Kuśanābha's Daughters Marry Brahmadatta

The marriage of Kuśanábha’s hundred daughters to Brahmadatta turns a royal alliance into a decisive reversal: as each daughter’s hand is placed in the king’s, their deformity and cares vanish. The episode links a carefully arranged marriage and its rites to the restoration of the brides, while also giving a personal history to the groom who receives them.

Brahmadatta and his origins

Brahmadatta is introduced as the son granted to Somada after she asks Chuli for a child. Somada says that she lives the life of an unmarried maiden and appeals to the sage as a suppliant; Chuli hears her prayer favorably and gives her a son. The account identifies Brahmadatta as Chuli’s spiritual child and says that his mother gives him his name. His place in the marriage is therefore framed not only by his royal standing but by this earlier relationship of prayer, favor, and spiritual parentage.

Brahmadatta rules from Kampili, where he maintains his state as a rich and powerful king. The comparison to Indra presents his prosperity and city in elevated terms, making him a suitably eminent match for the daughters of Kuśanábha. The description also establishes that the marriage joins two royal houses: the intended union is not incidental, but a match deliberately made by a father who seeks a husband for all one hundred daughters.

Kuśanábha’s arrangement

Kuśanábha plans that Brahmadatta should become the husband of his hundred daughters. The account stresses the daughters’ obedience to their father’s call: they come to the marriage he has arranged, and each maiden gives her hand to the king. Their collective presence gives the ceremony an unusual scale, but the narrative marks its progress individually, bride by bride, rather than treating the hundred as an indistinguishable group.

The arrangement also connects this wedding to the daughters’ altered condition. Their deformity and cares disappear as the marriage takes place. The change is attached to the moment of union, specifically the placing of each daughter’s hand in Brahmadatta’s palm. Rather than describing a gradual recovery, the episode makes the restoration coincide with the formal act that joins bride and groom. The repeated gesture gives the scene its structure: each daughter’s hand is received, and the damage that had marked the group is removed.

The ceremony and restoration

The wedding rites are completed before the account turns to the couple’s departure. Their order matters: the hand-taking is followed by the removal of deformity and cares, and the completed ceremonies are followed by honor shown to the bridegroom and his brides. The passage thus presents restoration within a public, formal marriage, not as an event separate from the union or its ritual completion.

The outcome is collective but not abstract. Brahmadatta takes the hand of every maiden, and the change comes with each hand placed in his. The narrative’s emphasis on this repeated action makes the daughters’ restoration the central consequence of the wedding. It does not separately describe individual responses or distinguish one bride from another; instead, all one hundred share the same outcome through the same ceremonial gesture.

Departure and significance

When the rites are complete, the bridegroom and his brides are sent away with the highest marks of honor. This closing movement carries the marriage beyond the exchange of hands: Kuśanábha’s plan has been fulfilled, the ceremonies have concluded, and the newly joined party departs under formal recognition. The account does not specify a destination for that departure, so its emphasis remains on the honor accompanying the send-off rather than on a further episode in the couple’s life.

The wedding’s distinctive narrative work lies in the close succession of arrangement, ritual union, and bodily change. Brahmadatta’s royal prosperity makes him an eminent husband; Kuśanábha’s plan brings all one hundred daughters into the match; and the ceremony marks the disappearance of their deformity and cares. The passage consequently makes marriage both a dynastic act and the hinge of a shared reversal, ending not with the planning of the match but with its completion and an honored departure.