Mahabharata · Chapter 20 · Part 2 of 3 · Krishna’s report, the armies march, Uluka’s embassy

About 100 minutes · in 4 sittings

The report at Upaplavya: what Bhishma said to Duryodhana, and the vow he told again

Krishna came back from Hastinapura to Upaplavya with the war in his hands. He told the Pandavas everything that had happened in the Kuru court, and the brothers kept him a long time, going over it, asking again, turning the same facts to see what else they held, until at last he went to his own quarters to rest. Virata and the other kings were dismissed. The sun went down. The five brothers said their evening prayers, and while the words were on their lips their minds were somewhere else entirely, on the man who had just come back from the enemy’s city with a refusal. When the prayers were done they sent for him again. They brought Krishna into the middle of them, and the deliberation began over from the beginning, because a decision this size has to be made more than once before it is made. Yudhishthira opened it. Lotus-eyed one, he said, tell us everything you said to Dhritarashtra’s son in the assembly at Nagapura. And Krishna gave him the shortest possible summary of a failed mission: I went to Nagapura and told Dhritarashtra’s son, in the assembly, what was true, what was reasonable, and what was to his own advantage. That wicked-minded man accepted none of it.

The summary did not satisfy the king, and it was never meant to. What Yudhishthira wanted was the room itself, the voices in it, the exact order of who spoke and what they said, because in those voices lay the answer to the question he could not stop asking, which was whether the war was still avoidable. When Duryodhana chose the wrong road, he asked, what did the old grandsire of the Kurus say to that vengeful prince? What did the preceptor say, the blessed son of Bharadvaja? What did his own parents say, Dhritarashtra and Gandhari? What did our younger father say, Kshatta, who knows dharma better than any man alive and who grieves for us as if we were his own sons? And all the kings who sat in that assembly, what did they say? Tell it all, Janardana, exactly as it happened. He admitted something then that a king does not easily admit. You told us already, he said, the hard words the Kuru chiefs spoke to Duryodhana, a man drowned in lust and greed who thinks himself wise. But those words have gone out of my memory, Keshava. I want to hear them all again. Act so that the opportunity does not slip away from us. You are our refuge, Krishna, you are our lord, you are our guide.

So Krishna told it again, and this time slowly. Listen, king, he said, to what was said to Suyodhana in the middle of the Kuru assembly, and keep it in your mind. When I had finished speaking, Dhritarashtra’s son laughed out loud. It was the laugh that did it. Bhishma, who had sat through Krishna’s whole address in silence, was stung to fury by that laugh, and what came out of him was his own life, told as an argument. Listen, Duryodhana, he said, to what I say for the preservation of our race, and having heard it, tiger among kings, do what is good for your own house. My father Shantanu was known all over the world. At first I was his only son, and a wish grew in his heart for a second one, because the wise say that an only son is no son at all. He wanted the line never to end and his fame to spread. Knowing that wish, I brought Kali to be my mother, and to do it I made a promise that is very hard to keep, for my father’s sake and for the sake of the race. How that promise cost me the kingship, how I have held my seed drawn up ever since, you know perfectly well. I do not grieve over it. Look at me: I keep that vow and I live in happiness. Of Kali was born my younger brother, the mighty-armed and handsome pillar of Kuru’s house, Vichitravirya of the righteous soul. When my father had gone to heaven I installed Vichitravirya as ruler of the kingdom that had been mine, and I put myself under him, his servant. Then I won him wives fit for him, defeating many assembled kings to do it. You have heard about that often enough. Some time afterward I was drawn into single combat with the great Rama. From fear of Rama my brother fled, all the more because his people abandoned him, and in that time he grew too attached to his wives and was taken by a wasting sickness. When he died there was no one to rule, and the king of the gods did not send a single drop of rain on the land.

