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MERENDALE ; Once Again Draupadi's Hair
175
however, the dissolution of praksti, which he thinks the loose hair symbolize, is not a fact but only an imagined possibility. H. has to live with this inconsistency because we know that heavens did not fall when, according to H., Draupadi, resolved to wear her bair loose due to the insult done to them by Duḥśāsana. This should have happened if untying of hair meant dissolution of the three gunas of prakti. But it did not, and hence what accord. ing to H, is already a fact symbolizes wbat according to him is a possibility ! But then the epic gives no ground for imagining this possibility either. The epic does not inform us that the Kauravas misruled their kingdom during the exile of the Pandavas, that during their rule adharma was ascendant. Hence there is no reason to feel that, if the Pandavas had failed to avenge the insult to Draupadi, i, e. if they had lost the war and not regained sovereignty, the Kauravas would have let loose on earth such terror, such adharma, as would match pralaya.
Madhu Vidya/525
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