ORIENTAL SERIES.

378
YUDHI-SHTHIRA.
YTJDHI-SHTHrRA. The eldest of the five Parcel princes,
mythologicaUy the son of Dharma, the god of justice. With
the Hindus he is the favourite one of the five brothers, and
is represented as a man of calm, passionless judgment, strict
veracity, unswerving rectitude, and rigid justice. He was renowned
as a ruler and director, but not as a warrior. Educated
at the court of his uncle, Dhnta-rash^ra, he received from the
family preceptor, Drona, a military training, and was taught the
use of the spear. When the time came for naming the Yuva-raja
or heir-apparent to the realm of Hastina-pura, the Maha-raja
Dhrita-rashfra selected Yudhi-shtfhira in preference to his own
eldest son, Dur-yodhana. A long-standing jealousy between
the PaTi^ava and Kaurava princes then broke forth openly.
Dur-yodhana expostulated with his father, and the end was that
the PaTniavas went in honourable banishment to the city of
Varanavata, The jealousy of Dur-yodhana pursued them, and his
emissaries laid a plot for burning the brothers in their dwelling-
house. Yudhi-shbdra ?
s sagacity discovered the plot and Bhima
frustrated it. The bodies of a Bhil woman and her five sons
were found in the ruins of the burnt house, and it was believed
for a time that the Paranavas and their mother had perished.
When Draxipadl had been won at the swayam-vara, Yudhi-
shtfhira, the eldest of the five brothers, was requested by his
juniors to make her his wife, but he desired that she should
become the wife of Arjuna, by whose prowess she had been won.
Through the words of their mother, Kunti, and the decision of
the sage Vyasa, the princess became the common wife of the five
brothers. An arrangement was made that Draupadi should
dwell in turn with the five brothers, passing two days in the
separate house of each, and that under pain of exile for twelve
years no one of the brothers but the master of the house should
enter while Draupadi was staying in it. The arms of the
family were kept in the house of Yudhi-shfliira, and an alarm
of robbery being raised, Arjuna rushed there to procure hia
weapons while Draupadi was present. He thus incurred the
pain of exile, and departed, though Yudhi-shtfhira endeavoured
to dissuade him by arguing that the elder brother of a fatherless
family stood towards his juniors in the position of a father.
After the return of the Pawdavas from exile and their establish-
uient at Indra-prastha, the rule of Yudhi-ahfliira is described as