Princess Kunti

Once i worked in a cosmopolitan place where the hiring of workers from all across the globe was common; over the course of a quarter of a century they came in waves, responding to troubles in their homelands and the possibilities offered for succor here in the United States. Among these co-workers was a young fellow from India; occasionally he and i would chat about bits of Indian lore that i had stumbled upon in my readings and practice. Maybe something about the courtroom scene of a young Indian man, falsely accused of sedition, who at trial, came to realize that the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney were revealed to be the three aspects of the Hindu divinity, Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva; later this defendant would be known as Sri Aurobindo, my favorite yogi: the modern day initiator of Integral Yoga.

This co-worker returned to India for a visit, and while there thought of me with kindness, enough so to purchase a gift, which he gave me when arriving back to work in the States. This is how my little home library acquired copies of the classics of Hindu Literature, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Maha means great as in mahatma (great + atman or soul); Bharata is another name for India. The Mahabharata is a big deal in India. When a dramatic production of it was mounted for television and broadcast nationwide, streets were deserted, shops shuttered, and parliament adjourned early lest legislators miss the showing; exceeding perhaps the cultural phenomena here in the States when ROOTS was first televised.

Eventually the epic Mahabharata concludes with a great battle as described in its final chapters often published separately and known as the Bhagavad-Gita, or Song of the Blessed, the source teaching of karmayoga, an instrument of inspiration to Gandhi and onto Martin Luther King Jr., and many others.

Early in the Mahabharata is the story of princess Kunti, a name she took from the king who adopted her when she was orphaned as a girl. Young Kunti was sweet and attentive to her adoptive parent, and was rewarded with a special mantra; the recitation of which was said to call to appearance any of the gods, each of which could, without intercourse, impregnate a woman with divine seed. In her youth and innocence Kunti repeated the mantra, and Surya the sun god appeared, and despite her protests of her unsuitability the virginal Kunti became pregnant.

So both Kunti and a latter day Mary were said to have been virgins yet giving of birth (the Mahabharata is often dated at 3700 BCE). In Kunti’s case the birth caused sufficient consternation for the ensuing child to be abandoned -set afloat in a basket in a river, much like another latter day counterpart -Moses.

Later in life Kunti had occasion to repeat the mantra several times, resulting in additional births only to be forced by circumstances to infanticide. Needless to say, apparently a great ambivalence grew up around this cultural icon; blessed by great fecundity and cursed by destructive circumstance.

My guess, my felt intuition, at the time of reading her story in the gift copy of the Mahabharata was that women in general have come to suffer from this ambivalence. Virgin or whore; Mary or Magdalene; this ambivalence is deep and includes besides the cultural issues it raises of non-equality of the genders the physical attributes of women as well. Romans called the female genitalia cloaca, their word for sewer. Over many millennia her name Kunti, the name of women have suffered, often going underground, and being passed down by word of mouth, even onto our day.

So now i honor her and all women everywhere as daughters of the great mother with this haiku.

Princess Kunti: A Mother of Note

A virgin became
Pregnant; her name gave birth to
Common usage: Cunt!