Mahabharata · The Exile Begins: from the Copper Vessel to the Debate at Dvaitavana

About 120 minutes · in 4 sittings

Five brothers walk out of a gambling hall into thirteen years of exile, and a whole city walks after them, so that on the first night, under a banyan on the bank of the Ganga, Yudhishthira has to ask himself how he is going to feed the Brahmins who refuse to turn back. That question opens this chapter, and the answer to it is a copper vessel given by the sun, which does not empty until Draupadi has eaten. Behind them in Hastinapura the blind king banishes Vidura and calls him back, Vyasa comes with a warning and goes, and Maitreya’s curse settles on Duryodhana’s thigh. In the forest Bhima kills Kirmira, Krishna arrives to hear Draupadi weep and tells her where he was while the dice were falling: fighting a city that flew. Then the lake at Dvaitavana, and the evening argument that is one of the longest in the Mahabharata, in which Draupadi asks her husband where his anger is and Yudhishthira answers that forgiveness is the axle the world turns on.

Out through the Vardhamana gate: a city that follows, the one thing Yudhishthira asks of it, and the first night under the banyan on the Ganga

Janamejaya wanted to know how twelve years are lived. The question he put to Vaishampayana was long because it had many parts, and every part was a wound. Cheated at dice by Dhritarashtra’s sons and their counselors, goaded by wicked men who had planted a lasting enmity on purpose, spoken to in language that cruel: what did the Kuru princes do next, these ancestors of mine, the sons of Pritha? Men with Indra’s strength, stripped of their wealth and thrown all at once into misery, how did they pass their days in the forest? Who walked out after them? How did they carry themselves, what did they eat, where did they sleep? And the princess, the best of her sex, faithful to her husbands, righteous, who always spoke the truth and deserved none of it, how did she bear that forest? Tell me all of it, the king said, in detail. My curiosity is very great. It is the curiosity of a man whose whole existence descends from those twelve years, and Vaishampayana answered it by beginning at the gate.

They went out by the Vardhamana gate of Hastinapura, the five brothers with their weapons and Draupadi with them, and they turned north. Indrasena and the other servants, fourteen in all with their wives, followed on fast chariots. That was the entire procession of a family that had ruled from Indraprastha a few weeks before. Then the city found out. Grief went through Hastinapura the way news does, and the citizens turned on the men they held responsible: Bhishma, Vidura, Drona, and Kripa the Gautama, the elders who had sat in the hall and let it happen. They gathered, and because there is a freedom in despair, they said aloud what people in a capital ordinarily whisper. Our families, our homes, ourselves, all of it is lost, they said, now that Duryodhana wants this kingdom with Shakuni and Karna and Duhshasana behind him. Where a sinner like that, propped up by sinners like those, reaches for the throne, our lineages and our customs and our virtue and our prosperity are doomed together, and where those are gone, what happiness is left? He hates his elders. He has abandoned decent conduct. He quarrels with his own blood. He is greedy, vain, mean, and cruel by nature, and the whole earth is finished the day he rules it. So let us go where the sons of Pandu are going, the merciful ones, the high-minded ones, who have mastered their passions and beaten their enemies and kept their modesty and their good name, and who are devoted to what is right.

And they went. A crowd of townspeople walked out of the city after the exiles, caught up with them on the road, and stood before the sons of Kunti and Madri with their hands joined. Blessings on you, they said. Where will you go and leave us in this grief? Wherever you go, we will follow. We were shattered to learn that relentless enemies beat you by deceit. You must not abandon us, your loving subjects, your devoted friends, people who have only ever wanted your welfare and worked to please you. We do not wish to be swallowed in the certain ruin of living under the Kuru king. Then, because they were the citizens of a learned city and they had rehearsed their case, they made an argument. Listen, bulls among men, to what comes of keeping good company and bad. Cloth, water, earth, and sesame seed take the scent of the flowers they lie with; qualities are the product of association. Company with fools breeds a delusion that tangles the mind, and daily company with the good and wise leads to the practice of virtue. Therefore those who want freedom should keep company with the wise, the old, the honest, the pure in conduct, the ascetic; they should wait upon those whose three possessions, learning, birth, and deeds, are all pure, since such company is worth more than the scriptures themselves. We have no religious merit of our own, but we shall earn it by association with the righteous, just as we would earn sin by serving the sinful. The sight and touch of dishonest men, talk with them, association with them, diminish virtue, and people who are bound to such men never attain purity of mind. Company with the base impairs the understanding, company with the indifferent makes it indifferent, and communion with the good raises it. Every quality that the world calls a source of merit, prosperity, and pleasure, that people honor, that the Vedas praise, that the well-conducted approve, exists in you, separately and together. That is why we want to live among you.

Yudhishthira did not argue with them. He accepted the compliment as an act of love rather than a statement of fact, and then he asked for the one thing that mattered to him more than an escort. We are blessed, he said, that the people, with the Brahmins at their head, moved by affection and compassion, credit us with merits we do not have. But my brothers and I ask one thing of you all, and out of affection and pity for us you must not do otherwise. Our grandfather Bhishma, the king, Vidura, my mother, and most of those who wish us well are in Hastinapura. If you want our welfare, then cherish them, all of you together, because they are overwhelmed with sorrow. You have come a long way in your grief at our going. Go back, and let your hearts be tender toward the relatives I am entrusting to you as pledges. Of everything you could do, this is the one act my heart is set on; by doing it you will give me the greatest satisfaction and pay me the greatest respect. The crowd wailed at that, one long cry of Alas, O king, and then, remembering everything he was, they did what he asked. They turned around. They took their leave of the Pandavas and went back toward the city without wanting to, which is the hardest way to walk.

When the last of them had gone the brothers climbed back into their chariots and drove on until they came to the great banyan called Pramana on the bank of the Ganga. It was near the end of the day. They touched the sacred water and purified themselves, and there under the tree they passed the night, and their supper was the river. Water only. Some Brahmins had followed them that far out of affection, of both kinds, those who keep the sacrificial fire and those who do not, with their disciples and kinsmen, and they stayed the night too. Ringed by those reciters of the Veda, the king shone among them, a beaten man made luminous by the company he kept. The Brahmins lit their fires. The evening was beautiful and terrible at the same time, the first of the exile, and they filled it with the chanting of the Vedas and with quiet talk, and in voices sweet as swans they spent the whole night comforting the best of the Kurus. It was the only thing they had to give him, and it was enough to get him to morning.

A key to reading this (names and places): The Vardhamana gate is one of the gates of Hastinapura. “Gautama” here is Kripa, the son of Sharadvat of the Gautama line, who taught the princes before Drona. “The son of Subala” is Shakuni. Indrasena is Yudhishthira’s charioteer and trusted servant, who will still be with the family in the year of hiding. The banyan called Pramana stands on the Ganga; Vyasa says only that the first night was spent there on water. The two kinds of Brahmins are those who maintain a daily sacrificial fire and those who do not.

The gist: The Vana Parva opens on Janamejaya’s question, how were the twelve years lived, and Vaishampayana answers from the first hour: the brothers leave by the Vardhamana gate with Draupadi, their weapons, and fourteen servants, and the city walks out after them, cursing Duryodhana and reciting the law of good company. Yudhishthira asks them for one thing only, to go home and look after the elders he is leaving behind, and they obey him weeping. The first night of exile is spent under the banyan Pramana on the Ganga, with river water for supper and the Veda chanted over the king until dawn.

“How am I to feed them?”: Shaunaka’s teaching to a weeping king on the root of grief, the sickness of wealth, and the eightfold path

The night passed and the light came, and with the light came the problem. The Brahmins who lived by begging stood in front of the Pandavas as the brothers prepared to go into the forest, and they did not look like men who intended to say goodbye. Yudhishthira tried to send them home gently. We have been robbed of our prosperity and our kingdom, he told them, robbed of everything, and we are about to go into the deep woods in sorrow, to live on fruit and roots and whatever we can hunt. The forest is full of dangers; it crawls with snakes and beasts of prey. I think you will certainly suffer great privation and misery there. The suffering of Brahmins can overpower even the gods; that it would overwhelm me is beyond doubt. So go back, Brahmins, wherever you like. They answered that their road was the road he was taking. You must not forsake us, king; we are your devoted admirers, and we practice the true religion. The gods themselves have compassion on their worshipers, and most of all on Brahmins of regulated lives. He tried again, and this time he told them the truth about his brothers. I too am devoted to the Brahmins, he said, but this destitution that has overtaken me has left me confused. These brothers of mine, who would have to gather the fruit and the roots and bring in the deer, are stunned with grief over their own afflictions and over Draupadi’s distress and the loss of the kingdom. In such a state I cannot put them to painful tasks. The Brahmins would not be put off. Let no worry about our upkeep find a place in your heart, they said. We will provide our own food and follow you; by meditation and prayer we will work for your welfare, and by pleasant conversation we will keep you entertained and be cheered ourselves. Then Yudhishthira said the thing that broke him. No doubt it must be as you say, since I am always glad of your company. But my fallen condition makes me see myself as an object of reproach. How shall I look at all of you, who do not deserve hardship, living painfully out of love for me on food you have to labor for yourselves? Shame on the wicked sons of Dhritarashtra. He said it and he wept, and the king sat down on the ground.

A Brahmin named Shaunaka came forward then, a man learned in the knowledge of the self and skilled in the Sankhya way of yoga, and he did the only useful thing one can do for a man sitting on the ground, which is to talk to him as though he were still standing. Causes of grief by the thousand and causes of fear by the hundred fall on the ignorant every day, he said, and they do not fall on the wise. Surely a sensible man like you never lets himself be deluded by acts that go against true knowledge, that are full of every kind of evil, and that destroy salvation. In you, king, dwells that understanding with its eight attributes which comes from the study of the Vedas and the scriptures and which is said to guard against all evils. Men like you are never stupefied when poverty comes, or when calamity falls on their friends, or by any distress of the body or the mind. Listen: I will tell you the verses that the illustrious Janaka once chanted on the subject of governing the self. This world is afflicted with two kinds of suffering, the body’s and the mind’s, and I will set out the means of allaying both, briefly and in detail. Four things cause the body’s suffering: disease, contact with what is painful, toil, and the lack of what one desires. Disease is treated with medicine; the mind’s ailments are cured by seeking to forget them in meditation. That is why sensible physicians first soothe the mind of a patient with agreeable talk and the offer of what he wants. A hot iron bar thrust into a jar heats the water in it, and in the same way grief in the mind brings agony to the body. And as water quenches fire, so true knowledge quiets the mind’s disturbance, and when the mind finds ease the body finds it too.

Then Shaunaka went to the root, and the root, he said, is affection. It seems to me that affection is the source of all mental sorrow, he told the king. Affection makes every creature miserable and brings on every kind of woe; it is the root of all misery and all fear, of joy and grief, of every kind of pain. From affection spring all our purposes, and from affection springs the love of worldly goods, and both are sources of evil, though the first is worse than the second. A little fire thrust into the hollow of a tree burns the tree down to its roots, and a little affection destroys both virtue and profit. A man has not renounced the world merely by withdrawing from its possessions; the one who lives in contact with the world and sees its faults, that man has truly renounced it. Freed from every evil passion, depending on nothing, such a one has left the world behind. So no one should fix his affection on friends or on the wealth he has earned, and affection for one’s own person should be extinguished by knowledge. Like the lotus leaf that water never wets, the souls of men who can tell the passing from the everlasting, who pursue the eternal, who know the scriptures and are purified by knowledge, are never moved by affection. The man under affection’s sway is tortured by desire, and from the desire in his heart his thirst for possessions grows. That thirst is sinful; it is the source of every anxiety; it leans toward unrighteous acts. Happiness belongs to those who can give up this thirst, which the wicked can never give up, which does not decay when the body decays, and which is a fatal disease. It has no beginning and no end. Dwelling in the heart, it destroys creatures like a fire without a body, and as a bundle of wood is consumed by the fire it feeds, a man of impure soul is destroyed by the greed born in his own heart.

From there Shaunaka moved to money, and the passage is one of the epic’s plainest inventories of what wealth costs the people who hold it. As living creatures always dread death, he said, men of wealth are in constant fear of the king and the thief, of water and fire, and even of their own relatives. A morsel of meat in the air is taken by birds, on the ground by beasts, in water by fish; the rich man is exposed to danger wherever he is. To many, the wealth they own is their bane, and whoever sees happiness in wealth and weds himself to it does not know true happiness. That is why gaining wealth is thought to increase covetousness and folly; wealth is the root of stinginess and boasting, pride and fear and anxiety, and these are the miseries the wise see in riches. Men undergo endless trouble getting wealth and keeping it; spending it is full of grief; sometimes life itself is lost for it; giving it up is misery, and even those whom one’s wealth has nourished become enemies for the sake of that wealth. If possessing it is that full of misery, one should not mind losing it. Only the ignorant are discontented; the wise are always content. The thirst for wealth can never be satisfied. Contentment is the highest happiness, and so the wise regard contentment as the highest object to pursue. Knowing how unstable youth and beauty are, life and hoarded treasure, prosperity and the company of those one loves, the wise never covet them. So one should refrain from acquiring wealth, bearing the pain that comes with the refusal; no rich man is free of trouble, and that is why the virtuous applaud those who are free of the desire for it. And as for those who pursue wealth for the purposes of virtue, it is better for them to refrain altogether, for it is better not to touch mud at all than to wash it off after being smeared with it. Yudhishthira, it is not right for you to covet anything. If you want virtue, free yourself from the desire for worldly possessions.

The king answered from the ground, and his answer is the householder’s whole creed. Brahmin, this desire of mine for wealth is not for enjoying it when I have it, he said. I want it only to support the Brahmins, and I am not moved by greed. What is the point of a man like me living a domestic life if he cannot cherish and support those who follow him? Every creature is seen dividing the food it gets among those who depend on it; in the same way a householder should give a share of his food to the yatis and the brahmacharins who have given up cooking for themselves. The houses of good men are never without four things: grass for a seat, space to rest, water to wash and to drink, and sweet words. To the weary a bed, to the man tired of standing a seat, to the thirsty water, to the hungry food, these must always be given. A guest is owed pleasant looks, a cheerful heart, and sweet words; the host should rise and go toward him, offer him a seat, and honor him properly. That is the eternal morality. Those who do not perform the agnihotra, who do not tend the bulls, who do not cherish their kinsmen and guests and friends and sons and wives and servants, are consumed by the sin of that neglect. No one should cook food for himself alone, and no one should kill an animal without dedicating it to the gods, the ancestors, and guests, or eat what has not been so dedicated. By scattering food on the earth morning and evening for dogs and Chandalas and birds a man performs the sacrifice to the Vishvedevas. He who eats the vighasa eats ambrosia: what remains of a sacrifice after the gods and the ancestors have been served is ambrosia, and what remains after the guest has eaten is called vighasa and is ambrosia too. Feeding a guest is itself a sacrifice, and its five dakshinas are the host’s pleasant looks, his attention, his sweet words, the respect of walking a few steps after the guest, and the food and drink. Whoever gives food without stint to a tired traveler he has never seen before earns great merit, and a householder who lives by these practices earns merit that is called very great. What is your opinion of this, Brahmin?