The famine brought the people to Bhishma’s door, and Bhishma repeated to Duryodhana what they had said to him, so the prince could hear how a kingdom sounds when it begs. Your subjects are about to be wiped out, they said. Be our king, for our good. Drive off this drought. Blessed be you, perpetuator of Shantanu’s line; your subjects are stricken with terrible diseases, very few of them are still alive; you must save them, son of Ganga. End these torments. Hero, cherish your subjects righteously. While you are alive do not let the kingdom go to ruin. They said it weeping, Bhishma told him, and my heart did not move. I remembered how good men behave and I chose to keep my vow. Then the citizens came, and my auspicious mother Kali herself, and our servants, the priests, the preceptors of our house, and many Brahmins of great learning, all of them grieving, and they urged me onto the throne. While you live, they said, shall the kingdom that Pratipa ruled go to ruin? Great-hearted one, be our king. I joined my hands to them. I was full of grief myself, badly shaken, and I laid before them the vow I had made out of respect for my father. Again and again I explained that for the sake of our race I had sworn to live with my seed drawn up and to renounce the throne, and that I had done it above all for my mother. I begged them not to put me to that yoke. And I joined my hands to my mother and said: mother, I was begotten by Shantanu and I belong to Kuru’s race, and I cannot make my promise false. I told her that over and over. It was for you especially, mother, I said, that I took this vow; I am your servant and your slave, mother, you who are famous for a parent’s love. Having begged my mother and the people this way, I asked the great sage Vyasa to beget children on my brother’s wives. My mother and I both pleased that rishi, and at last he granted our prayer for children. He begot three sons in all. Your father was born blind, and because of that defect of a sense from birth he could not be king. High-souled and celebrated Pandu became king. And when Pandu became king, his sons must receive their father’s inheritance.

The conclusion followed from the story like a verdict from evidence, and Bhishma delivered it as one. Sire, do not quarrel, he said. Give them half the kingdom. While I am alive, what other man is fit to reign? Do not disregard my words. I want only that there should be peace among you. Sire, king, I make no distinction between you and them; I love you all equally. What I have said to you is also the opinion of your father, of Gandhari, and of Vidura. The words of the old should always be heard. Do not disregard these words of mine. Do not destroy everything you have, and the earth along with it. That, Krishna told Yudhishthira, is what the grandsire said, and the room knew as he said it that a man who had given up a throne for a promise was asking his grandnephew to give up half of one for peace, and that the grandnephew had already laughed.

A key to reading this (names): Nagapura is another name for Hastinapura; both mean the city of the elephant. Kali is Satyavati, so called for her dark complexion, and Bhishma’s vow on her account, which the Adi Parva tells in full, is the reason he has no throne and no sons. The “great Rama” with whom Bhishma fought in single combat is Parashurama, Rama of the axe; how that duel came about is the story of Amba, told later in this same chapter. Kshatta is Vidura’s title. Pratipa was Shantanu’s father.

The gist: Back at Upaplavya, Krishna is asked to replay the Kuru assembly speech by speech, and the first voice he gives them is Bhishma’s. Provoked by Duryodhana’s laugh, the grandsire tells his own life as the argument: the vow for his father, the throne he refused during a famine, the three sons Vyasa begot, and the plain inheritance law that follows: Pandu was king, so Pandu’s sons must have their share. Give them half, Bhishma says, and he says it in the name of Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, and Vidura as well.

Three more voices in the hall: Drona’s ledger, Vidura’s plea, and a mother’s verdict

