Arjuna’s years of travel following a self-imposed exile – triggered when he interrupted Yudhishthira and Draupadi’s privacy, breaking an agreed rule among the Pandava brothers regarding their shared wife – brought him into contact with several women across different kingdoms and realms, each marriage adding to the complicated family tree that would eventually populate the war’s casualty lists. Ulupi, a princess of the Nagas, was among the most unusual of these encounters.
Pulled beneath the water
While Arjuna bathed in the Ganga during his travels, Ulupi – who had seen him and been immediately drawn to him – pulled him down into the river and into the underwater realm of the Nagas, where she confessed her feelings and asked him directly to become her husband, at least for a single night. Arjuna, bound by his own vow of celibacy during this specific stretch of his exile, initially resisted on principle.
Ulupi’s counter-argument reframed the request as an act of dharma rather than a violation of his vow: refusing to relieve another person’s genuine suffering and desire, she argued, when one had the power to do so without lasting harm, was itself its own kind of failure of righteous conduct – a request framed less as seduction and more as an appeal to Arjuna’s own principle of protecting those who came to him for help. Persuaded, Arjuna spent the night with her, and their union produced a son, Iravan.
A son raised apart, called in when needed
Iravan grew up in the Naga realm with his mother rather than at the Pandava court, largely disconnected from the political life of Hastinapura until the Kurukshetra war approached and Arjuna, needing every possible ally, sought him out. Iravan agreed to fight for the Pandavas, and his arrival introduces one of the war’s more unusual subplots: before entering battle, he wished to marry, understanding he might not survive, and no princess of standing was willing to become a widow so quickly and so certainly.
Krishna’s solution as Mohini
Krishna resolved the impasse by taking his Mohini form – the same feminine incarnation used during the churning of the ocean – and marrying Iravan himself for one night, ensuring the young warrior did not go into battle and likely death unmarried and unmourned in the specific ritual sense his culture required. Iravan died on the war’s eighth day, killed by the rakshasa Alambusha in disguise, and Krishna as Mohini is said to have genuinely mourned him afterward – a detail later traditions, particularly in Tamil Nadu, developed into the still-observed festival of Koovagam, where transgender and gender-nonconforming devotees ritually marry and mourn Iravan each year in his memory.
A thread easy to miss, hard to forget once seen
Ulupi herself reappears briefly after the war, credited in some tellings with reviving Arjuna after a later mishap using a Naga gem’s power – a small act of continued devotion from a wife married during a single night by a river, whose son’s death and unusual wedding would go on to shape a living devotional tradition thousands of years later.