
Mādrī
Sign in to saveAlso known as Mādravatī
Madri (, ), also known as Madravati (, ), is a legendary character in the Mahabharata, an ancient Sanskrit epic poem. She is the princess from the Madra Kingdom and becomes the second wife of Pandu, the king of the Kuru Kingdom. She is the mother of the twins Nakula and Sahadeva, the youngest of the five Pandava brothers.
Key facts
- Character.series
- Mahabharata
- Character.image
- Madri - Raja Ravi Varma Print.jpg
- Character.caption
- A print of Madri by Raja Ravi Varma (1848 – 1906)
- Character.gender
- Female
- Character.info hdr
- Personal Information
- Character.spouse
- Pandu
- Character.origin
- Madra
- Character.children
- Nakula and Sahadeva (by Ashvins)
- Character.lbl21
- Clan
- Character.data21
- Bahlikas
via Wikipedia infobox
~23 min read
Encyclopedic overview
14 sectionsContents
- Literary background
- Name and epithets
- Biography
- Marriage
- Exile
- Birth of Nakula and Sahadeva
- Death
- Assessment
- Sati
- Beyond the ''Mahabharata''
- Notes
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
Madri (, ), also known as Madravati (, ), is a legendary character in the Mahabharata, an ancient Sanskrit epic poem. She is the princess from the Madra Kingdom and becomes the second wife of Pandu, the king of the Kuru Kingdom. She is the mother of the twins Nakula and Sahadeva, the youngest of the five Pandava brothers.
Madri is the daughter of Madraraja—the king of Madra—and sister of Shalya. Her marriage to Pandu is arranged by Bhishma, the grandsire of the Kuru dynasty, in exchange for a heavy bride price. After Pandu is cursed that he would die if he engaged in sexual relations, Madri accompanies Pandu in his self-imposed exile, along with Pandu's first wife, Kunti. Using Kunti's divine boon, Madri invokes the twin gods Ashvins to conceive her twin sons. Later, the cursed Pandu dies when he is overcome by desire and initiates intimacy with Madri. Overcome with remorse and grief, Madri entrusts her sons to Kunti's care and joins him in death.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Mādrī” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.