Krishna went on with his account, and Yudhishthira, who had asked for every word, got every word. When Bhishma fell silent, he said, the man who rose next was the one whose silence would have been most useful to Duryodhana. Drona had always been able to speak; that was part of what made him dangerous in a council, and he chose to speak now, in the middle of the assembled monarchs, and to aim what he said straight at the prince who paid him. He began, as Bhishma had, with a family. Pratipa’s son Shantanu had lived for the welfare of his line. Devavrata, whom the world called Bhishma, had lived for the same thing. And so had Pandu, the king of the Kurus, a man fixed on truth, master of his own appetites, righteous, careful in his vows, attentive to every duty he owed. Pandu held the kingdom by right. And Pandu, being that kind of man, handed it over. He gave the sovereignty to his elder brother, Dhritarashtra, whose wisdom no one questioned, and to his younger brother Vidura, the one they called Kshattri, and he set Dhritarashtra on the throne, and then, with his two wives, he walked into the forest. Drona lingered on what happened next, because it was the part Duryodhana had grown up inside without ever seeing. Vidura, that tiger among men, placed himself under Dhritarashtra with complete humility and waited on him like a servant, fanning him with the frond of a young palm. The subjects bowed to the blind king exactly as they had bowed to Pandu. Pandu, having given away a kingdom, went off and wandered the whole earth. And the state, in his absence, ran on a division of labor that everyone in the hall could remember: Vidura took charge of the treasury, of gifts, of the servants and the feeding of the household; Bhishma took charge of war and peace, and of the delicate question of which kings should receive presents and which should be refused. When Dhritarashtra sat on the throne, Vidura sat at his elbow. That was the house Duryodhana had been born into.

Then Drona turned. Born in Dhritarashtra’s line, he asked, how do you dare to split this family in two? Join your brothers and enjoy everything there is to enjoy. And before the prince could file the speech under cowardice or self-interest, Drona closed both doors. He did not say this from fear, he said, and he did not say it for money. The wealth he lived on had been given to him by Bhishma, and by Bhishma alone, whatever Duryodhana liked to think; he wanted no livelihood from the prince, and he would not be taking one. Where Bhishma stood, there Drona would stand. Do what Bhishma has told you, he said. Grinder of foes, give the sons of Pandu half the kingdom. I was their teacher as much as I was yours. Arjuna of the white horses is to me what Ashvatthama is. And then the sentence that Krishna repeated for Yudhishthira with particular care, because it had been said in front of every king who would soon be lined up across the field from him: what is the use of so much talk? Victory is wherever righteousness is.

After Drona, Vidura spoke, and Krishna noted the strange thing he did: he did not look at Duryodhana at all. He turned toward Bhishma, his uncle, and kept his eyes on the old man’s face for the whole of what he said. Devavrata, he said, listen to me. When this house of Kuru had died out, you were the one who brought it back to life. That is why you can sit there unmoved while I weep. The stain on our line is this Duryodhana, and you follow his inclinations, though he is enslaved by greed, wicked, ungrateful, and out of his senses with desire. The Kurus will pay for the acts of a son who steps over the command of a father who lives by dharma and by sense. Great king, act so that the Kurus do not perish. Like a painter making a picture, you gave life to me and to Dhritarashtra; the Creator makes creatures and then destroys them, and I am asking you not to imitate him. Do not watch the extinction of your own house with your own eyes and stay indifferent. And if the slaughter that is coming has already taken your understanding, then take me and take Dhritarashtra and go with us into the woods. Otherwise, this very day, bind this Duryodhana whose only wisdom is deceit, and rule the kingdom with the sons of Pandu standing guard around it. Relent, tiger among kings. A great killing of the Pandavas, of the Kurus, of kings whose power has no measure, is standing in front of us. He stopped there. His heart was too full to go on, and for a while, Krishna said, he only sat and breathed, the long uneven breaths of a man doing arithmetic he cannot make come out.

