Assessment and Remembrance
Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote a collection of poems titled "Pancha Kanya" with themes of episodes from mythology of the panchakanya. The tales of the panchakanya remain popular motifs in the Mahari dance tradition of Odisha.
The panchakanya are regarded by one view as ideal women. George M. Williams remarks, "They are not perfect but they fulfil their dharma (duty) as mothers, sisters, wives and occasionally leaders in their own right." Another view considers them exemplary chaste women or mahasatis ("great chaste women") as per the Mahari dance tradition, and worthy as an ideal for "displaying some outstanding quality".
Another view does not regard the panchakanya as ideal women who should be emulated. Bhattacharya, author of Panch-Kanya: The Five Virgins of Indian Epics contrasts the panchakanya with the five satis enlisted in another traditional prayer: Sati, Sita, Savitri, Damayanti and Arundhati. He rhetorically asks, "Are then Ahalya, Draupadi, Kunti, Tara, and Mandodari not chaste wives because each has 'known' a man, or more than one, other than her husband?"
Women who suffered most in their lives and who had followed the dictate and regulations prescribed in the scriptures for women were considered. They, as prescribed in the Manu Smirti, the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, were considered as the Five ideal Woman, all married.
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