Rukmini

The road to the shrine of Ambika had been watered at dawn so the dust would not rise, and by mid-morning the whole of Kundina was standing along it. Banners hung from the arches. Aloewood smoke drifted off the rooftops, where the households had been burning it since the night before. In the middle of the procession walked a girl keeping a vow of silence, surrounded by her mothers, her friends, and royal guards in mail with their weapons raised, and every person watching believed they were watching a bride go to pray before her wedding to the prince of Chedi. She was, in fact, keeping an appointment she had made herself.

Rukmini was the daughter of Bhishmaka, who ruled Vidarbha from the city of Kundina, and the sister of Rukmi, who effectively ruled Bhishmaka. She had never laid eyes on Krishna. She had heard him described by the travellers and bards who passed through her father’s court, and that was sufficient. Her brother had other arrangements in mind, and a doting father proved easy to talk round, so the invitations went out for a marriage to Shishupala of the Chedis. The commentarial tradition reads the whole episode from a great height: Rukmini is Lakshmi, taking a body suited to the body her lord has taken, so that the goddess of fortune arrives on earth in step with him. The Bhagavata narrates it from much closer to the ground, as a family problem with a deadline.

What she did about it was write. She sent a brahmin to Dwarka with a message that reads less like a plea than a set of instructions: come before the wedding, and take me from the procession on the morning I go to the goddess’s shrine. Krishna heard it out, took the brahmin’s hand, and laughed. Then he asked which night the marriage was fixed for, learned it was the night after next, and told his charioteer Daruka to bring the chariot round. Shaibya, Sugriva, Meghapushpa and Balahaka were yoked to it. They covered the distance from Anarta to Vidarbha between one evening and the next morning.

She did not know any of this. The night before, counting the hours, she worked herself into the conclusion that he had looked into her and found something not worth the journey. Tears came up and she shut her eyes rather than let them fall, because weeping on that particular morning would have been read by everyone present. Then her left eye began to throb, and her left arm, and her left thigh, which in the reckoning of omens is the good side, and shortly afterwards the brahmin came into the women’s quarters walking like a man with news.

The shrine itself was ordinary and the worship was ordinary. She washed her hands and feet, sipped water, went in to Bhavani, and made her request plainly, greeting the goddess along with her children and asking that Krishna become her husband. Aged brahmin women guided her through the rites. She gave salt and fried cakes and betel and sugarcane, took back a portion as prasada, bowed to her mother, and came out into the light holding her nurse’s hand, rings glittering on her fingers. Ranged around the courtyard were thousands of armed kings who had come to make sure Shishupala got his bride. The text says they dropped their weapons without noticing. Krishna took her up into the chariot with the Garuda banner while every one of them watched, and left at a walking pace, like a lion carrying off his own share from a circle of jackals.

It worked. The kings recovered themselves, put on their armour, chased him down and were routed by the Yadava rear guard, and Jarasandha delivered a philosophical speech to a devastated Shishupala about how nobody stays lucky. Rukmi took it harder. He had sworn in front of every prince present that he would not re-enter Kundina until he had killed Krishna and brought his sister back, and he caught up at the Narmada and lost, comprehensively, one weapon at a time. When he came at Krishna on foot with a sword, Krishna cut the sword apart and raised his own to finish him, and Rukmini threw herself at her husband’s feet with her throat closed and her necklace slipping loose and begged for her brother’s life. She got it. What she got with it was Rukmi tied up and shaved in patches, moustache and hair, and released alive into permanent humiliation. Balarama was disgusted, told Krishna plainly that disfiguring a kinsman amounts to killing him, and then turned to the weeping bride and explained the doctrine of the soul to her at some length. Rukmi kept his oath in the most literal way available. He built a new city, Bhojakata, and lived in it, and never went home.

Years later, in Dwarka, there is a quieter scene. Moonlight comes through the lattice of her chamber, jasmine wreaths hang humming with bees, aloewood smoke leaks out through the openings and the breeze carries in the smell of the parijata tree from the garden. Krishna is stretched on a couch and she is fanning him with a whisk with a jewelled gold handle, and he begins, in the mildest voice, to explain that she made a poor choice: that he is a penniless man who fled to the sea in fear of better kings, that marriages ought to be contracted between equals, and that there is still time for her to pick a proper Kshatriya. She listens. The fan falls out of her hand, her bangles slide down her wrist, and she goes over like a plantain tree in a storm. He is off the couch and holding her before she lands, four-armed for the purpose, wiping her face, telling her it was a joke and he only wanted to hear what she would say. Then she says it, and her reply runs to fifteen verses and gives no ground at all, ending with a cool observation about what most husbands actually are under the skin.

Her power is not weaponry. It is that her choice, once made, is load-bearing: the letter moves an army, and her hands on Krishna’s feet stop a sword already lifted. Because she is Lakshmi, prosperity moves with her attention, and the oldest commentary explains her bow to the brahmin messenger as a deliberate act of enrichment, since when Lakshmi salutes a man he becomes wealthier than anyone. That logic still runs at her temple near Dwarka and at Pandharpur, where she is Rakhumai and receives the pilgrimage alongside her husband.

The limits are just as clear. She could halt the killing and not the humiliation, and the brother she saved spent the rest of his life in a city built out of spite. She could out-argue the lord of the three worlds and still be knocked flat by him for the length of one unkind joke, because the single thing capable of injuring her is his regard, and he knew it well enough to aim there. Nothing in the record suggests she ever forgave the shaving.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Rukmini in Hindu mythology?

Rukmini is the chief queen of Krishna and an incarnation of the goddess Lakshmi. She was the daughter of King Bhishmaka of Vidarbha and is best known for arranging her own elopement with Krishna to escape a marriage her brother had fixed for her. She is worshipped in her own right at Dwarka and, as Rakhumai, at Pandharpur in Maharashtra.

Did Krishna abduct Rukmini or did she elope with him?

Both descriptions appear in the tradition. Rukmini sent Krishna a letter asking him to carry her off from the procession to the temple of Ambika, naming the day and the place, so the plan was hers. The Bhagavata Purana nevertheless classes the resulting union as the rakshasa form of marriage, meaning marriage by capture, which is why her brother Rukmi treated it as a theft and pursued them.

What happened to Rukmini’s brother Rukmi?

Rukmi chased Krishna to the Narmada, was defeated weapon by weapon, and was about to be killed when Rukmini fell at Krishna’s feet and begged for his life. Krishna spared him but tied him up and shaved his head and moustache in patches as a disgrace. Rukmi had vowed never to return to Kundina without his sister, so he founded a new city called Bhojakata and lived there instead.

Why is Rukmini worshipped as a goddess?

Rukmini is understood as Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and fortune, taking a human body to accompany Krishna during his time on earth. That identification is stated outright in the Bhagavata Purana at her wedding in Dwarka. It is the basis for her temple worship, including the Rukmini Devi Temple outside Dwarka, where water is the offering given back to pilgrims.

What is the story of Krishna and Rukmini’s quarrel?

In Dwarka, Krishna teased Rukmini by telling her she had married beneath herself and should choose a proper king instead. She took him seriously, fainted, and he caught her and admitted he had only wanted to hear her answer. Her reply, one of the longest speeches given to any of Krishna’s queens, dismantles his argument point by point.

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