Shaunaka’s opinion began with a sigh at the world. It is full of contradictions, he said; what shames the good gratifies the wicked. Driven by ignorance and passion, slaves of their senses, even fools perform many acts of apparent merit to feed their appetites in the next life, and with their eyes open they are led astray by seducing senses, like a charioteer who has lost his wits behind restive, vicious horses. Then he traced the mechanism, step by step, of how a man is caught. When any of the six senses finds its object, the desire to enjoy that object rises in the heart; when the heart moves to enjoy it, a wish is formed, and the wish gives birth to a resolve; and at last, like an insect drawn into a flame by its love of light, the man falls into the fire of temptation, pierced by the arrows of pleasure that desire shoots, desire being the seed of the resolve. From then on, blinded by the sensual pleasure he chases without limit, sunk in the dark ignorance he mistakes for happiness, he does not know himself. Like a wheel that never stops turning, every creature, out of ignorance and deed and desire, falls into state after state in this world, wanders from one birth to another, and ranges the whole circle of existence from Brahma down to the tip of a blade of grass, now in water, now on land, now in the air. That is the career of those without knowledge. Now hear the course of the wise, who are intent on virtue that profits and who want release. The Vedas enjoin action, and they enjoin the renunciation of interest in action; so act, and renounce self-regard. Sacrifice, study, giving, austerity, truth in speech and in deed, forgiveness, restraint of the senses, and renunciation of desire: these eight have been declared the duties that make up the true path. The first four open the way to the world of the ancestors and should be practiced without self-regard; the last four the pious observe always, to reach the heaven of the gods; and the pure in spirit follow all eight. Those who would conquer the world for the sake of salvation should act with all motive renounced, their senses subdued, keeping their vows, serving their teachers, regulating what they eat, studying the Vedas, renouncing action as mean, and holding their hearts in check. By giving up desire and aversion the gods attained prosperity; it is by their wealth of yoga that the Rudras, the Sadhyas, the Adityas, the Vasus, and the two Ashvins rule over creatures. So do as they did, son of Kunti: turn wholly from action with a motive and strive for success in yoga and in austerity. You have already succeeded in what you owed your ancestors on both sides, and in the success that comes from sacrifice. Now, for the sake of serving the Brahmins, strive for success in penance. Those crowned with ascetic success can do whatever they wish by virtue of it. Practice austerity, then, and realize every wish you have. It was an answer to the king’s question, and it was also a set of directions, because the next thing Yudhishthira does with his priest Dhaumya follows from this one word: austerity.

A key to reading this (terms): Shaunaka is introduced simply as a learned Brahmin versed in Sankhya and yoga; the verses he recites are attributed to Janaka, the philosopher king of Videha. The “understanding with eight attributes” is mentioned and never itemized here. Vighasa is the food left after a guest has eaten; the offering to the Vishvedevas is the daily scattering of food on the ground for dogs, outcastes, and birds; the agnihotra is the daily fire offering. The eightfold path is Shaunaka’s own division: four outward duties (sacrifice, study, giving, austerity) that lead to the ancestors’ world, four inward ones (truth, forgiveness, restraint, renunciation) that lead to the gods’. “What you owed your ancestors” refers to the traditional debts a man pays by having children and by sacrifice; the one remaining road, Shaunaka says, is austerity, and that is the road Dhaumya will point him down in the next scene.

The gist: In the morning the Brahmins refuse to be sent home, and Yudhishthira, who cannot feed them, sits down on the ground and weeps. Shaunaka lifts him with Janaka’s verses: the body suffers from four causes, the mind from one root, affection; affection breeds desire, desire breeds thirst, and thirst is a fire that burns on its own fuel; wealth manufactures fear and enemies, and contentment is the only happiness. Yudhishthira answers that he wants wealth for dependents, not pleasure, and lays out the householder’s duties to guests. Shaunaka grants that the world is full of contradiction and then gives him the road: the eight duties, action without self-regard, and now austerity, so that the Brahmins can be served.

Dhaumya’s remedy, the hundred and eight names of the sun, and the copper vessel that stays full until Draupadi eats

Shaunaka had finished, and the problem had not gone anywhere. It was still standing on the riverbank in the shape of several thousand Brahmins who had walked out of Hastinapura behind a king with nothing in his hands. Yudhishthira went to his priest. With his brothers around him he put the matter to Dhaumya in the plainest terms he had: the Brahmins versed in the Vedas are following me into the forest. Struck with calamity after calamity, I cannot support them. I cannot abandon them, and I have no power to feed them. Tell me, holy one, what a man in my position should do. Dhaumya did not answer at once. He turned inward for a moment, searching with the sight that yoga gives for the road out, and when he spoke it was with a story about the beginning of food. In the old days, he said, every living creature that had been made was tormented by hunger. And the sun, Savita, took pity on them the way a father would. He went first into the northern course of the year and drew water up with his rays; then he came back into the southern course and stood over the earth with his heat held inside himself. While he stood there, the moon, lord of all growing things, turned the vapor the sun’s heat had raised into clouds and poured it down as rain, and plants came up out of the ground. So it is the sun himself, soaked through by the moon’s influence, who becomes, when the seeds sprout, the holy vegetation of the six tastes. That is what feeds every creature on earth. The food that keeps the living alive is full of the sun’s energy, and the sun is therefore the father of all creatures. Take refuge in him, Yudhishthira. Every famous king of pure descent and pure deeds has rescued his people by hard austerity: Kartavirya, Vainya, Nahusha, each of them, by vows and ascetic meditation, delivered his people from heavy affliction. You are purified by your acts. Do as they did. Enter on austerities, and support these Brahmins righteously.

Here Janamejaya, who is listening to all of this generations later, interrupts to ask how the king actually did it, how that bull of the Kurus adored the sun of wonderful appearance for the sake of the Brahmins, and Vaishampayana makes him earn the answer: purify yourself, withdraw your mind from everything else, appoint a time, and I will tell it in full. Then he gives him the hundred and eight names of the sun as Dhaumya once gave them to the son of Pritha. The catalogue is worth hearing as a catalogue, because it is a map of how far the sun reaches. It begins with the plain solar names, Surya, Aryaman, Bhaga, Tvashtri, Pusha, Arka, Savitri, Ravi, Gabhastimat, and then widens: Aja the unborn, Kala who is time, Mrityu who is death, Dhatri, Prabhakara; earth, water, fire, space and wind, the sole stay of everything; the planets, Soma, Brihaspati, Shukra, Budha, Angaraka, Indra, Vivasvat, Diptanshu, Shuchi, Shauri, Shanaishchara; the great gods themselves, Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra, Skanda, Vaishravana, Yama; the fires, of lightning, of the belly, of the kindling; the Veda’s maker, its limbs, its vehicle; the four ages, Krita, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali full of every impurity; the measures of time, kala, kashtha, muhurta, kshapa, yama, kshana, and the maker of the year; the sacred fig tree, the wheel of time, Vibhavasu, Purusha, the eternal one, the yogin, the manifest and the unmanifest, Sanatana; the overseer of time and of creatures, Vishvakarma, the dispeller of darkness, Varuna, the ocean, the ray, the cloud, life itself, the slayer of enemies, the refuge and lord of beings, the creator, the destroyer at the end of the age, fire, the first of all, the one without craving, the endless, Kapila, Bhanu, the giver of desires, the one who faces every way, victory, the vast, the boon-giver, mind, the fair-winged bird, the beginning of beings, the swift-goer, the holder of breath, Dhanvantari, the comet, the first god, the son of Aditi, the twelve-fold self, the lotus-eyed; father, mother, grandfather; the door of heaven, the door of offspring, the door of liberation; the triple heaven, the maker of bodies, the tranquil self, the self of the universe, the face of the universe, the self of all that moves and does not move, the subtle self, and the merciful Maitreya. These are the hundred and eight names of Surya of immeasurable energy, as Brahma himself told them. Dhaumya added what the hymn is for. One bows to Bhaskara, blazing like gold or fire, whom the gods and the fathers and the Yakshas worship and whom Asuras and night-wanderers and Siddhas adore, for the winning of prosperity; whoever recites it at sunrise with fixed attention gains a wife, children, wealth, and the memory of his former lives; it gives patience and memory; the man who recites it with a concentrated mind is safe from grief, from forest fire, and from the sea, and everything he desires becomes his.

What Yudhishthira did with the hymn is described with the precision of a rite, because it was one. He gathered his heart inside itself and purified it, and with the single purpose of feeding the Brahmins he entered into austere meditation. He worshiped the maker of day with flowers and the other offerings and bathed. He stood in the stream with his face toward the sun. Touching the water of the Ganga, his senses under complete control, living on air alone, he stood with his soul absorbed, practicing pranayama, and then, purified and with his speech restrained, he began to sing. The hymn he sang is long, and it moves in the same widening spiral as the names. You are the eye of the universe, he began, the soul of every embodied thing, the origin of all things, the embodiment of the acts of all religious men; the refuge of those who know the Sankhya and the support of the yogins; a door with no bolt on it; the refuge of those who want release. You hold up the world and reveal it and sanctify it and support it out of pure compassion. The Brahmins adore you with the hymns of their own Vedic branches; the rishis adore you; the Siddhas, Charanas, Gandharvas, Yakshas, Guhyakas and Nagas follow your chariot across the sky wanting boons; the thirty-three gods with Upendra and Mahendra and the order of the Vaimanikas won their success by worshiping you; the Vidyadharas got all they desired by offering you garlands of celestial mandara; the Guhyas and the seven orders of the fathers, divine and human, the Vasus, the Maruts, the Rudras, the Sadhyas, the Marichipas, the Valakhilyas, the Siddhas, all rose by bowing to you. In all seven worlds, including Brahma’s, I know nothing beyond you. There are other beings, great and full of energy, but none has your luster. All light is in you; you are the lord of all light. In you are the five elements, and all intelligence and knowledge and asceticism and the powers asceticism gives. The discus with the beautiful nave, with which the bearer of the Sharnga bow humbles the pride of the Asuras, was forged by Vishvakarma out of your energy. In summer you draw moisture with your rays from every body and plant and liquid, and in the rains you pour it back; your rays warm and scorch, and become clouds that roar and flash and rain when the season comes. No fire, no shelter, no woolen cloth gives a man shivering in the cold wind more comfort than your rays. You light the whole earth with her thirteen islands. You alone work for the welfare of the three worlds. If you did not rise, the universe would go blind, and the learned could not pursue virtue, wealth, and profit; it is by your grace that Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas perform their duties and their sacrifices. Those who know chronology say you are the beginning and the end of a day of Brahma, a full thousand ages long. You are the lord of the Manus and of their sons, of the universe and of man, of the manvantaras and their lords. When dissolution comes, the Samvartaka fire born of your anger consumes the three worlds and remains alone; the many-colored clouds born of your rays, with the elephant Airavata and the thunderbolt, bring the appointed floods; and dividing yourself into twelve and becoming twelve suns, you drink the ocean up again with your rays. You are called Indra, you are Vishnu, you are Brahma, you are Prajapati; you are fire and the subtle mind, the lord and the eternal Brahman. You are Hamsa, Savitri, Bhanu, Anshumalin, Vrishakapi; Vivasvan, Mihira, Pusha, Mitra, Dharma; the thousand-rayed, Aditya, Tapana, lord of rays; Martanda, Arka, Ravi, Surya, Sharanya, the maker of day, Divakara, Saptasapti, Dhumakeshin, Virochana; swift of speed, destroyer of darkness, master of the yellow horses. Whoever adores you humbly on the sixth or seventh lunar day wins the grace of Lakshmi; whoever worships you with undivided attention is delivered from every danger and agony; whoever holds that you are everywhere, the soul of all things, lives long, free of sin and free of disease. And then, at the end of all that immensity, the single small request the whole hymn was built to carry: lord of all food, give food in abundance to me, who want it so that I may entertain all my guests with reverence. He closed with bows to the sun’s attendants who have taken refuge at his feet, Mathara and Aruna and Danda, Ashani and Kshubha and the rest, and to the divine mothers of all creatures, Kshubha and Maitri and the others of their order, asking them to deliver their suppliant.

The sun answered. Pleased with the hymn, self-luminous, blazing like fire, the maker of day showed himself to the son of Pandu, and Vivasvan said: you shall have everything you desire. I will provide you with food for five and seven years together. Take this copper vessel that I give you. As long as Panchali holds it and does not eat from it herself, the four kinds of food cooked in your kitchen, fruits and roots and meat and vegetables, shall from this day be inexhaustible. And in the fourteenth year from now you shall have your kingdom back. Then he vanished. Vaishampayana pauses over the hymn’s credentials before he lets the story move: whoever recites it with a concentrated, ascetic mind for the sake of a boon obtains that boon from the sun, however hard it is to get; a man or a woman who recites it or hears it day after day obtains a son if they want a son, riches if they want riches, learning if they want learning; whoever recites it at the two twilights is delivered from danger and freed from bonds. Brahma gave it to Shakra, Narada had it from Shakra, Dhaumya from Narada, and Yudhishthira, having it from Dhaumya, obtained all his wishes. By its power a man wins in war and gains great wealth, and it leads the reciter, out of all his sins, to the region of the sun.

Then the boon was tested in the most ordinary way possible: somebody cooked. Yudhishthira came up out of the water, took hold of Dhaumya’s feet, and embraced his brothers. He went with Draupadi to the kitchen, was honored by her in the proper way, and set himself to cook the day’s food. And the clean food, however little was prepared, furnished with the four tastes, increased and became inexhaustible. With it Yudhishthira fed the twice-born. After the Brahmins had eaten, and his younger brothers, Yudhishthira himself ate what remained, the portion called vighasa, and after him Prishata’s granddaughter took what was left, and after she had eaten, the day’s food was gone. That became the order of every day. The son of Pandu, as resplendent now as the god who had answered him, entertained the Brahmins as they wished; obedient to their priest, the sons of Pritha performed sacrifices on the auspicious lunar days and constellations and conjunctions, by the ordinances, the scriptures, and the mantras; and when the sacrifices were done, blessed by Dhaumya’s rites and accompanied by him and surrounded by the Brahmins, they set out for the Kamyaka woods.

