her prayers separately!

Shortly after this fivefold marriage,--which assured the Pandavs a
royal ally,--Bhishma persuaded the blind rajah--who had meantime
discovered his nephews were not dead--to give them one half of his
realm. Taking up their abode there, the Pandavs built the city of
Indraprastha (Delhi) on the banks of the Jumna, before they decided
that the eldest among them (Yudhishthira) should be king, the others
humbly serving as his escort wherever he went.

One day this eldest Pandav went to visit the eldest Kuru, a proficient
gambler, with whom he played until he had lost realm, brothers, wife,
and freedom! But, when the victor undertook to take forcible
possession of the fair Draupadi, and publicly stripped her of her
garments, the gods, in pity, supplied her with one layer of vesture
after another, so that the brutal Kuru was not able to shame her as he
wished. Furious to see the treatment their common wife was undergoing
at the victor's hands, the five Pandavs made grim threats, and raised
such a protest that the blind uncle, interfering, sent them off to the
forest with their wife for twelve years. He also decreed that, during
the thirteenth, all must serve in some menial capacity, with the
proviso that, if discovered by their cousins, they should never regain
their realm.

"'Tis no fault of thine, fair princess! fallen to this servile state,
Wife and son rule not their actions, others rule their hapless fate!
Thy Yudhishthir sold his birthright, sold thee at the impious play,
And the wife falls with the husband, and her duty--to obey!"

During the twelve years which the Pandavs spent in the forest, with
the beautiful and faithful Draupadi (who was once carried away by a
demon but rescued by one of her spouses), they met with sundry
adventures. Not only did they clear the jungle, rescue from cannibals
the jealous cousins who came to humiliate them, and perform other
astounding feats, but they were entertained by tales told by Vyasa,
among which are a quaint account of the Deluge, of the descent of the
Ganges, a recitation of the Ramayana, and the romance of Nala and of
Savitri, of which brief sketches are given at the end of this article.
All this material is contained in the "Forest Book," the third and
longest parvan of the Mahabharata, wherein we also find a curious
account of Arjuna's voluntary exile because he entered into Draupadi's
presence when one of his brothers was with her! To a