Kunti- Hindu FigureMortal"Mother of the Pandavas"

Durvasa's Gift

Kunti was born Pritha, daughter of the Yadava chief Shurasena. As a child she was given in adoption to her father's cousin Kuntibhoja. When the sage Durvasa visited the court, Kunti was assigned to attend him. Durvasa was notoriously unpredictable. A wrong look could provoke his curse. For a year Kunti served him with such discipline that the sage, satisfied, granted her a mantra: she could summon any god, and that god would be bound to give her a child.

The Son Set Adrift

Kunti tested the mantra by invoking Surya as she watched the dawn. The sun god appeared before her in radiant form. She could not retract the invocation. Surya assured her that her virginity would remain intact. She bore a son adorned with natural armor and golden earrings, marks of his solar parentage. But Kunti was unmarried. She placed the infant in a basket, sealed it, and set it adrift on the river. The child was found by the charioteer Adhiratha and his wife Radha. They named him Vasusena. He would become Karna.

Pandu's Curse

Kunti married Pandu, king of Hastinapura, at her svayamvara. Pandu also took a second wife, Madri of the Madra kingdom. While hunting, Pandu killed the sage Kindama and his wife in the form of mating deer. The dying sage cursed him to die the moment he embraced any woman in passion. Pandu renounced the throne and retired to the Himalayan foothills with both wives.

In the crisis of the curse, Kunti revealed Durvasa's mantra. At Pandu's direction, she invoked Dharma and bore Yudhishthira, then Vayu for Bhima, then Indra for Arjuna. When Pandu asked for more, she refused: a woman should not bear children by more than three men besides her husband. She shared the mantra once with Madri, who summoned the twin Ashvins and bore Nakula and Sahadeva.

Pandu succumbed to the curse after embracing Madri. Madri followed him onto the funeral pyre, entrusting her sons to Kunti. Kunti returned to Hastinapura with five children and no husband.

The Lac House

Duryodhana's jealousy of the Pandavas escalated into a plot. He arranged for Kunti and her sons to stay in a palace at Varanavata built entirely of lac, intending to burn them alive. Vidura warned Kunti through coded messages and arranged for a tunnel beneath the building. When the lac house was set ablaze, Kunti and the five brothers escaped through the tunnel into the wilderness.

They lived in disguise. It was Arjuna, competing at Draupadi's svayamvara under a false identity, who won her hand. Returning to their hiding place, the brothers called out to Kunti that they had brought something wonderful. Without looking up, she replied: "Share equally whatever you have brought." A mother's word to her sons could not be taken back. Draupadi married all five.

Karna at the River

On the eve of the Kurukshetra war, Kunti sought out Karna at the banks of the Ganga where he performed his daily prayers. She revealed the secret she had kept for decades: he was her firstborn, Surya's son, elder brother to the Pandavas. She begged him to join his brothers.

Karna refused. He would not betray Duryodhana, the only man who had given him dignity when the world scorned him as a charioteer's son. But he made Kunti a promise: he would not kill any of her other four sons. His enmity was reserved for Arjuna alone. Win or lose, she would have five sons.

Karna fell to Arjuna on the seventeenth day. Only after the war did the Pandavas learn they had killed their eldest brother. Yudhishthira, shattered by the revelation, cursed all women to be unable to keep secrets.

The Forest Fire

Rather than enjoy the kingdom her sons had won, Kunti chose to accompany the blind Dhritarashtra and Gandhari into the forest for a life of asceticism. Before leaving, she offered prayers to Krishna preserved in the Bhagavata Purana as the Kunti Stuti. She asked for calamities rather than comfort, because it was in danger that her family had always turned to God.

In the Ashramvasika Parva, the three elderly figures lived simply in a forest hermitage. A wildfire swept through. Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, and Kunti perished together in the blaze.