Pulled Under While Bathing
During the twelve-year forest exile, Arjuna undertook a separate pilgrimage of his own, partly to fulfil a vow after an earlier dispute with his brothers over Draupadi's shared time between them. While bathing in the Ganga, he was pulled underwater by Ulupi, a naga princess and daughter of Kauravya, king of the nagas, who had fallen for him at first sight and taken this direct method of bringing him to her father's underwater kingdom.
Ulupi proposed marriage immediately, and when Arjuna protested that he was bound to a vow of celibacy during this stage of his pilgrimage, she countered with an argument the text presents as genuinely persuasive: that his vow concerned Draupadi specifically, protecting the rotation arrangement between the five brothers, and did not extend to relationships formed elsewhere during his travels, and that refusing a woman who had approached him in genuine distress would itself be a violation of dharma toward someone seeking refuge.
A Marriage That Left Little Trace
Arjuna married Ulupi and spent one night in the naga kingdom before continuing his pilgrimage the next morning, a pattern the Mahabharata repeats across several of his exile-period marriages, treating them as genuine unions rather than casual encounters while still keeping each relatively brief within the epic's larger narrative flow.
From this marriage was born Iravan, a son raised in his mother's naga kingdom rather than at Hastinapura, who would later play his own distinct role at Kurukshetra, offering himself in sacrifice before the war, an episode covered in detail elsewhere in this series.
Ulupi herself reappears at a critical moment much later in the epic: after Arjuna is killed in battle by his own son Babruvahana, an episode also covered elsewhere in this series, it is Ulupi who possesses the Sanjivani gem, or in some tellings arranges for its use, capable of restoring the dead to life, and who ensures Arjuna is revived, closing a narrative thread that had otherwise gone quiet for most of the epic's middle books.
Why Ulupi's Story Frames Arjuna's Exile Marriages
Ulupi's marriage is the first of three unions Arjuna forms during this period of travel, followed by Chitrangada and eventually Subhadra, and together they establish a pattern the epic uses deliberately: each marriage produces a son with a distinct destiny tied to a different region and culture, expanding the Pandava family's reach and alliances well beyond Hastinapura's immediate politics.
Ulupi's role as the one who returns to save Arjuna's life decades later also marks her as more than a narrative footnote. Unlike several of the epic's exile marriages that fade from the story after producing an heir, Ulupi remains structurally important to the plot at its most consequential moment, making her, alongside Draupadi, one of the relatively few women in the epic whose actions directly and decisively determine whether a central hero lives or dies.
What People Ask Most
Are nagas in this story literal snakes or a human-like people?+
The nagas in the Mahabharata are generally depicted as a semi-divine, human-like people who live in an underwater or subterranean kingdom and can also take serpent form, rather than as ordinary snakes.
Did Ulupi and Arjuna ever live together after this initial meeting?+
The text does not describe an extended shared life; Ulupi remained in the naga kingdom raising Iravan, and their relationship is depicted through occasional, significant reappearances rather than ongoing domestic life together.
Is the Sanjivani gem the same as the Sanjivani herb from the Ramayana?+
No, they are separate devices from different texts serving a similar life-restoring function; the Ramayana's Sanjivani is a herb Hanuman retrieves from a mountain, while Ulupi's is a gem specific to the naga tradition in the Mahabharata.
About the author
Anjali Mehta · Editor, M.A. Religious Studies
Anjali is the managing editor for Vandnaa and oversees the festival and vrat coverage. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies and reviews every published article for accuracy, accessibility, and tradition-fidelity.
Meet the Vandnaa editorial team →