A key to reading this (names and numbers): Dhaumya is the Pandavas’ family priest, who goes into exile with them. The kings he cites, Kartavirya (Sahasrarjuna of the Haihayas), Vainya (Prithu, son of Vena, who milked the earth) and Nahusha (Yayati’s father), are ancient rulers remembered for saving their people through austerity. “Five and seven years” is the twelve years of forest exile; the fourteenth year is the point at which, the year of concealment being over, the kingdom is owed back. Vighasa is the remainder a householder eats after guests and dependents have been fed; eating it is itself an act of dharma. The condition on the copper vessel, full until Draupadi eats, is the hinge of a later crisis, when Duryodhana sends the sage Durvasa to the forest after Draupadi has eaten; that episode is told in chapter 14. The thirteen islands and the thirty-three gods are the hymn’s conventional counts; the twelve suns are the twelve Adityas at the dissolution of the world.

The gist: Faced with thousands of Brahmins he cannot feed, Yudhishthira is sent by his priest to the source of food itself. He stands in the Ganga, controls his breath, and sings the sun’s hundred and eight names and a long hymn that ends in one small request for food. The sun appears, gives him a copper vessel that will stay full every day until Draupadi eats, promises the kingdom in the fourteenth year, and vanishes. The king cooks, everyone eats in the proper order, and the Pandavas move on to the Kamyaka forest.

“Stay or go as you like”: Vidura’s plain counsel, Dhritarashtra’s anger, and a single chariot on the road to Kamyaka

With the Pandavas gone, the palace at Hastinapura went quiet in the way a house goes quiet after a funeral, and the blind king, whose knowledge served him for eyes, sat in it and felt the quiet turn into fear. He sent for Vidura. Your understanding is as clear as Bhargava’s, he said, and you know every subtlety of dharma, and you look on all the Kauravas with an equal eye. Tell me what is right for me and for them. Things have gone the way they have gone, Vidura; what should we do now? How do I keep the goodwill of the citizens so that they do not tear us out by the roots? You know every good expedient. Tell me all of it. It was the question of a man who wanted to be told that the damage could be managed, and Vidura, who had watched the dice fall, gave him instead the only answer there was. The three ends of life, he said, profit and pleasure and release, all rest on dharma, and the wise say a kingdom rests on it too. So cherish your own sons and the sons of Pandu righteously, king, with all the power you have. That dharma was cheated by wicked men with Subala’s son at their head when your sons invited the righteous Yudhishthira and beat him at dice. For that act of utter iniquity I see one expiation, chief of the Kurus, by which your son may be freed of sin and win back his place among good men: let the sons of Pandu have what you gave them. It is the highest dharma of a king to be content with his own and never to covet what belongs to another. Then your good name would not suffer, there would be no quarrel in the family, and no unrighteousness would be yours. This is your first duty now: gratify the Pandavas and disgrace Shakuni. If you want to give your sons back the fortune they have lost, adopt this course at once. If you do not, the Kurus will surely be destroyed, because neither Bhimasena nor Arjuna, once angry, will leave one enemy alive. What is there in the world that men cannot get when Savyasachin is among their warriors, when they have the Gandiva, the most powerful bow in the world, and when mighty Bhima fights beside him?

Then Vidura said the thing he had been saying for the whole of Duryodhana’s life. When your son was born, he reminded the king, I told you: abandon this ill-omened child; the good of your race lies in that. You did not do it. And I have not, since then, pointed you toward your welfare either. Do as I counsel now, and you will not have to repent afterward. If your son consents to rule jointly and in peace with the sons of Pandu, you will pass your days in joy and have nothing to regret. If not, then for your own happiness, give up your child. Set Duryodhana aside and install the son of Pandu in the sovereignty; let Ajatashatru, free of passion, rule the earth righteously, and all the kings of the earth will pay us homage without delay, like Vaishyas. Let Duryodhana and Shakuni and Karna wait on the Pandavas with alacrity. Let Duhshasana, in open court, ask forgiveness of Bhimasena and of Drupada’s daughter. And pacify Yudhishthira by placing him on the throne with every mark of respect. You asked me; what else could I counsel? Do this, king, and you will have done what is proper. Dhritarashtra heard him out, and the answer that came back was the true shape of the man. What you have said in this assembly about the Pandavas and myself, he said, is for their good and not for ours. My mind does not approve it. How have you settled all this in your mind? When you speak like this on the Pandavas’ behalf, I perceive that you are no friend of mine. How can I abandon my son for the sake of Pandu’s sons? They are my sons too, no doubt, but Duryodhana came out of my own body. Who, speaking impartially, would ever counsel me to give up my own body for the sake of others? Everything you say is crooked, Vidura, though I hold you in high esteem. Stay or go, as you like. However much she is humored, an unchaste wife leaves her husband in the end. He stood up abruptly on that sentence and went into the inner apartments. Vidura sat a moment in the emptied hall. This race is doomed, he said, and he went to where the sons of Pritha were.

The Pandavas by then had put distance between themselves and the Ganga. Wanting the forest life, they had gone with their followers from the riverbank to the field of Kurukshetra, bathed in the Sarasvati and the Drishadvati and the Yamuna, and moved west from wood to wood until they saw before them the Kamyaka forest, the favorite haunt of munis, on a level wild plain by the Sarasvati. It was full of birds and deer, and the munis there welcomed and comforted them, and in that forest the heroes settled. And Vidura, who could not stop wanting to see them, came to Kamyaka alone in a single chariot. He arrived behind fast horses and found Yudhishthira the just sitting in a retired spot with Draupadi, his brothers and the Brahmins around him. What Yudhishthira felt when he saw his uncle coming with quick steps from a distance was fear, and the fear had a specific shape. What message does Kshatta bring us, he asked Bhimasena. Has Shakuni sent him to invite us to dice again? Does the small-minded Shakuni mean to win our weapons from us at dice this time? Bhimasena, if anyone challenges me with the word come, I cannot stay away. And if our possession of the Gandiva becomes doubtful, will the winning back of our kingdom not become doubtful too? It is the most revealing sentence Yudhishthira speaks in the first year of exile: he already knows that the flaw that lost the kingdom is still in him, and that the enemy knows it too. But the Pandavas rose and welcomed Vidura, and the descendant of Ajamidha sat down among them and made the usual inquiries, and after he had rested a while they asked him why he had come, and he told them everything about the bearing of Ambika’s son.

Ajatashatru, Vidura said, Dhritarashtra called me, his dependent, before him and honored me and said: things have gone thus; tell me what is good for the Pandavas and for me. I pointed out what would be good for the Kauravas and for Dhritarashtra both. He did not relish it, and I could find no other course. What I advised was greatly to their benefit, Pandavas, but Ambika’s son paid no heed. As medicine does not commend itself to a sick man, my words did not please the king; as an unchaste woman brought into the house of a man of pure descent cannot be brought back to the path of virtue, I could not bring Dhritarashtra back; as a young girl does not care for a husband of sixty, Dhritarashtra did not care for what I said. Surely destruction will overtake the Kuru race; surely Dhritarashtra will never come to good fortune. As water dropped on a lotus leaf does not stay there, my counsel will have no effect on him. He told me in his anger: go where you like; never again shall I seek your help in ruling the earth or my capital. So, best of kings, cast off by king Dhritarashtra, I have come to you to offer good counsel. And what Vidura offered was the same teaching he had offered in open court, now to the only listener who would use it. Hear it and keep it in mind. The wise man who bears all the gross wrong his enemies heap on him, bides his time patiently, and multiplies his resources the way men build a small fire into a large one by degrees, rules this whole earth alone. The man who in prosperity shares his substance with his adherents finds in them sharers of his adversity; that is the best way to secure adherents, and it is said that the man who has adherents wins the sovereignty of the world. So divide your prosperity with your followers, Pandava; deal truthfully with them and speak to them agreeably. Share your food with them. Never boast in their presence. This is the conduct that increases the prosperity of kings. Yudhishthira answered like a man being handed a rope. Relying on this high intelligence, undisturbed by passion, I will do as you counsel, he said. And whatever else you advise concerning time and place, I will follow it carefully and entirely.

A key to reading this (Kshatta and Ajatashatru): Kshatta is Vidura’s title, the name of the station of a son born to a servant woman; Ajatashatru, “he whose enemy was never born,” is Yudhishthira’s epithet. Bhargava here is Shukra, the preceptor of the Asuras, the standard of political wisdom. Vidura’s reminder that he advised abandoning Duryodhana at his birth refers to the omens that attended it, told in the Adi Parva. Yudhishthira’s fear that Kshatta has come with another invitation to dice has a history: the summons to the second game was also carried by Dhritarashtra’s messenger, and Yudhishthira holds himself bound by a vow never to refuse a challenge. “Like Vaishyas” means as tributaries paying their dues; the descendant of Ajamidha is Vidura, Ajamidha being an ancestor of the Kuru line.

The gist: Dhritarashtra asks Vidura how to keep the citizens’ goodwill, and Vidura gives him the one course he cannot bear: give the Pandavas back what was theirs, disgrace Shakuni, and if Duryodhana will not share the throne, give up Duryodhana. The king tells him to stay or go, and goes himself. Vidura drives alone to Kamyaka, where Yudhishthira first fears another summons to dice and then receives, and promises to keep, the counsel that will govern the exile: bide your time, build slowly, share everything with your followers, and never boast.

A king faints at the door of his own hall, Sanjaya rides to Kamyaka, two brothers make peace, and Karna’s proposal is stopped by Vyasa

Dhritarashtra’s anger lasted about as long as it took Vidura’s chariot to leave the city. Then the repentance came, and it came with the two thoughts that always undid him: how much Vidura understood about war and peace, and how large the Pandavas were going to grow. Pained by the memory of his brother, the king made his way to the door of the hall of state and there, in front of the kings in attendance, fell senseless to the floor. When he came to himself he got up off the ground and spoke to Sanjaya, who was standing by. My brother and friend is like the god of justice himself, he said. Remembering him today, my heart burns with grief. Go, bring me my brother, who knows dharma, without delay. And the king wept bitterly. Burning in repentance, crushed by sorrow at the memory of Vidura, he spoke to Sanjaya again out of a brother’s love: go and find out whether my brother, whom my wretched self drove out in anger, is still alive. That wise brother of mine, of immeasurable intelligence, has never been guilty of the slightest offense; it is he who has suffered grievous wrong at my hands. Seek him, wise one, and bring him here, or I will lay down my life. Sanjaya said so be it and went in the direction of the Kamyaka woods. He lost no time on the road, and when he reached the forest where the sons of Pandu lived he saw Yudhishthira dressed in deerskin, seated with Vidura among thousands of Brahmins and guarded by his brothers, like Purandara among the gods. He went up and worshiped him in the proper way, and Bhima and Arjuna and the twins received him with due respect. Yudhishthira asked after his welfare, and when Sanjaya had been seated at his ease he disclosed his errand. King Dhritarashtra, Ambika’s son, has remembered you, Kshatta. Go back to him without delay and revive the king. Best of men, with the permission of these Kuru princes, at the command of that lion among kings, it is right that you return to him.

Vidura, who had never in his life been able to stop belonging to his family, took Yudhishthira’s leave and went back to the city named for the elephant. When he came before the king, Dhritarashtra of great energy said to him: it is by my good luck alone, Vidura, sinless one, learned in dharma, that you have come here remembering me. In your absence, bull of the Bharatas, I lay sleepless day and night and saw myself as a man lost on the earth. Then the king did something the epic records with care, because it is the gesture of an elder to a child: he took Vidura on his lap and smelled his head. Forgive me, sinless one, he said, the words in which I addressed you. And Vidura answered him with the sentence that explains his whole life. I have forgiven you, king. You are my superior, worthy of the highest reverence. Here I am, come back, eager to see you. All virtuous men, tiger among men, are partial by instinct toward those in distress; this is scarcely the result of deliberation, and my partiality to the Pandavas comes from nothing else. Your sons are as dear to me as the sons of Pandu, Bharata, but the latter are in distress now, and so my heart goes out to them. So the two illustrious brothers exchanged their apologies and were, the text says, greatly happy. It is the last unclouded happiness in the palace for a long time.

News of it reached Duryodhana, and Duryodhana began to burn. Vidura had returned, and the king had consoled him; that was all it took. With his understanding clouded by ignorance he summoned Subala’s son and Karna and Duhshasana and laid out the threat as he saw it. The learned Vidura, the minister of the wise Dhritarashtra, has come back. He is the friend of the sons of Pandu and is always working for their good. As long as this Vidura has not succeeded in making the king bring them back, all of you think about what will benefit me. If I ever see the sons of Pritha come back into this city, I will waste away again by refusing food and drink, even if there is no obstacle in my path. I will take poison, or hang myself, or enter the fire, or kill myself with my own weapons. I will never be able to look at the sons of Pandu in prosperity. Shakuni, who had built the whole scheme on the Pandavas’ word being good, was almost amused. What folly has taken hold of you, king? The Pandavas have gone to the forest under a specific pledge. What you fear cannot happen. The Pandavas always abide by the truth, bull of the Bharatas; they will never accept your father’s words. And if, obeying the king’s command, they do come back to the capital in violation of their vow, then this will be our conduct: we will put on a look of neutrality, we will seem to obey the monarch’s will, and we will watch the Pandavas closely and keep our own counsel. Duhshasana agreed with his uncle, as Duhshasana always did: it is just as you say, uncle of great intelligence; the words of wisdom you speak always recommend themselves to me. Karna said that all of them wanted to accomplish Duryodhana’s will and that for once they were unanimous: the sons of Pandu, with their passions under complete control, will never come back before the promised period is over. And if they do come back, out of failing sense, then defeat them at dice again.

