I discorsi di Mandodarī e Draupadī: locuzioni retoriche a confronto
Abstract
In the Indian epic, oratory is held in high regard and is a characteristic of prominent male characters. The present paper focuses on Draupadī and Mandodarī who share the qualities of loyalty and devotion to their spouses (pativratā), but differ in that one is bound to a conquering hero, the other to an antihero. Both of them are the protagonists of an episode of intense narrative pathos, when they exhort and/or admonish their respective spouses to act or for not having acted in a specific manner (MBh 3.28-33; R [G] 6.33; R [B] 6.99). A few lines from the Rāmāyaṇa depicting Mandodarī scolding the deceased Rāvaṇa, expunged from the Baroda edition but partly preserved in Gorresio, have proved useful for comparisons with Draupadī’s speech to Yudhiṣṭhira from the third book of the Mahābhārata. To the best of my knowledge, no attempt has been made to perform an exhaustive comparison of the two protagonists’ dialectics or even these selected passages. Therefore, the objective of the present research is to analyse some of the rhetorical-stylistic strategies employed in the literary representation of Mandodarī and Draupadī.
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