Women in Mahabharata - Iravati
Not much is known about her except that she is the daughter of Kadru, and [according to some sources] the mother of the Airavatas. She is also associated with the river Ravi/Payoshni.
This to me presents a poignant connection. Iravati is the sister of the Nagas, which narratively mirrors the relationship of Kauravas and Dushhala.
In old Sanskrit the words "Naga" and "Hasti" simultaneously signifies both "snake" and "elephant". This connection is poetically exploited as Hastinapura is referred to multiple times in the epic as Nagasahvaya.
Laying its base upon Janmejaya's Sarpa-satra, the genocide of the Nagas, Mahabharata itself spends almost half of the first Parva detailing the dynastic intricacies of the Nagas and their tumultuous relationship with the Kuru dynasty.
Several times we run into this interlinked metaphor in the story:
Bheema, as a child, meets Vasuki who is his [great x 3 +]great-granduncle and gains the physical strength of a hundred elephants,
Krishna's grandmother is identified as a Naga woman,
Arjuna and Krishna form an enmity with Takshaka, a friend of Indra and Airavata, when they burn his home down,
Arjuna's second partner Uloopi's father is identified as the Naga Kauravya-Airavat, and,
Yudhishthira meets Naga-Nahusha, a distant relative who also nearly kills Bheema himself.
This key to this trend of different sub-factions on both sides aligning and dis-aligning with the snake/elephant totems lies probably with this little-known woman who lays near-forgotten in a tiny corner of this vast epic.
She is identified with the modern day river Ravi, and is also noted as one of the mothers to the Agni tribe.