Duryodhana turned his face away from his counselors, cheerless. That was the moment Karna read the room, and what he read in it changed his advice. His fine eyes widened; he gestured with anger; and he addressed Duryodhana and Duhshasana and Subala’s son with a new haughtiness. Princes, know my opinion. All of us are servants of the king, waiting on him with joined palms, and we should do what pleases him. But because we depend on Dhritarashtra, we are not always able to look after his welfare with promptness. So let us now put on our mail, take up our weapons, mount our chariots, and go in a body to kill the Pandavas where they live in the forest. Once the Pandavas have been quieted and have gone on the unknown journey, we and Dhritarashtra’s sons will find peace. As long as they are in distress, as long as they are in sorrow, as long as they have no help, so long are we a match for them. That is my mind. They applauded the charioteer’s son again and again and said very well, and each of them mounted his chariot, and, sure of success, they drove out together to kill the sons of Pandu. What stopped them was the one man in the epic who sees everything at once. Krishna-Dvaipayana, pure of soul, knew by his spiritual sight that they had set out; he came upon them on the road and commanded them to turn back, and they did. Then, having sent them away, the holy one whom all the worlds worship went quickly to the king whose intelligence served him for eyes and who was sitting at his ease, and Vyasa began to speak.

A key to reading this (the city of the elephant, and Krishna-Dvaipayana): The city named for the elephant is Hastinapura. Krishna-Dvaipayana is Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata and the begetter of Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura, which is why he can walk into the king’s presence and be obeyed on the road; his words to the king open the next scene. Duryodhana’s threat to waste away “again” recalls the earlier occasion, in the Sabha Parva, when the sight of the Pandavas’ prosperity drove him to refuse food and drink. Shakuni is Duryodhana’s maternal uncle, which is why Duhshasana addresses him as uncle. Sanjaya is Dhritarashtra’s charioteer and trusted messenger, the man who will later narrate the whole war to him. Smelling the head is the epic’s standard gesture of a parent’s or elder’s affection.

The gist: Having driven Vidura out, Dhritarashtra collapses at the door of his own hall and sends Sanjaya to bring him back; the brothers make peace, the king with Vidura on his lap, Vidura explaining that good men lean by instinct toward whoever is suffering. That reconciliation is what sets Duryodhana burning. Shakuni and Karna assure him the Pandavas will keep their word, but when Duryodhana turns his face away, Karna proposes riding out to kill them in the forest now, while they are helpless. All four mount their chariots. Vyasa meets them on the road, turns them back, and goes to see the king.

Vyasa’s warning and the tears of Surabhi; Maitreya’s curse, and the thigh Duryodhana slapped

Vyasa did not come to Hastinapura to console anyone. He came with a date. Hear me, wise Dhritarashtra, he said, and I will tell you what is for the great good of all the Kauravas. It has not pleased me that the Pandavas have gone to the forest dishonestly beaten at dice by Duryodhana and the rest. When the thirteenth year runs out, Bharata, they will remember every wrong done to them, and they may pour weapons on the Kauravas like virulent poison. Why does your sinful, wicked-hearted son, who is always burning with anger, want to kill the sons of Pandu for the sake of their kingdom? Restrain the fool. Let your son sit quiet. If he tries to kill the Pandavas in their exile he will only lose his own life. You are as honest as wise Vidura, or Bhishma, or we ourselves, or Kripa, or Drona, and you know as well as any of us that a feud with one’s own kin is forbidden, sinful, and contemptible. So you must hold back from such acts, king. And understand this, Bharata: Duryodhana looks at the Pandavas with such jealousy that great harm will follow unless you step in. Then the sage made a proposal so strange that it could only have come from someone who already knew it would be refused. Or let this wicked son of yours go to the forest alone, without companions, and live there with the sons of Pandu. If the Pandavas, from living beside him, come to feel affection for Duryodhana, then good fortune may be yours, king of men. But he answered his own suggestion in the same breath. That will not happen, for we have heard that the nature a man is born with does not leave him until he dies. What do Bhishma and Drona and Vidura think? What do you think? What is beneficial should be done while there is still time, or your purposes will never be realized.

The blind king answered the way he always answered, with the truth and with an excuse folded inside it. Holy one, he said, I did not like this business of gambling. But I think I was made to consent to it, drawn by fate. Neither Bhishma nor Drona nor Vidura nor Gandhari liked the game at dice. No doubt it was born of folly. And though I know everything, illustrious one, you who delight in keeping vows, I am under the sway of a father’s affection and I cannot cast off my senseless son Duryodhana. Vyasa did not argue with the affection. He explained it, and then he turned it against the king. What you say is true, king, son of Vichitravirya. We know well that a son is the best of all things and that there is nothing so good as a son. It was from the tears of Surabhi that Indra came to know that a son is worth more than any other possession. Let me tell you that excellent story, the conversation of Indra and Surabhi. In the old days Surabhi, the mother of cows, was once weeping in the celestial regions. Indra took pity on her, child, and asked: auspicious one, why do you weep? Is all well with the gods? Has any misfortune, however small, fallen on the world of men or of serpents? No evil has befallen you that I can see, Surabhi answered. I grieve for my son, Kaushika, and that is why I weep. Look, chief of the gods: that cruel farmer down there is beating my weak son with a wooden stick and crushing him under the weight of the plow, and my child, shaking with agony, is falling to the ground and is at the point of death. At the sight of it, lord of the gods, I am filled with pity and my mind is in turmoil. The stronger of the pair carries his heavier share of the load with ease, Vasava. But the other one is lean and weak, a bundle of veins and sinews. He carries his burden with difficulty, and it is for him that I grieve. Look, Vasava: cut by the whip, driven past what he can bear, he cannot carry his load. It is for him, moved by grief, that I weep with a heavy heart, and these tears of pity run down from my eyes. Shakra asked the question any god would ask. Fair one, when thousands of your sons are oppressed every day, why do you grieve for this one under his affliction? And Surabhi gave the answer that Vyasa had walked all the way to Hastinapura to deliver. I have a thousand children, Shakra, and my affection flows equally toward all of them. But I feel a greater pity for the one who is weak and innocent.

Indra, Vyasa said, was astonished at those words, and he became convinced, Kuru’s descendant, that a son is dearer than one’s own life. And the illustrious chastiser of Paka poured a thick shower of rain down on that field at once and put a stop to the farmer’s work. Then the sage laid the story over the king’s own house like a template. As Surabhi said, king, your affection flows equally to all your sons. Let it be greater toward those who are weak. As my son Pandu is to me, so are you, son, and so is Vidura of profound wisdom. It is out of affection that I tell you all this. You have a hundred and one sons, Bharata, and Pandu has only five. They are in a bad way, passing their days in sorrow. How will they save their lives, how will they prosper: such thoughts about Pritha’s suffering sons trouble my soul without rest. Lord of the earth, if you want all the Kauravas to live, let your son Duryodhana make peace with the Pandavas. Dhritarashtra agreed with everything, which was the trouble with Dhritarashtra. It is exactly as you say, sage of profound wisdom. I know it well, as all these kings do. What you consider good for the Kurus, Vidura and Bhishma and Drona have all pointed out to me. If I deserve your favor, if you have any kindness for the Kurus, then admonish my wicked son Duryodhana yourself. Vyasa declined the errand and named the man who would run it. King, after seeing the Pandava brothers, the holy rishi Maitreya is on his way here wishing to see us. That mighty rishi will admonish your son for the welfare of this house. And whatever he advises must be followed without hesitation, Kauravya, because if what he recommends is not done, the sage will curse your son in anger. Having said that, Vyasa left, and Maitreya appeared.

The king and his son received the road-worn chief of sages with the arghya and every other rite of welcome, and Dhritarashtra asked the questions a host asks and a father dreads. Holy one, was your journey from the Kurujangala a pleasant one? Are those heroes, the five Pandavas, living happily? Do those bulls of the Kuru race intend to serve out their time? Will the brotherly affection of the Kauravas ever be impaired? Maitreya told him where he had been. I set out on a pilgrimage to the shrines, he said, and came to the Kurujangala, and there, unexpectedly, in the Kamyaka woods, I saw Yudhishthira the just. Many sages had come there to look at that high-souled man, living in an ascetic’s hermitage in deerskin with his hair matted. It was there, king of kings, that I heard of the grave error your sons committed and of the calamity and the terrible danger that the dice have brought down on them. That is why I have come to you, for the good of the Kauravas, because my affection for you is great and I take pleasure in you. King, it is not fitting that your sons should quarrel with one another for any reason while you and Bhishma are alive. You are the post to which the bulls are tied on the threshing floor; you are the one with the power to punish and to reward. Then why do you look away from this great evil that is about to overtake everyone? And Kuru’s descendant, because of the wrongs committed in your court, which were like the acts of wretched outcasts, you are not well thought of among the ascetics. Then he turned to the wrathful prince and, to everyone’s surprise, softened his voice. Mighty-armed Duryodhana, best of eloquent men, illustrious one, listen to what I say for your own good. Do not seek a quarrel with the Pandavas, king. Work for your own good, bull among men, and for the good of the Pandavas, the Kurus, and the world. Those tigers among men are heroes of great prowess in war, with the strength of ten thousand elephants, with bodies hard as the thunderbolt, holding fast to their promises, proud of their manhood. They have slain the enemies of the gods, Rakshasas who take any shape at will, the ones led by Hidimba and Kirmira. When those high-souled men left this city, a Rakshasa of fierce soul blocked their path in the night like an immovable hill, and Bhima, the foremost of the strong, who delights in fighting, killed that monster the way a tiger kills a small deer. Consider too, king, how Bhima on his campaign of conquest killed in battle the mighty warrior Jarasandha, who had the strength of ten thousand elephants. Related to Vasudeva, with the sons of king Drupada as their brothers-in-law, who that is subject to decay and death would undertake to fight them? Let there be peace between you and the Pandavas, bull of the Bharata race. Follow my counsel and do not surrender to anger.

Duryodhana said nothing. He began to slap his thigh, which was like the trunk of an elephant, and with a smile on his face he began to scratch the ground with his foot, his head hanging down, not a word out of him. It was the same thigh he had bared to Draupadi in the dicing hall, and the gesture said what his silence did not. Maitreya watched the prince insult him by drawing lines in the dust, and anger came up in him, and as if fate itself had commissioned him, the best of sages set his mind on a curse. With eyes red, he touched water and spoke it over the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra. Since you slight me and refuse to act on my words, you will soon reap the fruit of this insolence of yours. In the great war that will spring from the wrongs you have done, the mighty Bhima will smash that thigh of yours with a blow of his mace. Dhritarashtra began at once to pacify the sage so that what he had said might not come to pass, and Maitreya gave him the one door out. King, if your son makes peace with the Pandavas, this curse of mine will not take effect, child. Otherwise it must be as I have said. The king, wanting to know the measure of Bhima’s strength, asked the only question left in him: how was Kirmira killed by Bhima? But Maitreya was finished with that house. I will not speak to you again, king, for my words are not regarded by your son. After I have gone, Vidura will tell you everything. And he went back the way he had come, and Duryodhana went out too, shaken by the news that Kirmira was dead at Bhima’s hands.

A key to reading this (names and the thigh): Surabhi is the mother of cows, and her sons here are the two oxen yoked to a plow. Kaushika, Shakra, Vasava, and the chastiser of Paka are all names of Indra. Vyasa fathered Dhritarashtra, Pandu, and Vidura, which is why he calls the king “son” and sets the three in one line. The Kurujangala is the wild tract of the Kuru country that holds the Kamyaka forest. Duryodhana’s slap on his thigh echoes the moment in the Sabha Parva when he bared that thigh to Draupadi, and Maitreya’s curse lands on the same limb; it is fulfilled in the mace duel at the end of the war, and the curse carries a single escape clause, peace, which Duryodhana never uses.

The gist: Vyasa warns Dhritarashtra that the Pandavas will come back after the thirteenth year with their wrongs remembered, and uses the tears of Surabhi to teach him that a father owes more love to the weaker son. The king agrees, pleads paternal helplessness, and asks the sage to talk to Duryodhana himself. Maitreya arrives, counsels peace in gentle words, and is answered with a slapped thigh and a foot scratching the dust. He curses that thigh to Bhima’s mace, leaves peace as the only way out, and refuses to say another word in that house.

Midnight in the Kamyaka forest: Kirmira, brother of Baka, and Bhima’s fight as Vidura tells it

Kshatta, the king said, I want to hear about the destruction of Kirmira. Tell me how the encounter took place between the Rakshasa and Bhimasena. Vidura had heard the story many times in the forest, from the men who lived it, and he told it as they had told him. Listen, he said, to the feat of Bhimasena, whose deeds are more than human. Beaten at dice, the Pandavas left this city and traveled three days and three nights, and at last they came to the woods called Kamyaka. It was just after the dreadful hour of midnight, king, when the whole of nature sleeps and the man-eating Rakshasas of terrible deeds come out to roam. At that hour the ascetics and the cowherds and every other ranger of the forest used to abandon the Kamyaka and get as far from it as they could, out of fear of the cannibals. And it was at exactly that hour that the Pandavas walked in. A fearful Rakshasa with blazing eyes appeared in front of them with a lighted brand in his hand and stood across their path. His arms were spread wide and his face was terrible, and he blocked the road along which those perpetuators of the Kuru line were walking. Eight teeth stood out of his mouth. His eyes were the color of copper. The hair of his head stood up and burned, and he looked like a mass of cloud catching the rays of the sun, or shot through with lightning, with flocks of cranes flying beneath it on their wings. He gave out frightful yells and roared like a raincloud, and he began to spread the illusion that his kind spreads. At the sound of that roar the birds and every other creature of land and water began to drop from the air and out of the trees, crying in fear, and with the deer and the leopards and the buffaloes and the bears bolting in every direction it seemed as if the forest itself had begun to move. The wind of the Rakshasa’s breathing made creepers far away seem to embrace the trees with arms of copper-colored leaves. A violent wind rose, and the sky went dark with dust. Grief is the greatest enemy of the five senses and their objects, and just so did this unknown enemy stand before the Pandavas. Seeing them from a distance in their black deerskins, the Rakshasa blocked their way through the forest like the mountain Mainaka.

