More citations on our heroine:
INIMITABLE FIRST LADY Even in that exalted group of five, Draupadi has but one of comparable stature, Sita being her only credible competitor for excellence. Irawati Karve draws a few significant parallels between the two illustrious queens. 4.2 Both had preternatural births; both chose their ideal consorts after they proved their prowess in a Svayamvara test; and both accompanied their husbands into exile in the forest. But Draupadi surely had more facets to her remarkable personality than the heroine of the Ramayana. Let us review some of those matchless qualities of Draupadi, the miracle-engendered princess of Pancala, marriage with whom provided the Pandavas with the necessary politico-military muscle to face their Kuru rivals. Rajshekhar Basu provides a fine human sketch of Draupadi. 4.3 Arguably, no other woman in ancient Indian literature can match the qualities that animate her character. Her personal beauty is beyond comparison, and is only enhanced by her dark complexion, perhaps signifying a fire-related characteristic associated with her sacrificial origin. Her ravishing appearance in the svayamvara hall cast a powerful spell on all the suitors. All the five Pandava brothers felt drawn by her enamouring magnetism, and their shared matrimony could well have been an expedient modus vivendi to prevent any fissure in fraternal unity, as was the arrangement for her cohabitation with each brother by seasonal turn. 4.4 Interestingly, the rotational arrangement also helped in fixing the paternal identity of Draupadi's five sons (the Upa-pandavas), which otherwise could have been difficult in such a muddlingly polyandrous situation (without the modern recourse to DNA tests). Notwithstanding the discipline of such a wife-sharing arrangement by five virile husbands, it certainly would have proved too much for most women. 4.5 Draupadi, however, discharged her demanding marital role with remarkable success, so much so that Krshna's wife, Satyabhama, keen to establish her own dominance over other co-wives, once asked her (during the Vana-parva), if she used some occult rituals or potions to control her five husbands. Draupadi's advice to her could well serve as a model code of conduct for all righteously inclined wives of all ages.
There seems to have been an age-defying quality about Draupadi's beauty. Near the fag end of the 12 years in the forest, one look at her caused Jayadratha, the Sindhu king, to lose his head. She was then almost past her youth, yet Jayadratha, considerably younger, was driven by lust to kidnap her, exclaiming in impassioned wonder: I need marry none else if this woman becomes mine; after seeing her, all other women seem to be simians in comparison'. There is a striking cross-cultural parallel between her age-defying sex appeal (she was a veritable Agni-kanya or scorcher' in today's parlance), and her hypnotic effect on even younger men, and the cynic Enobarbus' description of Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale /her infinite variety. Other women cloy / the appetites they feed. But she makes hungry /where she most satisfies.
Basu, Abhijit (2014-01-30). Marvels and Mysteries of the Mahabharata (Kindle Locations 1558-1562). Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd. Kindle Edition.
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