Sep 1, 2025
Women in Mahabharata - Padmavati
In Mahabharata Karna has three wives hailing from the same soota caste. Here, it is a case of a straight-and-narrow arranged marriage.
Tamizh folk theatre finds one woman, Ponnuruvi, the princess of Kalinga (basically, Bhanumati), who here is married to Karna instead and accepts him only after finding out that Karna is kshatriya by birth.
In Kashiram Das' adaptation, the princess Ashavari rejects him (like Draupadi), and the woman married to him finally is the maid of the princess- Padmavati.
The more popular names today are Vrushali and Supriya- the creations of Shivaji Sawant in his work Mrityunjaya. While Vrushali's backstory is unique, Supriya's story seems like a mixture of the above two traditions.
