"Shaibya With Her Dead Child" from Wikimedia Commons
Shaibya, like most women in the Indian Epics I've read so far, has a hard life. She and her husband are in love and have a wonderful existence until Harischandra dares to help some of the fairy-humans he found, and then for the entire rest of the story right up until the end, Bishwamitra is the worst. Just the worst. He ousts Harischandra from his throne and takes over, and demands 1000 gold pieces to be paid to him, but won't let Harischandra use his own money for it.
Shaibya looks at this as an opportunity to show just how much she loves her husband, and promptly sells herself to be a slave. She takes her son, and Harischandra leaves to go be a slave himself.
Continuing to be awful, Bishwamitra refuses to take the money from Harischandra because of the caste system.
To add to their sorrows, Shaibya's son apparently dies, and she has no money for cremation. She and Harischandra are reunited, and it is revealed that all of their sorrows have been a test for Harischandra to prove that he's... Sad enough? Willing to kill himself if his son dies? I don't really get it.
The main point that I got from this story is that the ideal wife has super, super pure love for her husband, and forgives him always. Shaibya's defining characteristic here is her love for her husband and her son. I think the reason I find Draupadi so interesting as a character is that she's much more complex than a lot of the 'ideal' women I've been reading about. Although Savitri was also pretty cool. They're all good, but they definitely all have a very common theme between them.
Hey Claire! So this was supposed to be one of the stories that I read as well and I sort of skipped it. I"m sort of glad I did too. I think you're very right when it comes to a theme for all of these stories. It's not just about love, but it's a model for the best wife ever apparently. I was really excited at first to read these, but after getting the gist of the stories I was sort of disappointed.
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