Krishna, the lotus-eyed Draupadi, had never seen anything like him, and she shut her eyes in fear. Standing among the five Pandavas, she whose braid Duhshasana’s hand had torn loose looked like a river churning between five hills, and seeing her overcome, the five brothers held her up, the way the five senses under the sway of desire cling to the pleasures of their objects. Then Dhaumya, the priest of great ascetic power, stepped forward in front of the sons of Pandu and, with mantra after mantra of the kind that destroys Rakshasas, tore apart the illusion the monster had spread. When the Rakshasa saw his illusion dispelled, that mighty creature of crooked ways, who could take any form he wished, opened his eyes wide in fury and looked like death itself. King Yudhishthira, endowed with great wisdom, spoke to him first, and he spoke as a host. Who are you, and whose son? Tell us what we should do for you. The Rakshasa answered Yudhishthira the just with an introduction and a menu. I am the brother of Baka, the celebrated Kirmira. I live at ease in these deserted woods of Kamyaka and get my daily food by defeating men in fight. Who are you, who have come near me in the shape of my food? I will defeat you all in fight and eat you with pleasure. Yudhishthira told him his name and his line. I am king Yudhishthira the just, the son of Pandu, of whom you may have heard. Deprived of my kingdom, wandering with my brothers Bhimasena and Arjuna and the others, I have come into this terrible forest that is your dominion, wanting to pass my time of exile here. At the name of Bhima the Rakshasa’s whole night changed. By good luck, he said, fate has today fulfilled my long-standing desire. With weapons raised I have been ranging the whole earth to kill Bhima, and I could not find Bhima. By good luck the killer of my brother, whom I have hunted so long, has come to me. It was he who, disguised as a Brahmin, killed my dear brother Baka in the Vetrakiya forest by the power of his science; there is truly no strength in his arms. And it was this same wicked-souled man who killed my dear friend Hidimba, who lived in this forest, and carried off his sister. Now the fool has come into this deep forest of mine when the night is half spent, at the very hour when we roam. Today I will take my long-cherished revenge on him, and today I will satisfy Baka with his blood in plenty. By killing this enemy of the Rakshasas I will be free of the debt I owe my friend and my brother, and I will attain supreme happiness. If Baka once let Bhimasena go, today I will devour him in your sight, Yudhishthira. As Agastya ate the mighty asura Vatapi and digested him, so will I eat this Bhima and digest him.

It can never be so, said Yudhishthira, who kept his word in all things, and he rebuked the Rakshasa in anger. The mighty-armed Bhima tore up a tree ten vyamas long and stripped it of its leaves in one motion. In the same moment the ever-victorious Arjuna strung Gandiva, the bow with the force of the thunderbolt. Bhima made Jishnu stand down. This one was his. He walked toward the Rakshasa, who was still roaring like the clouds, and said to him, Stay, stay! And tightening the cloth around his waist, rubbing his palms together, biting his lower lip with his teeth, armed with the tree, the powerful Bhima rushed at his enemy, and as Maghavat hurls the thunderbolt he brought that tree, which looked like the mace of Yama himself, down with force on the cannibal’s head. The Rakshasa did not move under the blow. He did not waver at all. Instead he hurled his burning brand, blazing like lightning, at Bhima, and that foremost of fighters turned it aside with his left foot so that it flew back toward the Rakshasa. Then fierce Kirmira tore up a tree of his own and came on like Yama with his mace, and the fight that followed was ruinous to the trees, like the battle in the old days between the brothers Vali and Sugriva for the possession of one woman. The trees struck on the heads of the two fighters broke into splinters, like lotus stalks thrown against the temples of maddened elephants, and countless trees of that great forest lay crushed like reeds and scattered like rags. That fight with trees between the foremost of Rakshasas and the best of men lasted, bull of the Bharata race, only a moment. Then the angry Rakshasa picked up a crag and hurled it at Bhima standing before him, and Bhima did not waver. Then, like Rahu going with outstretched arms to swallow the sun as it scatters its rays, the Rakshasa with outstretched arms sprang at Bhima, who had stood firm under the crag, and the two of them tugged and grappled in every way, like two maddened bulls, like two mighty tigers armed with teeth and claws, and the encounter grew fierce and hard. Bhima remembered the disgrace they had lately suffered at Duryodhana’s hands. He was proud of the strength of his arms. And he knew that Krishna was watching him. Vrikodara began to swell with vigor.

Burning with anger, Bhima seized the Rakshasa in his arms as one rutting elephant seizes another. The powerful Rakshasa seized him in turn, and Bhimasena, the strongest of all men, threw the cannibal down with violence. The sounds of those two mighty fighters crushing each other’s hands were frightful, like the sound of splintering bamboo. Having thrown him down, Bhima caught him by the waist and began to whirl him about, the way a hurricane shakes a tree. In that grip the exhausted Rakshasa began to faint, trembling all over, and still he pressed the Pandava with all the strength he had. Finding him worn out, Vrikodara wound his own arms around him the way one binds a beast with a cord, and the monster began to roar frightfully, like a trumpet blown wrong. The mighty Vrikodara whirled him a long time, until the Rakshasa seemed to lose his senses and began to twitch, and finding him finished, the son of Pandu, without losing a moment, lifted him in his arms and killed him like a beast. He set his knee on the waist of that wretch of a Rakshasa and pressed the neck with his hands. Then, dragging the bruised body along the earth, its eyelids about to close, Bhima said to it: sinful wretch, you will no longer have to wipe away the tears of Hidimba or Baka, for you too are on your way to the mansions of Yama. And with that, his heart full of wrath, the foremost of men looked at the Rakshasa, stripped of clothing and ornaments, senseless and convulsing, and left him dead. When that Rakshasa the color of clouds had been killed, the son of the best of kings praised Bhima for his many qualities, and putting Krishna in their front they set out for the Dvaita woods. That is how Kirmira was slain in combat by Bhima, Vidura said, in obedience, Kaurava, to the commands of Yudhishthira the just. Having rid the forest of its pest, the victorious king began to live in that dwelling of theirs with Draupadi, and those bulls of the Bharata race, comforting Draupadi, praised Bhima with glad hearts and entered a forest that had gone quiet. Passing through that great forest, Vidura said, I myself saw the body of that wicked and fearless Rakshasa lying where Bhima’s might had left it, and it was there, Bharata, that I heard this feat of Bhima’s from the Brahmins gathered around the Pandavas. And the king, hearing how Kirmira, the foremost of Rakshasas, had been killed in combat, sighed in sorrow and sank into thought.

A key to reading this (old accounts): Baka is the Rakshasa Bhima killed in a Brahmin’s disguise near Ekachakra in the Adi Parva (the Vetrakiya forest was his ground), and Hidimba is the one Bhima killed in the forest after the escape from the house of lac, before marrying his sister Hidimba; Kirmira has come to collect for both. The story of Agastya swallowing Vatapi, which Kirmira cites as a model for eating Bhima, is told by Lomasha on the pilgrimage in chapter 13a. A vyama is the span of two outstretched arms, roughly a fathom. Vrikodara, “wolf-belly,” is Bhima; Jishnu is Arjuna; Maghavat is Indra. Dhritarashtra’s sigh at the end is the reason the whole story is told: he asked about Kirmira to measure Bhima, and Bhima is the man Maitreya has just promised will break his son’s thigh.

The gist: Vidura tells the king about the third night of the exile, when Baka’s brother Kirmira stood across the Pandavas’ path in the Kamyaka forest with a torch in his hand. Dhaumya breaks his illusion, Yudhishthira gives his name, and the Rakshasa recognizes in Bhima the killer of his brother and his friend and announces that he will eat him. Bhima waves Arjuna off, fights him with a tree, then with bare arms, and strangles him. Dhritarashtra, who asked the question to gauge Bhima’s strength, gets his answer and sinks into thought.

The kings gather in Kamyaka: Keshava’s vow, Arjuna’s hymn to calm him, and “you are Nara, I am Narayana”

The news of the exile traveled faster than the exiles did. Before the Pandavas had settled into the great forest, the roads to Kamyaka were full of chariots: the Bhojas, the Vrishnis, and the Andhakas from the west, the blood relations of Panchala, Dhrishtaketu the king of Chedi, and those famous brothers of the Kekaya house, all of them riding with the same heat in the chest. They came to see the sons of Pritha in their affliction, and the first thing they did on arriving was curse the sons of Dhritarashtra, and the second was ask the only question that mattered: what should we do now? Then those bulls of the Kshatriya order sat down in a ring around Yudhishthira the just, with Vasudeva at their head. Krishna saluted the foremost of the Kurus with every courtesy, and what came out of him afterward was said in grief, and it was a vow. The earth will drink the blood of Duryodhana and Karna, of Duhshasana and the wicked Shakuni. We will kill them in battle, defeat their followers and their royal allies, and set Yudhishthira the just on the throne. The wicked deserve to be slain. That is the eternal law.

It was the tone rather than the words that frightened the assembly. Janardana had gone into a passion over the wrongs done to Pritha’s sons, and he looked, to the men watching him, like someone bent on consuming everything that had ever been created. Arjuna moved first. He had seen this face before and knew what it could do, and he set out to bring it back by the only means he trusted: he began to recite, in front of the angry kings, the deeds that this being had done in earlier lives, this soul of all things, himself immeasurable, the eternal one of infinite energy, the lord of Prajapati, the ruler of the worlds, Vishnu of profound wisdom. He addressed him as one addresses a god who has forgotten for a moment that he is one. In days of old, Krishna, you wandered the Gandhamadana mountains for ten thousand years as a sage whose home was wherever evening found him. You lived on water alone for eleven thousand years by the lake of Pushkara. With your arms raised and standing on one leg you passed a hundred years on the high hills of Badari, living on air. With your upper garment cast aside, your body wasted to a bundle of veins, you sat on the banks of the Sarasvati at a sacrifice that ran for twelve years. On the plain of Prabhasa, which the virtuous ought to visit, you kept a vow standing on one leg for a thousand years of the gods. Vyasa told me that you are the cause of creation and of its course. You are the lord of the field, the mover of all minds, the beginning and the end of things. All asceticism rests in you. You are the embodiment of every sacrifice, and you are the eternal one.

Then Arjuna went through the list of the deeds, and it was long, because it was the whole history of the god. Killing the Asura Naraka, the Earth’s firstborn, you took his earrings and performed the first horse sacrifice, with that Asura for the horse. You slew all the Daityas and Danavas gathered in battle, gave the lord of Shachi the sovereignty of the universe, and only then took birth among men. Floating on the primordial waters you became Hari, and Brahma, and Surya and Dharma, Dhatri and Yama and Anala and Vasu, Vaishravana and Rudra, Kala and the sky and the earth and the ten directions. Uncreated yourself, you are the lord of all that moves and all that stands still, the maker of everything, foremost of all that exists. In the forest of Chitraratha you gratified with your sacrifice the chief of the gods, the highest of the high, and at every sacrifice you gave gold by the hundreds and thousands. Born as the son of Aditi you were known as the younger brother of Indra, and while still a child you filled heaven and sky and earth with three steps, and dwelling then in the body of the sun you afflicted him with your own splendor. In a thousand incarnations you have slain sinful Asuras by the hundred. Destroying the Mauravas and the Pashas, killing Nisunda and Naraka, you made the road to Pragjyotisha safe again. You killed Ahvriti at Jaruthi, and Kratha, and Shishupala with his followers, and Jarasandha and Shaibya and Shatadhanvan. On a chariot that roared like clouds and blazed like the sun you defeated Rukmi in battle and won the daughter of Bhoja for your queen. In fury you killed Indradyumna and the Yavana called Kaseruman. Killing Shalva the lord of Saubha, you destroyed the city of Saubha itself. At the Iravati you slew king Bhoja, the equal of Kartavirya, and Gopati and Talaketu fell to you as well. You took for yourself the sacred city of Dwarka, rich and beloved of the sages, and at the end you will sink it in the ocean. How can there be crookedness in you, slayer of Madhu, who are without anger and envy and untruth and cruelty? All the sages who come to you seated in your glory on the sacrificial ground seek your protection. At the end of the age you stand contracting all things, withdrawing this universe into yourself. At the beginning of the age Brahma himself sprang from your lotus navel, the lord of all that moves and does not move, whose this whole universe is. When the dreadful Danavas Madhu and Kaitabha set out to kill Brahma, you saw their impiety and grew angry, and from your forehead, Hari, sprang Shambhu, the holder of the trident. Both of those foremost gods came from your body to do your work; Narada told me this. In the forest of Chaitraratha you celebrated a great sacrifice of many rites with plentiful gifts. God with eyes like lotus petals, the deeds you did as a boy, by your own might and with Baladeva beside you, have never been done by anyone and never will be. You even lived on Kailasa, in the company of Brahmins.

When he had said all this the illustrious Pandava, who was the very soul of Krishna, fell silent, and Krishna answered him with the fewest words he had spoken all day. You are mine and I am yours, and all that is mine is yours as well. Whoever hates you hates me, and whoever follows you follows me. Irrepressible one, you are Nara and I am Narayana, Hari. We are the sages Nara and Narayana, born into the world of men for a purpose. Partha, you are from me and I am from you. Bull of the Bharatas, no one can understand the difference between us. The anger had gone out of the ring of kings while Arjuna spoke, and something else had come into it, which none of them named.

A key to reading this (the hymn): Arjuna’s recital treats Krishna as every form of Vishnu at once: the three steps of Vamana (“son of Aditi, younger brother of Indra”), the killing of Naraka and the recovery of the earrings, Madhu and Kaitabha, and the old teaching that at the end of an age everything is drawn back into him. Shalva and Saubha are named here as a deed already done; Krishna will tell that story himself two scenes from now, in answer to Yudhishthira. The forest of Chitraratha (Chaitraratha) belongs to the Gandharva king of that name. Nara and Narayana are the two ancient sages of Badarikashrama, of whom Arjuna and Krishna are held to be the incarnations; the epic returns to that pairing again and again, and this is the place where Krishna states it outright.

The gist: Yadavas, Panchalas, Chedis and Kekayas ride to Kamyaka and sit in a ring around Yudhishthira, and Krishna makes the first open vow of the war: the earth will drink the blood of Duryodhana, Karna, Duhshasana and Shakuni. Alarmed by his anger, Arjuna recites the whole history of Vishnu’s deeds to calm him, and Krishna answers with the sentence that binds the two of them for good: you are Nara, I am Narayana.

Draupadi before Krishna: “fie on Bhima’s strength, fie on Arjuna’s Gandiva,” and the promise that the wives of the Kauravas will weep

Krishna had finished speaking, and the ring of kings was still hot with what he had said, when Panchali came forward. She had Dhrishtadyumna on one side of her and her other brothers around her, and she walked up to the lotus-eyed one where he sat among his kinsmen as a woman walks up to the only court that can hear her case. She wanted protection, and she asked for it in anger. She began with his titles, and she gave them in the names of the sages who had conferred them, so that there could be no doubt afterward whom she had been addressing. Asita and Devala have said that in the making of all things you were pointed out as the one Prajapati and the creator of the worlds. Jamadagni’s son says that you are Vishnu, and that you are the sacrifice, the sacrificer, and the one for whom the sacrifice is performed. The sages call you forgiveness and truth. Kashyapa has said that you are sacrifice born of truth. Narada calls you the god of the Sadhyas and of the Shivas, the one creator and lord. You play with the gods, with Brahma and Shankara and Shakra, the way children play with toys. The sky is covered by your head and the earth by your feet; these worlds are your womb, and you are the eternal one. To the sages purified by the Veda and by penance you are the highest of all objects. You are the refuge of every royal sage who keeps to dharma and never turns his back on a battlefield. You are the lord of all, present everywhere, the soul of things, the working power inside everything. The rulers of the worlds, the worlds themselves, the constellations, the ten directions, the sky, the moon and the sun all rest in you, and so do the dharma of creatures and the immortality of the universe. You are the supreme lord of all beings, divine and human. Therefore, slayer of Madhu, trusting the affection you bear me, I will tell you my griefs.

