrya to let her go, and Vicitravīrya only married the other girl who had received a bride-price from another man.

Originally posted by: Swetha-Sai

Also, why didn’t Bhishma leave Amba there itself when she was unwilling to comply compared to her sisters?

All three girls could be assumed to be unwilling to be kidnapped. When a king gave his daughter/sister the privilege of svayaṃvara, the point was to assert to his neighbours that his kingdom was so powerful that one alliance was as good as another. A princess who chose her own husband could be sent quietly to him. By announcing a public svayaṃvara instead, a king not only invited tourism to his capital city, he declared his capability to defend the princess's choice. Whether the princess chose someone or she was kidnapped, the disappointed warriors could be expected to fight over her.

Originally posted by: Swetha-Sai

But, what happened to Amba was unfortunate. She didn’t get her lover back neither take revenge as Amba from Bhishma for ruining her life. Her grit and determination is commendable as she did get boon to destroy Bhishma and she did suicide to take re-birth and fulfil her revenge.

So far, members have discussed whether productive alternatives were available to Ambā, and who should have encouraged her more to live a comfortable life. You may be the only one here who thinks that Ambā's destructive effort is commendable. We can agree to disagree. I always thought it was ironic that Ambā died and took rebirth to kill Bhīṣma, a futile effort if Bhīṣma could also take rebirth to carry on with his goals.

^I personally believe half of such opinions for eg. Amba could've prevented her kidnapping, or Kunti could've kept Karna...all of these originate from the portrayals of various serials/movies which (justifiably) refuse to show/emphasise the actual ages of the characters.

Most of these women, even Gandhari and her patti, were almost children by today's standards when they made their most controversial choices.

I feel like it's a bit much to expect that just because these women had dynamic personalities in their later lives or at least had the potential to be dynamic, would make all sound choices even when they were clearly not equipped to.