Devalok
Folk tale · 2 tellings · Pan-India

The strip of cloth (Draupadi binds Krishna's finger)

At the Rajasuya Krishna kills Shishupala with his discus and cuts his finger, and Draupadi tears her sari to bind it; he promises to repay every thread. In the dice hall her garment does not end when Dushasana pulls it. The Mahabharata tells the death of Shishupala and the hall; the cut finger comes from later devotional telling.

Who is in it

Places: Indraprastha, Hastinapura · Texts: Mahabharata

The story, beat by beat

  1. At the Rajasuya Shishupala insults Krishna a hundred times and is killed by the discus.
  2. The discus cuts Krishna's finger, and Draupadi tears a strip of her sari to bind it.
  3. Krishna promises to repay her thread for thread.
  4. The Pandavas lose Draupadi at dice and Dushasana tries to strip her in the hall.
  5. Her garment never ends, and Krishna says it was the cloth she gave him.

protection debt devotion festival

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Popular retelling

As told at Raksha Bandhan

Pan-India · hi Vaishnava 🪔 Raksha Bandhan

At Yudhishthira's Rajasuya Shishupala insults Krishna over the first honour. Krishna has promised Shishupala's mother to forgive a hundred wrongs; at the hundred and first he throws the Sudarshana and kills him, and the returning discus cuts his finger. Draupadi tears a strip from her sari and binds it, and Krishna promises to repay each thread. When Dushasana tries to strip her in the dice hall, her sari never ends.

Wikipedia: Raksha Bandhan (the Bhavishya Purana Uttara 137 passage); The Mahabharata, Sabha Parva, translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli (1883 to 1896) § 2.44

Primary text (translation)

Mahabharata, Sabha Parva (the dice hall)

Pan-India · sa Vaishnava 🪔 Raksha Bandhan

Draupadi, staked and lost, is dragged into the hall by Dushasana. She asks whether a man who has lost himself can stake his wife; Vikarna speaks for her and Karna shouts him down. Karna orders the Pandavas and Draupadi stripped; Dushasana pulls her garment, and in the vulgate she prays to Govinda, and garment after garment appears in its place until he gives up. Bhima vows to drink Dushasana's blood.

What is different here:

No cut finger; the critical edition omits her prayer.

The Mahabharata, Sabha Parva, translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli (1883 to 1896) § 2.68; The Mahabharata, Critical Edition, Sabha Parva 61 and Aranyaka Parva (notes on the Draupadi garment passage, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute)

Sources: Wikipedia: Raksha Bandhan (the Bhavishya Purana Uttara 137 passage); The Mahabharata, Sabha Parva, translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli (1883 to 1896); The Mahabharata, Critical Edition, Sabha Parva 61 and Aranyaka Parva (notes on the Draupadi garment passage, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute)

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