And she told them, and the telling was an indictment. How could a woman like me, the wife of Pritha’s sons, the sister of Dhrishtadyumna, your friend, be dragged into an assembly? In my season, stained with blood, in a single cloth, trembling and weeping, I was dragged into the court of the Kurus. The wicked sons of Dhritarashtra saw me there stained with blood before all those kings, and they laughed. While the sons of Pandu and the Panchalas and the Vrishnis were alive, they dared to say they would use me as their slave. By the ordinance I am the daughter-in-law of Dhritarashtra and of Bhishma, and still they wanted to make a slave of me by force. Then she turned on her own husbands. I blame the Pandavas, who are mighty and foremost in battle, because they saw their wedded wife, whom the whole world knows, treated with that cruelty, and they did not stir. Fie on the might of Bhimasena, fie on Arjuna’s Gandiva, for both of them let me be disgraced by little men. The virtuous have always kept one eternal rule: that a husband, however weak, protects his wedded wife. Protecting the wife protects the offspring, and protecting the offspring protects oneself, because one’s own self is begotten on the wife; that is why she is called jaya. A wife should protect her lord too, remembering that he will take birth in her womb. The Pandavas never abandon anyone who asks them for protection, and yet they abandoned me when I asked. She named her sons then, all five, one to each husband, as if laying them on the ground in front of Krishna: Prativindhya by Yudhishthira, Sutasoma by Vrikodara, Shrutakirti by Arjuna, Shatanika by Nakula, Shrutakarman by the youngest, every one of them of energy that cannot be checked. For their sake alone I needed to be protected. They are mighty warriors, like your own Pradyumna, foremost bowmen no enemy can defeat in battle. Why do their fathers bear the wrongs done by Dhritarashtra’s sons, whose strength is contemptible? Cheated out of their kingdom, made bondsmen, and their wife dragged in her season and in one cloth into the assembly. Fie on that Gandiva which no one can string except Arjuna and Bhima and you. Fie on Bhima’s strength and Arjuna’s prowess, since after all he did, Duryodhana has drawn breath even for a moment.

Then she reminded Krishna what “all he did” meant, and the list ran back to the Pandavas’ childhood. It was Duryodhana who drove them and their mother from the kingdom while they were still children at their studies and their vows. It was that wretch who put fresh, virulent poison in Bhima’s food, a full dose, which Bhima digested along with the meal without harm, because his days were not yet done. It was Duryodhana who, at the house by the banyan called Pramana, bound Bhima as he slept and threw him into the Ganga and went back to the city; and Bhima woke, tore the bonds, and rose from the water. It was Duryodhana who had venomous black cobras set to bite Bhima all over his body, and Bhima did not die; he woke, crushed the snakes, and with his left hand killed the charioteer, Duryodhana’s favorite, who had been sent to do it. It was Duryodhana who, while the children slept at Varanavata with their mother, set fire to the house to burn them alive. Who else is capable of such an act? She told even the fire, because Krishna had not been there. Kunti, ringed by flames, cried out to her children that she was undone, that she would perish with her little ones, and Bhima, whose strength is the wind’s, comforted his mother and brothers: like Garuda the son of Vinata I will spring into the air; we have nothing to fear from this fire. He took his mother on his left side, the king on his right, the twins on his two shoulders, and Vibhatsu on his back, and with a single leap he cleared the fire and carried them all out of it. That night they came near the forest of Hidimba, and while they slept exhausted with their mother, the Rakshasa woman Hidimba came to them, saw the Pandavas asleep on the ground, wanted Bhima for her husband, and took his feet in her lap to press them with her soft hands. Bhima woke and asked her, faultless one, what do you want here, and she, who could take any shape at will, told him to fly at once because her brother was coming to kill them. Bhima answered that he was not afraid, and that if the brother came he would kill him. The brother came, hideous and roaring, demanding that Hidimba bring the man so he could eat him, and the woman, out of pity, said nothing. The man-eater rushed at Bhima, caught his hand, made his other fist hard as Indra’s thunderbolt and struck him a blow like lightning, and Bhima, with his hand held, went into a rage. The fight between them was like the fight of Vasava and Vritra, and after playing with the Rakshasa a long while Bhima killed him when he had worn himself out. With Hidimba, the sister, who later bore Ghatotkacha, walking ahead of them, the brothers went on with their mother and many Brahmins toward Ekachakra, with Vyasa, who always sought their good, as their counselor, and at Ekachakra they killed another mighty cannibal, Vaka, as terrible as Hidimba himself. Then Bhima and his brothers went to Drupada’s capital, and there, Krishna, as you won Rukmini the daughter of Bhishmaka, Savyasachin won me, at the svayamvara, by a feat no one else could perform and by fighting the assembled kings.

So, she said, I live here in many griefs and in great distress, with Dhaumya at our head and without the blessed Kunti. Why do these men with the strength and prowess of lions sit and watch me afflicted by enemies so despicable? How long am I to burn with grief for wrongs done by weak and wicked men? I was born in a great house, I came into the world in an extraordinary way, I am the beloved wife of the Pandavas and the daughter-in-law of the illustrious Pandu, the foremost of women and devoted to my husbands, and I was seized by the hair, Krishna, in the sight of the Pandavas, each of whom is an Indra. Then the mild-speaking Krishna, Drupada’s daughter, covered her face with her soft hands like lotus buds and wept, and the tears ran down onto her breast. She wiped her eyes, and her voice when it came back was choked with anger. I have no husbands, no sons, no friends, no brothers, no father. I do not have you either, slayer of Madhu, for you all sit unmoved watching me treated cruelly by inferior enemies. The grief of Karna’s mockery cannot be soothed. On these grounds I deserve your protection forever, Keshava: our kinship, your respect for me, our friendship, and your lordship over me.

Vasudeva answered her in front of the heroes. Fair lady, the wives of the men you are angry with will weep as you are weeping, when they see their husbands lying dead on the ground, wallowing in blood, their bodies covered with Vibhatsu’s arrows. Do not weep. I will exert myself to the limit of my powers for the sons of Pandu. I promise you that you will be the queen of kings again. The heavens may fall, the Himavat may split, the earth may crack open, the waters of the ocean may dry up, and my words will still not be in vain. When Achyuta had said this, Draupadi looked sideways at her third husband, and Arjuna said to her: do not grieve, lady of the beautiful copper eyes. It will be exactly as the slayer of Madhu has said. It cannot be otherwise. Dhrishtadyumna, her brother, then divided the war among them as though it were already a matter of bookkeeping. I will kill Drona. Shikhandi will kill the grandfather. Bhimasena will kill Duryodhana, and Dhananjaya will kill Karna. Sister, with Rama and Krishna beside us we could not be beaten in battle even by the slayer of Vritra; what are the sons of Dhritarashtra? When those words had been spoken, every man in that ring turned his face toward Vasudeva, and he began to speak.

A key to reading this (what is being remembered): Draupadi’s speech has two movements. First she reminds Krishna who he is, in the words of Asita, Devala, Jamadagni’s son (Parashurama), Kashyapa and Narada, so that the demand she is about to make is made of the all-powerful. Then she recites Duryodhana’s crimes against the boys, all of them stories of the Adi Parva: the poison, the binding and drowning at the Pramana banyan, the cobras, the house of lac at Varanavata, Hidimba, Vaka, and the svayamvara. The etymology of jaya, the wife as the one in whom the husband is born again, is Vyasa’s own argument. The five sons are named here in a single breath. Dhrishtadyumna’s vow assigns the war’s four great killings in advance: Drona to himself, Bhishma to Shikhandi, Duryodhana to Bhima, Karna to Arjuna. “Rama” beside Krishna is Balarama.

The gist: In the same ring of kings Draupadi lays her whole humiliation before Krishna, curses her own husbands’ strength for not stirring, and runs through Duryodhana’s plots from the Pandavas’ boyhood onward to ask how he is still breathing. Krishna promises that the sky may fall before his word fails; Arjuna repeats it; and Dhrishtadyumna parcels out the four deaths of the war.

“Had I been at Dwarka there would have been no dice”: why Krishna was away, Shalva’s threat, and a city under siege from the sky

What Krishna said to the assembly began as an apology and turned, sentence by sentence, into a statement of what he would have done, and the men listening understood that they were hearing the terms on which he intended to conduct the rest of his life. Lord of the earth, if I had been at Dwarka this evil would not have come upon you. I would have come to the gambling match uninvited, whether Ambika’s son or Duryodhana or any of the Kauravas wanted me there or not, and I would have stopped the game by showing its many evils, with Bhishma and Drona and Kripa and Bahlika to back me. For your sake I would have told Vichitravirya’s son: foremost of kings, let your sons have nothing to do with dice. I would have shown him the evils by which you have fallen into this distress and by which Virasena’s son once lost his kingdom. Unforeseen evils come to a man from dice. I would have described how a man once in the game goes on playing for the sake of winning. Women, dice, hunting and drink, to which people become addicted through temptation, are counted as the four evils that strip a man of prosperity; those who know the scriptures say that misfortune waits on all of them, and those who are addicted to dice know its evils best. Standing before Ambika’s son I would have pointed out that by dice men lose their possessions in a day, fall into distress, are deprived of wealth they never enjoyed, and exchange harsh words. If he had accepted what I said, the welfare of the Kurus and dharma itself would both have been saved. And if he had rejected my gentle counsel, offered as medicine, then I would have compelled him by force. And if the men who wait on him at court, calling themselves his friends and being his enemies, had supported him, I would have killed them all, together with the gamblers who were present. It is because I was away from the Anarta country at that time, Kauravya, that you have fallen into this distress born of dice. On reaching Dwarka I learned everything about your calamity from Yuyudhana, and with a heart sore with grief I came at once, wanting to see you. And I see you, bull of the Bharatas, with your brothers, plunged in misfortune.

Yudhishthira asked the obvious question, which was also the polite one. Krishna, why were you away from the Anarta country? Where did you stay while you were gone, and what did you do outside your kingdom? Krishna’s answer began with a name Yudhishthira had reason to remember. I had gone to destroy Shalva’s city, the one that moves through the air. Listen to my reasons. At your Rajasuya sacrifice I killed Damaghosha’s heroic son, the famous Shishupala of the mighty arms, because that wicked man could not bear in his anger to see the first honor offered to me. When Shalva heard that Shishupala was dead he came to Dwarka burning with rage, and the city was empty, because I was away, here with you. He came on a chariot made of precious metals, which is why it is called Saubha, and he fought the young princes of the Vrishni line without mercy, killed many of them, and laid waste every garden of the city. And he shouted as he did it: where is that wretch of the Vrishni race, Vasudeva, the evil-souled son of Vasudeva? I will humble in battle the pride of that man so eager for a fight. Tell me the truth, Anartas, and I will go wherever he is. I will kill the slayer of Kansa and Keshi and only then return; by my weapon I swear I will not return without killing him. Where is he, where is he? He rushed here and there demanding a battle with me, and he said that in his wrath for Shishupala’s death he would send that treacherous, low-minded man to Yama’s house that very day, and that he would kill the Janardana who had killed his brother, a boy of tender years, killed unprepared and off the field of battle. Having wailed like that and abused me like that, he rose into the sky on his metal chariot, which goes wherever its master wills. When I came home I heard what the evil-minded king of Martikavata had said about me, and I shook with anger, and having thought it all over I set my heart on killing him. His oppression of the Anartas, his abuse of me, and his enormous arrogance decided it. I set out from my city to kill the lord of Saubha, and searching here and there I found him on an island in the middle of the ocean. I blew Panchajanya, my conch from the sea, challenged Shalva to combat, and stood ready. At that moment I had to fight a crowd of Danavas, and I subdued every one of them and laid them on the ground. That is why I could not come to you then. As soon as I heard of the unfair game of dice at Hastinapura I came here, wanting to see you who have been plunged in distress.

Yudhishthira was not satisfied, and said so. Illustrious Vasudeva of the mighty arms, tell the death of the lord of Saubha in full; my curiosity has not been satisfied by this account. So Krishna told it from the beginning, and the beginning was a city preparing to be attacked from above. When Shalva heard that Shrutashravas’s son had been killed by me, he came to Dvaravati, and the wicked king drew up his forces and besieged the city around and above, took up his own station in the upper air, and opened his war on the town with a thick shower of weapons from every side. The city at that time was fortified on all sides according to the science of fortification: with pennons and arches, fighting men, walls and turrets, engines, miners, streets barricaded with spiked timber, towers and gated buildings well stocked with provisions; with engines for hurling firebrands and fire, deerskin vessels for carrying water, trumpets, tabors and drums, lances and forks, shataghnis and plowshares, rockets, stone balls, battle-axes and other weapons, shields plated with iron, and engines for throwing balls and bullets and scalding liquids. Its chariots defended it too, and so did Gada and Shamba and Uddhava and the rest, warriors of tried prowess, well born, able to meet any enemy, posted on the commanding heights with cavalry and standard bearers under them. Ugrasena and Uddhava had it proclaimed through the whole city that no one should drink, so that carelessness could not creep in, and every Vrishni and Andhaka, knowing that Shalva would kill them if they were careless, stayed sober and watchful. The police drove out of the city all the mimes and dancers and singers of the Anarta country. The bridges over the rivers were destroyed, the boats forbidden to sail, and the trenches around the city planted with sharpened stakes at the bottom. For two miles around the city the ground was made uneven, dug with holes and pits, and combustibles were buried under the surface. Our fort is strong by nature, always well defended and full of every kind of weapon, and with these preparations it was readier for an enemy than it had ever been; it looked, in those days, like the city of Indra himself. While Shalva was near, no one could enter or leave the city of the Vrishnis and Andhakas without giving the agreed sign. Every street and open space was crowded with elephants and horses. The fighting men were kept content with allowances and wages, rations, weapons and clothing; there was no one among them who was not paid in gold, no one who was not paid at all, no one who had not been obliged in some way, and no one whose valor had not been tested. That, lotus-eyed king, is how Dwarka, in good order, was defended by Ahuka.

