Uttarā
character from Indian epic Mahabharata
Uttarā (Sanskrit: उत्तरा, romanized: Uttarā) is a character in the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata. She was the princess of Matsya, and the daughter of King Virata and Queen Sudeshna, at whose court the Pandavas—the central figures of the epic—spent a year in concealment during their exile. During this period, she learned music and dance from Arjuna, the third Pandava, and later married his son, Abhimanyu. Uttarā was widowed at a young age during the Kurukshetra War. Following the Pandavas' victory in the war, she and her unborn son were attacked by Ashvatthama, and were saved by the divine intervention of Krishna. Her son Parikshit saved the Kuru lineage from extinction, and became a well-known monarch celebrated in both the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana.
Etymology
The Sanskrit name Uttarā is derived from the word Uttara by adding a feminine termination ā. It can have multiple meanings; according to British Indologist Monier Williams, in this context, it means 'upper,' 'higher,' 'superior,' or 'excellent'. The word is also used to denote the 'North direction', as well as 'an answer'. The male form of the name also appears in the Mahabharata as the name of her elder brother.
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This entry incorporates text from “Uttarā” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.