HOW A QUEEN BECAME A GODDESS

WHEN the founder of the Draupadi Dream Trust visited Chennai, she was shocked to learn of the many Draupadi temples in the south.

- NANDITHA KRISHNA

WHEN the founder of the Draupadi Dream Trust visited Chennai, she was shocked to learn of the many Draupadi temples in the south. Neither in Kampilya, where Draupadi was born, nor elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh and Nepal are there temples for this redoubtable wife of the Pandavas. But in the south, Draupadi is the kuladeivam of families and entire villages. There is a Draupadi Amman temple on my street.

How did this north Indian queen become a goddess feted at festivals in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and even Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius, Reunion and South Africa—wherever the south Indian diaspora lives? Such Draupadi festivals invariably involve fire-walking, for legend says she was born out of fire when father Drupad conducted yagna asking for a child.

Megasthenes, an ambassador of Alexander's general Seleucus I Nicator, says in Indica that Heracles, as the Greeks called Krishna, "was held in special honour by the Sourasenoi (Saurasena), an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora (Mathura) and Cleisobora... He had numerous male children, but only one daughter, Pandaia... To her Heracles assigned that portion of India which lies southwards and extends to the sea".