A key to reading this (Shalva and Saubha): Saubha is Shalva’s flying city-chariot, built of precious metals and able to go wherever he wills; that is why he can besiege Dwarka “from above.” Shalva is the king of Martikavata and a friend of Shishupala, whom he calls his brother. “Virasena’s son” is Nala, whose loss of a kingdom at dice is told in chapter 13. Yuyudhana is Satyaki; Ahuka is Ugrasena, the king in Dwarka. Krishna also says here, as plainly as he ever says anything, what his method would have been at the dice hall: persuasion first, then force, then killing the gamblers and the false friends if they stood in the way. It is the same escalation he will offer the Kurus as an envoy years later, in chapter 20.

The gist: Krishna tells Yudhishthira that he missed the dice match because Shalva, avenging Shishupala, had attacked Dwarka in his flying city Saubha and had to be hunted down. Yudhishthira asks for the whole story, and Krishna starts it with the city under siege: bridges broken, trenches staked, drink banned, every soldier paid in gold, and Ugrasena holding a Dwarka that looked like Indra’s own city.

Shalva at the gates of Dwarka: Samba’s mace, Charudeshna’s weapon, and Pradyumna’s first duel with the lord of Saubha

Krishna went on with his account, and Yudhishthira, who had asked the question, now had to sit and hear how the city of his greatest ally had been besieged while he was being crowned. Shalva, the lord of Saubha, came against Dwarka with an immense force, Krishna said, infantry and cavalry and elephants, an army in four divisions, and he was a careful invader. He chose level ground with plenty of water and he left alone the cremation grounds, the temples of the gods, the sacred trees and the ground covered with anthills; every other place his host occupied. The roads into the city were blocked by his divisions, and the secret entrances too, the ones a city keeps for exactly such a day, were sealed by the enemy’s camp. Then, like Garuda the king of birds stooping on his prey, the lord of Saubha rushed at Dwarka, and Krishna described the host he brought as a man describes an army he has had to respect: equipped with every kind of weapon, skilled in all of them, dense with chariots and elephants and horse, thick with banners, and made up of foot soldiers who were well paid and well fed, strong, marked with every sign of heroism, and furnished with wonderful chariots and bows.

The men who went out to meet that army were boys, or nearly. The young princes of the Vrishni house resolved to sally out of the city and fight it, and three of them rode out at their head: Charudeshna, Samba, and the great warrior Pradyumna, in their chariots and in mail, decked with ornaments, with their colors flying, against a host beyond counting. Samba took up his bow and went straight for Kshemavriddhi, who was both the commander of Shalva’s forces and his chief counselor, and Jambavati’s son poured arrows on him in an unbroken stream, the way Indra pours rain. Kshemavriddhi stood under it unmoved, like the Himalaya, and then answered with a heavier volley of his own, and his was helped by illusion. Samba broke the enchanted volley with counter-illusion and put a thousand arrows into his chariot, and the commander of the enemy host, pierced and overwhelmed, left the field on a fast horse. When the general had gone, a mighty Daitya named Vegavat rushed at Krishna’s son. Samba held his ground under the charge, and then, whirling a fast mace, he flung it, and Vegavat went down like an old lord of the forest with rotten roots, beaten flat by weather. With that great Asura dead by the mace, Samba pushed into the enemy host and began fighting everyone in it at once.

On another part of the field a famous Danava named Vivindhya, a heavy bowman, met Charudeshna, and the two fought the way Vritra and Indra fought in the old days, roaring at each other like lions and driving arrows into each other in their rage. Then Rukmini’s son laid on his bowstring a great weapon with the blaze of fire or the sun, a weapon that could destroy any enemy, and he woke it first with the incantations, and in his fury he challenged Vivindhya and loosed it. The Danava fell to the earth a corpse. And now Shalva himself came forward. He had seen Vivindhya die and his whole host waver, and he advanced on his beautiful chariot, the one that could go anywhere, and the fighters of Dwarka, seeing him on it, wavered with fear. It was Pradyumna who stopped the rot. He rode out in front of the Anartas and told them to be of good cheer. Do not waver, he said. Stand here and watch me fight. I will drive that chariot back by force, with Shalva on it. Yadavas, today, with the weapons that come off my bow like serpents, I will destroy the host of the lord of Saubha. Take heart, all of you, and do not be afraid; the lord of Saubha will be killed today, and attacked by me the wretch will be destroyed together with his chariot. The Yadava host heard him and stayed on the field, and began, Krishna said, to fight cheerfully.

Then Krishna described his son going into battle, and it is one of the few places in the story where a father is allowed to be proud out loud. Pradyumna mounted his golden chariot, drawn by excellent horses in mail, and over it stood the standard with the makara on it, the sea monster with its mouth gaping, fierce as Yama. The horses flew more than they ran. He had quiver and sword, and leather on his fingers, and he twanged his bow, which had the splendor of lightning, with great strength, passing it from one hand to the other as if in contempt of the enemy, and he spread confusion among the Danavas and the other warriors of the city of Saubha. He killed them continuously, and no one could see the slightest interval between one shaft and the next. The color of his face did not change and his limbs did not tremble; all that people heard of him was the lion’s roar that told of extraordinary valor. The sea monster on the golden flagstaff, the devourer of all fish, put terror into the hearts of Shalva’s men, and Pradyumna, the mower of enemies, drove straight at Shalva himself, who wanted the encounter as badly as he did.

Shalva could not bear the challenge. Maddened by anger, that conqueror of enemy cities came down from his chariot of unchecked speed to fight Pradyumna, and people watched a duel like the one between Indra and Bali; then, mounted again on his beautiful chariot decked with gold and crowded with flags and flagstaffs and quivers, the illustrious and mighty Shalva began to shoot at Pradyumna. Pradyumna overwhelmed him with a thick shower of arrows by the strength of his arms. The king of Saubha could not endure it and answered with arrows like blazing fire, and Pradyumna parried them, and Shalva rained other weapons of blazing splendor on him, and then Rukmini’s son, pierced by those shafts, loosed without wasting a moment an arrow made to enter the vitals of an enemy. It went through Shalva’s mail and into his heart, and he fell in a swoon. The foremost of the Danavas fled, tearing the ground under their feet, and Shalva’s army sent up its cries of Oh and Alas at the sight of the lord of Saubha lying senseless. But he was not dead, and when he came back to his senses he rose and suddenly loosed his arrows at Pradyumna. The mighty-armed hero, pierced deeply about the throat, weakened on his chariot. Shalva, having wounded Rukmini’s son, sent up a shout like the roar of a lion and filled the whole earth with it, and as Pradyumna went senseless Shalva did not lose a moment; he shot other shafts at him, hard to bear, and Pradyumna, pierced with arrows past counting and deprived of his senses, lay motionless on the field of battle. That was where Krishna left his son, for the moment, in the telling: on the floor of a chariot, at the feet of a man the gods had already promised to somebody else.

A key to reading this (whose sons, and what Saubha is): All of this is Krishna speaking to Yudhishthira in the Kamyaka forest, answering the question of where he was during the dicing, so “my son” means Samba when the mother named is Jambavati, and Pradyumna or Charudeshna when it is Rukmini. Saubha is Shalva’s flying city, which Ganguli’s translation calls the “chariot of precious metals”: it moves through the sky, and its lord fights both from it and on the ground. The Anartas are the people of the country around Dwarka. Kshemavriddhi, Vegavat and Vivindhya appear only here; the causes of the war, Shishupala’s death at Yudhishthira’s Rajasuya and Shalva’s vow, were given in the previous scene.

The gist: Shalva besieges Dwarka with a four-fold army while Krishna is away at the Rajasuya, and three young princes ride out to meet it. Samba drives off the commander Kshemavriddhi and kills the Daitya Vegavat with a mace; Charudeshna kills the Danava Vivindhya with a weapon woken by mantras; Pradyumna rallies the wavering Yadavas and takes on Shalva himself under the makara banner. One arrow reaches Shalva’s heart, but Shalva recovers and pierces Pradyumna in the throat, and Rukmini’s son lies senseless on his chariot.

“Turn the chariot”: Daruka’s son drives off the field, Pradyumna’s rebuke, and the arrow that Narada and the Wind came to stop

When Pradyumna went down under Shalva’s arrows, Krishna said, the Vrishnis who had come out to fight lost heart, and the warriors of the Vrishni and Andhaka houses broke into cries of Oh and Alas, while the enemy rejoiced. His charioteer, the son of Daruka, was a trained man and did what trained men do: seeing his master senseless, he turned the horses and carried him off the field. The chariot had not gone far when the best of warriors came back to himself. He took up his bow and spoke to his charioteer, and the first thing he said was a question. Son of the Suta tribe, what have you done? Why are you driving away from the field of battle? This is not the custom of the Vrishni heroes in war. Were you bewildered at the sight of Shalva in that fierce fight? Or did you lose heart watching it? Tell me truly what is in your mind. The charioteer’s answer was honest and it was also a plan. Son of Janardana, I am not confounded and fear has not taken hold of me. But I think the task of beating Shalva is too hard for you, son of Keshava, and so I am withdrawing slowly from the field. This wretch is stronger than you are. A charioteer must protect the warrior on his chariot whenever that warrior is deprived of his senses. You must always be protected by me, long-lived one, just as it is your duty to protect me. Believing that the man on the chariot must be guarded by the man at the reins, I am carrying you away. And you are alone, mighty-armed one, and the Danavas are many. Judging that you are not equal to them in this encounter, son of Rukmini, I am going.

The answer he got is the longest speech in this part of the story, and it is a speech about shame. Turn the chariot, said the prince whose banner bears the makara. Son of Daruka, never do this again; never, Suta, turn from the fight while I am alive. He is no son of the Vrishni race who forsakes the field, or kills an enemy fallen at his feet and crying I am yours, or kills a woman, a boy, an old man, or a warrior in distress with his chariot gone or his weapons broken. You were born in the race of charioteers and trained to your craft, son of Daruka, and you know the customs of the Vrishnis in battle; knowing them, never again fly from the field as you have done. Then he began to name the people whose faces he could not bear to imagine. What will the irrepressible Madhava, Gada’s elder brother, say to me when he hears that I left the battle in bewilderment, or that I was struck on the back, a runaway from the fight? What will Keshava’s elder brother, the mighty-armed Baladeva, dressed in blue and warm with wine, say when he comes home? What will that lion among men, Sini’s grandson Satyaki, that great warrior, say when he hears I abandoned the fight? And the ever-victorious Samba, and the irrepressible Charudeshna, and Gada, and Sarana, and mighty-armed Akrura, what will they say to me? And the wives of the Vrishni heroes, when they meet together, what will they say of me, whom until now they have thought brave and well-conducted, respectable, a man with a man’s pride? They will say: this Pradyumna is a coward, he comes here leaving the battle, fie on him. They will never say well done. Ridicule with that word fie, Suta, is worse than death to me or to anyone like me. So never leave the field again. Hari, the slayer of Madhu, has gone to the sacrifice of that lion of the Bharatas, Yudhishthira, and left the charge on me; I cannot bear to sit quiet now. When the brave Kritavarma was sallying out to fight Shalva I stopped him and said, I will resist Shalva, you stay; and Hridika’s son held back to honor me. Having left the field, what shall I say to that great warrior when I meet him? What shall I say to the irrepressible one of mighty arms, the holder of the conch and the discus and the mace, when he of the lotus eyes returns? Satyaki and Baladeva and the others of the Vrishni and Andhaka houses are always boasting of me; what shall I say to them? Suta, I will by no means be able to live, having left the field of battle with arrow wounds on my back while you carried me away. So turn the chariot, quickly, and never do this again even in the worst danger. I do not think life worth much when I have fled from the field like a coward with my back pierced by the enemy’s arrows. Have you ever seen me, son of a Suta, fly from a battle in fear like a coward? It was not right for you to leave the field while my desire for the fight was still unsatisfied. Go back.

The charioteer gave way, and he did it with grace. Son of Rukmini, he said quickly and sweetly, I am not afraid to drive horses on a field of battle, and I know the Vrishni customs in war; it is not otherwise in the least. But those who drive the chariot are taught that the warrior on it must be protected by his charioteer by every means, and you were badly hurt; you were wounded by Shalva’s arrows, and you were deprived of your senses, hero. That is why I retired from the field. But now that you have come to yourself without much trouble, chief of the Satvatas, son of Keshava, watch my skill at the reins. I was begotten by Daruka and I have been duly trained. I will now go into Shalva’s famous array without fear. And he pulled the reins and drove the horses back toward the battle at speed, and what followed was a display. Struck with the whip and pulled by the reins those excellent horses seemed to fly through the air, performing beautiful movements, now circling, now the same, now different, now to the right, now to the left, as if they understood the intention behind the lightness of the hand that held them; they burned with energy and seemed to go without touching the ground. That bull among men wheeled around Shalva’s host so easily that everyone who saw it wondered at it.

The lord of Saubha could not stand the maneuver and instantly sent three arrows at the charioteer, and the charioteer took no notice of their force and kept going along the right. Shalva turned his shower of assorted weapons on Rukmini’s son, and Rukmini’s son, smiling, showed him the lightness of his own hands and cut every one of them off as it arrived. Finding his arrows cut, the lord of Saubha reached for the dreadful illusion that is natural to Asuras and began to pour down a thick rain of shafts, and Pradyumna cut those powerful Daitya weapons to pieces in mid-flight with the Brahma weapon and loosed winged arrows of other kinds, arrows that delighted in blood, which turned aside the Daitya’s shafts and went into his head, his breast and his face. At those wounds Shalva fell down senseless. And the son of Rukmini, seeing the mean-minded Shalva down under his arrows, aimed another arrow at him, one that could destroy any enemy, an arrow worshiped by all the Dasharhas, flaming like fire and as fatal as a venomous snake, and when it was seen on his bowstring the sky filled with cries of Oh and Alas. Then all the celestials, with Indra and Kubera the lord of treasures at their head, sent Narada and the god of wind, who has the speed of thought, and those two came to Rukmini’s son with the message of the gods. Hero, king Shalva is not to be killed by you. Draw back the arrow. He cannot be slain by you in fight. There is no one alive who could not be killed by that arrow, but the Creator has ordained his death at the hands of Krishna, Devaki’s son, mighty-armed one; let that not be made false. And Pradyumna, glad at heart, took that best of arrows off his excellent bow and put it back in his quiver. The mighty Shalva, afflicted by Pradyumna’s arrows, got up disheartened and went quickly away; beaten by the Vrishnis, the wicked man climbed onto his chariot of precious metals, left Dwarka behind, and scudded off through the sky.

