01Pritha and the mantra
She was born Pritha, daughter of the Yadava chief Shura and sister of Vasudeva, and her father gave her as a child to his childless cousin Kuntibhoja; so she is Kunti. In Kuntibhoja’s house she served the hot-tempered rishi Durvasa so well that he gave her a mantra to call any deva to her. Still a girl, she tried it on the rising sun. Surya came, and she bore a son with earrings and armour grown into his body. In fear of what people would say, she laid him in a basket and set it on the river Ashva, and it floated down to the Ganga and the charioteer Adhiratha.
02Mother of the Pandavas
When Pandu was cursed and longed for sons, she told him of the mantra, and at his word bore Yudhishthira, Bhima and Arjuna. She gave the mantra once to Madri and raised Madri’s twins as her own. Widowed, she brought five boys to Hastinapura, survived the house of lac, and lived in hiding at Ekachakra, where she sent Bhima to the rakshasa Baka so that the brahmin family sheltering them would not lose a son. When her sons came home calling out that they had won alms, she said without looking, share it among you, and so Draupadi became the wife of all five.
03The message and the riverbank
Through the thirteen years of exile she stayed in Vidura’s house. When Krishna came to Hastinapura she gave him a message for her sons that is a kshatriya mother’s whole creed: tell Arjuna and Bhima that the hour for which a kshatriya woman bears sons has come. Then she went alone to the bank of the Ganga, where Karna stood at his prayers to the sun, and told him he was her son. He would not leave Duryodhana, but he promised her that she would still have five sons, with Arjuna or with Karna.
04To the forest with Gandhari
After the war, when the women were offering water to the dead, Kunti told her sons to offer it to Karna too, for he was their eldest brother. Yudhishthira’s grief was terrible. Fifteen years later, when Dhritarashtra and Gandhari left for the forest, Kunti went with them, though her sons begged her to stay and enjoy the kingdom they had won. She had urged them to war, she said, so that they would have what was theirs, not for her own comfort. In the forest she served the old king and queen, saw Karna again on the night Vyasa raised the dead, and died with them in the fire.
Famous verses
यदर्थं क्षत्रिया सूते तस्य कालोऽयमागतः ।
The hour has come for which a kshatriya woman bears a son.Mahabharata 5.135.9cd (BORI CE), Kunti’s message to her sons