Gandhari (character)

Alternate meanings: see Gandhari

Gāndhārī is a character in the India epic, the Mahabharata. She is a princess of Gandhara, a region spanning northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, from which her name is derived. In the epic, she undergoes an arranged royal marriage to the blind eldest prince Dhritarashtra, of the Kuru kingdom, at its capital of Hastinapura. When she finds her husband is blind, she decides to share his lot by blindfolding herself for the rest of her life. She bears numerous sons, who are known as the Kaurava, who form one of the principal parties of the story. She takes off her blindfold once only, to see her eldest son, Duryodhana. She ends her life with her husband and her sister-in-law Kunti in the Himalayas, where they die in a forest fire.

She is accompanied on her journey to the Kuru kingdom by her brother Sakuni, who becomes a nobleman of the court of Hastinapura.