The voice that came after his belonged to the one person in the hall with the most to lose by speaking. Gandhari, Subala’s daughter, the prince’s own mother, had heard the shape of a whole family’s destruction in what the men were saying, and fear turned to anger in her, and anger to a kind of formal clarity. She addressed her son with every king in the assembly as her witness. Let all the kings present in this royal hall, she said, and let the twice-born sages who make up the rest of this conclave, listen while I proclaim the guilt of your sinful self and of every counselor who stands behind you. The kingdom of the Kurus passes in the order of succession; that has always been the custom of our house. Sinful in soul and exceedingly wicked in your acts, you are seeking the ruin of the Kuru kingdom by your own unrighteousness. Wise Dhritarashtra holds the kingdom, with far-seeing Vidura beneath him as his counselor. Why, Duryodhana, do you step past these two in your delusion and reach for the sovereignty? And while Bhishma lives, both the king and Kshattri ought to stand under him; it is only because this foremost of men, this son of Ganga, does not want the throne, out of his own righteousness, that the unconquerable kingdom went to Pandu. Therefore Pandu’s sons are its masters today, and no one else. By paternal right the wide kingdom belongs to the Pandavas, and after them to their sons and grandsons in order. Let us all carry out what Devavrata, the wise chief of the Kurus who holds to truth, has said. Let this king and Vidura, at the command of Bhishma of the great vows, proclaim the same; that is what well-wishers of this house should do. And with dharma set in front, let Yudhishthira, the son of Dharma, guided by king Dhritarashtra and urged on by Shantanu’s son, rule this kingdom of the Kurus, which is lawfully his, for many long years.

A key to reading this (who is speaking to whom): Everything here is Krishna’s report to Yudhishthira at Upaplavya, replaying the Hastinapura council. Drona addresses Duryodhana directly. Vidura addresses Bhishma, and his line about the painter refers to Bhishma’s arranging, through the sage Vyasa, the births of Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura when the line had no heir. Gandhari addresses her son while making the whole hall her witness. Kshattri is Vidura’s title. Drona’s insistence that he eats Bhishma’s bread and not the prince’s foreshadows the position he will hold on the battlefield: wherever Bhishma is, Drona is.

The gist: Three voices follow Bhishma’s. Drona retells Pandu’s renunciation, disowns any debt to Duryodhana, and asks for half the kingdom to be given, ending with the line that victory lies where righteousness lies. Vidura, looking only at Bhishma, begs him either to bind the prince or to take the elders into the forest. And Gandhari, against her own son, states the law of succession before the kings: the kingdom was Pandu’s, so it is Yudhishthira’s.

The blind king’s genealogy: Yadu, Devapi, and the son who is no king’s son

Last of all, Krishna said, the king spoke, and what Dhritarashtra chose to do with his turn was unexpected. He did not plead and he did not threaten. He recited a family tree, and he used it as a blade. Duryodhana, my son, he said, listen to what I say, and blessings on you; do it, if you have any respect left for your father. The lord of creatures, Soma, was the first ancestor of the Kuru line. Sixth in descent from Soma came Yayati, the son of Nahusha, and Yayati had five sons, every one of them a royal sage. The eldest was Yadu, a prince of tremendous energy. Younger than Yadu was Puru, our own forefather, born of Sharmishtha, the daughter of Vrishaparvan. Yadu, best of the Bharatas, was born of Devayani, which made him the daughter’s son of Shukra, the one they also call Kavya, whose power had no measure. The king let the pedigree settle and then told the story the pedigree existed to carry. Yadu, the founder of the Yadavas, strong and proud and wrong in his understanding, humiliated all the Kshatriyas. Drunk on his own strength, he disobeyed his father’s orders. Unbeatable in battle, he insulted his father and his brother. On this earth bounded on four sides by the sea, Yadu became supreme, and having brought everyone under him, he settled himself in this very city, the one named for the elephant. And his father Yayati, in his anger, cursed him, and then went further than a curse: he threw him out of the kingdom. Those brothers of Yadu who had taken the side of their strong, proud elder were cursed with him. And when he had cursed those sons, that best of kings set the youngest, Puru, docile and obedient, on his throne. So the eldest son can be passed over and stripped of the kingdom, Dhritarashtra said, and younger sons, by their respect for their elders, can obtain it. He was speaking to a son who had never once been told that a first-born could lose.