A key to reading this (the charioteer and the names): Pradyumna’s driver is the son of Daruka, and Daruka himself is Krishna’s charioteer, who holds the reins in the next scene. The two rules that collide here, that a charioteer must carry an unconscious warrior out of danger and that a warrior would rather die than be carried out with wounds on his back, are both parts of the Kshatriya code, and the epic gives the argument in full rather than deciding it. The people Pradyumna names are all Krishna’s family: Gada and Baladeva (Balarama) are Krishna’s brothers, Samba and Charudeshna are Pradyumna’s brothers, and Satyaki, Sarana, Akrura and Kritavarma (Hridika’s son) are the leading warriors of the house. This Kritavarma is the same man who will fight for the Kauravas at Kurukshetra. The “Madhava, elder brother of Gada” is Balarama again, under another name.

The gist: Pradyumna’s charioteer carries him senseless off the field, and when he wakes he forces the man to turn back by invoking the Vrishni code, the judgment of Balarama and Satyaki, and the mockery of the Vrishni women, which he calls worse than death. Back on the field he cuts Shalva’s illusions with the Brahma weapon and drops him with arrows in the head, breast and face, but when he sets his last arrow to the string, Narada and the Wind, sent by the gods, tell him that Shalva’s death belongs to Krishna. Shalva flies away on Saubha through the sky.

Saubha over the sea: Daruka’s wounds, the trick of Vasudeva falling from the sky, the saw of Sudarshana, and Krishna’s departure

Krishna came home to Dwarka from the Rajasuya, he told Yudhishthira, and found the city with its splendor gone. There was no sound of Vedic recitation and none of sacrificial offering; the fine young women wore no ornaments and the gardens had lost their beauty. Alarmed, he asked Hridika’s son why the men and women of the Vrishni city looked so stricken, and Kritavarma told him the whole story of Shalva’s invasion and departure. Krishna made up his mind on the spot to kill Shalva. He encouraged the citizens and said cheerfully to king Ahuka, to Anakadundubhi, and to the chief heroes of the Vrishni race: stay in the city, bulls among the Yadavas, and take every care, and know that I am going to kill Shalva. I will not return to Dvaravati without killing him; I will come back to you having destroyed Shalva together with his chariot of precious metals. Strike up the sharp, the middle and the flat notes of the war drum, which the enemy dreads. The heroes said, go and kill the enemies, and with their blessings and the auspicious words of the Brahmins, having bowed to the best of the twice-born and to Shiva, Krishna set out on his chariot drawn by the horses Shaivya and Sugriva, filling every direction with the clatter of his wheels and blowing Panchajanya, the best of conches. He took his four-fold army, persevering in battle, and crossing many countries, mountains crowned with trees, lakes and rivers, he came to the country of Martikavarta, and there he heard that Shalva was coursing on his chariot near the ocean. He followed.

He found him out at sea. Shalva on his chariot of costly metals sat in the middle of the deep, heaving with billows, and seeing Krishna from a distance the wicked man challenged him again and again. Krishna’s arrows, capable of piercing to the quick, did not reach the chariot, and that made him angry. Shalva shot thousands of arrows in torrents, on the soldiers and on the charioteer and on the horses, and the men fought on without thinking about them; then Shalva’s warriors poured straight shafts by the thousand, and the Asuras covered Krishna’s horses and his chariot and Daruka with arrows that could pierce the vitals, until Krishna could see neither horses nor chariot nor charioteer, and he and his army were buried under weapons. He answered with arrows by the tens of thousands, woken with mantras. But the chariot was in the sky, a full two miles off, and his troops could not see it; they could only stand on the field like spectators at a place of amusement, cheering him on with shouts like the roar of a lion and with the sound of their clapping. His tinted arrows went into the bodies of the Danavas like biting insects, and cries rose from the chariot of precious metals from those who were dying of the wounds and falling into the waters of the ocean, and the Danavas, cut off from their arms and their necks, fell as headless trunks with tremendous roars, and as they fell the animals of the sea devoured them. Then Krishna blew Panchajanya, the conch that came out of the waters, graceful as a lotus stalk and white as milk, as the kunda flower, as the moon, as silver.

Seeing his men fall, Shalva began to fight with illusion. He hurled at Krishna, without pause, maces and plowshares and winged darts and lances and javelins and battle-axes and swords and arrows blazing like javelins and thunderbolts, and nooses and broadswords and bullets from barrels and shafts and axes and rockets, and Krishna let them come and destroyed them all by counter-illusion. When that illusion failed, Shalva fought with mountain peaks. Then there was darkness and light by turns, and the day was fair and then gloomy, hot and then cold, and there was a rain of coals and ashes and weapons. Krishna recognized the illusion for what it was, destroyed it with counter-illusion, and in due time showered arrows all round. Then the dome of the sky blazed as with a hundred suns, a hundred moons, thousands and tens of thousands of stars, and no one could tell whether it was day or night or find the points of the horizon, and Krishna, bewildered, fixed on his bowstring the weapon called Prajna, which went out like flakes of pure cotton blown on the wind, and a fight followed that made the hair stand on end, and with the light regained he fought on. Shalva went up into the sky again and hurled shataghnis and great maces and flaming lances and stout clubs, and Krishna cut them into two or three pieces with his swift arrows before they reached him, and there was a great noise in the heavens.

Then the fight turned personal, because Shalva went for the charioteer. He covered Daruka and the horses and the chariot with hundreds of straight shafts, and Daruka, plainly about to faint, said: afflicted with Shalva’s arrows I stay in the field because it is my duty, but I am no longer able to. My body has become weak. Krishna looked at him and found the driver wounded with arrows; there was not a spot on his breast or the crown of his head or his body or his arms that was not covered with shafts, and blood ran from the wounds until he looked like a mountain of red chalk after a heavy shower. Krishna cheered him, since there was nothing else he could do, and at that moment a man came quickly to the chariot, someone with a home in Dwarka, and spoke to him like a friend, bringing a message from Ahuka; he seemed to be one of Ahuka’s followers, and his voice was choked with sorrow. Warrior, he said, Ahuka the lord of Dwarka says this to you; hear what your father’s friend says, Keshava. In your absence today Shalva came to Dwarka and by main force has killed Vasudeva. There is no need of battle any more. Cease, Janardana. Defend Dwarka; that is your principal duty. Krishna’s heart grew heavy, and he could not decide what to do and what not to do. In his mind he blamed Satyaki and Baladeva and the mighty Pradyumna, to whom he had left the protection of Dwarka and of Vasudeva when he set out to destroy Shalva’s city. Does Baladeva live, he asked himself, and Satyaki, and Rukmini’s son, and Charudeshna, and Samba, and the rest? With those men alive, even the wielder of the thunderbolt could not have killed Vasudeva. So it is plain that Vasudeva is dead, and just as plain that the others, with Baladeva at their head, are dead too. That was his settled conclusion, and it was in that state, grieving for all of them, that he met Shalva again.

And then he saw his father. Vasudeva himself was falling from the chariot of precious metals, falling toward the earth like Yayati when his merit was spent, like a star whose merit is gone, his headgear foul and loose, his hair and clothes disordered. The bow Sharnga dropped out of Krishna’s hand, and he swooned and sat down on the side of the chariot, and his whole army, seeing him senseless and as if dead, cried Oh and Alas. His father, prone, with arms and legs outstretched, looked like a bird dropping from the sky, and as he fell the enemy warriors with lances and axes in their hands struck him grievously, and Krishna’s heart trembled. Then he came to himself, and in that whole great contest he could see neither the chariot of costly metals, nor the enemy Shalva, nor his old father. He concluded that it had been an illusion, and recovering his senses he began again to discharge arrows by the hundred. With his beautiful bow he began cutting the heads off the enemies of the gods on that chariot, and from Sharnga he sent handsome arrows shaped like snakes, arrows that could go to a great height and carried intense energy; and then the chariot vanished by illusion, and he was filled with wonder. The Danava host, with its frightful faces and hair, set up a great howl while he waited for it, and he laid on his string the weapon that can pierce an enemy who cannot be seen, guided by sound alone, and the shouting stopped: the Danavas who had raised it were all killed by shafts that blazed like the sun and struck at the perception of sound. When the shouting stopped in one place it rose in another, and he sent his arrows there too, and so the Asuras yelled in all ten directions, above and across, and he killed them all, the ones in the sky and the ones that were invisible, with arrows of many forms and celestial weapons inspired with mantras.

Then the chariot, which could go anywhere at will, bewildered his eyes and reappeared at Pragjyotisha, and the Danavas drowned him in a shower of rocks. Torrents of rock fell on him and covered him until he began to grow like an anthill with its summits and peaks; buried with his horses and his charioteer and his flagstaffs in crags on every side, he disappeared from sight altogether. The Vrishni heroes of his army panicked and fled in all directions, and the sky and the firmament and the earth were full of cries of Oh and Alas, his friends wept and wailed with heavy hearts, and the enemy was delighted; he heard about all of it afterward, when he had won. He took up the thunderbolt, Indra’s favorite weapon, which can split stone, and destroyed the whole mass of crags, and his friends rejoiced to see him as men rejoice to see the sun come up and scatter the clouds. But his horses, crushed by the weight of the stones, were trembling on the point of death, and it was his charioteer, the wounded Daruka, who said what the occasion needed. Son of the Vrishni race, look, there sits Shalva, the owner of the chariot of precious metals. Do not disregard him. Exert yourself. Give up your mildness and your consideration for Shalva. Kill him, mighty-armed one; do not let him live, Keshava. An enemy should be killed with every effort. Even a weak enemy under the foot of a strong man should not be disregarded by him, still less one who dares us to fight. So kill him, tiger among men, lord, foremost of the Vrishnis, with every effort, and do not delay again. He is not to be beaten by mild measures, and in my opinion he who fights you and who devastated Dwarka cannot be your friend.

Krishna heard him and knew it was true. He told Daruka to stay a moment, and he fixed on his bowstring his favorite weapon of fire, blazing, of celestial origin, of irresistible force, incapable of being baffled, bursting with energy, able to penetrate anything, of great splendor; and saying, destroy the chariot of precious metals together with all the enemies in it, he launched with the might of his arms, in wrath and with mantras, the great discus Sudarshana, which in battle reduces to ashes Yakshas and Rakshasas and Danavas and kings born in impure tribes, sharp-edged like a razor and without stain, like Yama the destroyer, incomparable, the killer of enemies. Rising into the sky it looked like a second sun at the end of the age. It came to the city of Saubha, whose splendor was gone, and went right through it the way a saw goes through a tall tree, and cut in two by the energy of Sudarshana the city fell like Tripura shaken by the arrows of Maheshvara. When Saubha had fallen the discus came back into his hand, and he took it up and threw it again, saying, go to Shalva; and it cut Shalva in two as he was in the act of hurling a heavy mace, and set him ablaze with its energy. The Danava women fled in all directions, crying Oh and Alas. Krishna drove his chariot up in front of the town of Saubha and cheerfully blew his conch and gladdened the hearts of his friends, and the Danavas, seeing their city, high as the peak of Meru, with its palaces and gateways destroyed and all ablaze, fled in fear. And that, he told Yudhishthira, is why I could not come to the city named after the elephant. If I had come, Suyodhana would not be alive, or the match at dice would never have happened. What can I do now? It is hard to hold back the water once the dam is broken.

Having said this to the Kaurava king, the slayer of Madhu, foremost of men, mighty-armed and graced with every grace, saluted the Pandavas and prepared to leave. He bowed with reverence to Yudhishthira the just, and the king and Bhima each smelled the crown of his head in blessing; Arjuna embraced him, and the twins saluted him with reverence. Dhaumya honored him in due form, and Draupadi worshiped him with tears. He put Subhadra and Abhimanyu on his golden chariot and mounted it himself, worshiped by the Pandavas, and consoling Yudhishthira he set out for Dwarka on that chariot that shone like the sun, drawn by Shaivya and Sugriva. When the Dasharha had gone, Dhrishtadyumna, Prishata’s son, set out for his own city with Draupadi’s sons, and Dhrishtaketu, the king of Chedi, took his sister and went home to his beautiful city of Shuktimati after bidding the Pandavas farewell, and the Kaikeyas too, with the permission of Kunti’s son of immeasurable energy, saluted all the Pandavas and went away. But the Brahmins and the Vaishyas and the people of Yudhishthira’s kingdom, though they were asked again and again to go, would not leave the Pandavas. The crowd that surrounded those high-souled men in the forest of Kamyaka looked extraordinary. And Yudhishthira, honoring those high-minded Brahmins, gave his men the order in due time: make ready the chariot.

A key to reading this (names and things): Ahuka and Anakadundubhi are the elders of Dwarka, and Anakadundubhi is another name of Krishna’s father Vasudeva, the man whose death the false message reports. Shaivya and Sugriva are Krishna’s chariot horses, Sharnga his bow, Panchajanya his conch (which came from the sea), and Sudarshana the discus, which Vyasa here shows being launched with mantras like a weapon of fire. Saubha is at once a city and a chariot, which is why it can sit over the ocean, vanish, and reappear at Pragjyotisha, the country in the far east. The Prajna weapon dispels darkness made by illusion. Yayati falling from heaven when his merit ran out is a story of the Adi Parva. Krishna’s last sentence, that this is why he was not at Hastinapura for the dicing, is the reason the whole tale was told: it answers the question Yudhishthira asked.

The gist: Back from the Rajasuya to a stripped and silent Dwarka, Krishna pursues Shalva and fights the flying Saubha over the sea: weapons of illusion, rains of coals, a hundred suns, Daruka bleeding at the reins, a false message from Ahuka, and the image of his own father falling from the sky, which knocks the bow from his hand. Seeing through the trick, he clears the invisible Danavas with sound-guided arrows and the rocks with the thunderbolt, and at Daruka’s urging looses Sudarshana, which saws Saubha in two and then cuts Shalva in half. That war is why he missed the dicing. Then he leaves with Subhadra and Abhimanyu, the allies go home, and the people of the kingdom stay with the Pandavas in Kamyaka.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vana Parva. This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, sections I-XXXV (1-35); the Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters differently. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. Dialogue and commentary are adapted, not a verbatim translation. About the sources.