He gave a second example, and this one came from closer to home. There was, he said, my father’s grandfather, king Pratipa, learned in every virtue, famous through the three worlds. To that lion among kings, who ruled by dharma, three sons were born, celebrated, like three gods. Devapi was the eldest, Bahlika the second, and Shantanu, the wise, the youngest; and Shantanu, my son, was my grandfather. Devapi had energy, virtue, and truthful speech; he waited on his father constantly. But that best of princes had a disease of the skin. He was loved by the people of the city and of the provinces, honored by the good, dear to the young and the old alike; he was generous, held firm to truth, worked for the good of every creature, and obeyed the instructions of his father and of the Brahmins. His brother Bahlika loved him, and so did the noble Shantanu; the affection among the three of them was great. When the time came, old Pratipa, best of kings, had every preparation made according to scripture for Devapi’s installation. He gathered every auspicious thing. And the Brahmins and all the elders among the citizens and the country people forbade it. When the old king heard that the installation of his son had been forbidden, his voice choked with tears and he grieved for that son. Generous, righteous, truthful, loved by his subjects, Devapi was still excluded from his inheritance because of his skin, for the gods, the king said, do not approve of a king who is defective in a limb, and it was with that in mind that those bulls among Brahmins stopped Pratipa from installing his eldest. Devapi, seeing his father prevented, and sunk in sorrow on his account, went away into the woods. Bahlika, for his part, gave up his paternal kingdom and went to live with his maternal uncle; abandoning father and brother, he came into the immensely wealthy kingdom of his mother’s father. And with Bahlika’s permission, on Pratipa’s death, Shantanu of world-wide fame became king and ruled.

Now the blind king arrived at himself, and Krishna reported that he did it without flinching. In the same way, Bharata, though I was the eldest, I was defective in a limb, and so, no doubt after long reflection, the intelligent Pandu excluded me from the kingdom. Pandu, younger than me, obtained it and became king. At his death, chastiser of foes, that kingdom must pass to his sons. When I could not obtain the kingdom, how can you covet it? You are no king’s son. You have no right to this kingdom; what you want is to take what belongs to others. The noble Yudhishthira is a king’s son. The kingdom is lawfully his. He, the large-hearted one, is ruler and lord of this house of Kuru. He is devoted to truth, clear in his perception, obedient to the counsel of friends, honest, loved by his subjects, kind to those who wish him well, master of his passions, and the punisher of everyone who is not good. Forgiveness, renunciation, self-control, knowledge of the scriptures, mercy toward all creatures, the competence to rule according to dharma: every one of these royal attributes is in Yudhishthira. And you are no king’s son, and you are forever inclined to sin against your own kin. Wretch, how do you expect to succeed in seizing a kingdom that lawfully belongs to others? Drop this delusion. Give half the kingdom, with its share of the animals and the rest of the possessions. Then, king, you may hope to live a while yet with your younger brothers.

And that, Krishna said, was where persuasion ended. Bhishma, Drona, Vidura, Gandhari, Dhritarashtra: five people had spoken, and the man they spoke to could not be brought to his senses by any of them. Duryodhana ignored them all. He stood up with his eyes red with anger and walked out of the assembly, and every king he had invited, each of them ready to lay down his life, rose and followed him. Outside, the prince gave the same order over and over to those hard-hearted rulers: the constellation Pushya is in the ascendant today; march this very day to Kurukshetra. Driven by fate, those monarchs set out gladly with their soldiers, and they made Bhishma their commander. Eleven akshauhinis of troops, king, have been assembled for the Kauravas, and at the head of that host Bhishma shines, with the palmyra on the banner of his chariot. In view of what has happened, do now whatever seems right to you. Then Krishna gave Yudhishthira the accounting he owed him for his own embassy, and he gave it in the order of the four instruments of statecraft. He had begun with conciliation, wanting brotherly feeling between the cousins, the survival of the house, the growth and prosperity of the people of the earth. When conciliation failed, he had turned to division: he had listed the Pandavas’ ordinary and extraordinary feats, and when Suyodhana showed no respect for soft words, he had the kings assembled and tried to split them apart. He had shown them signs, extraordinary and awful and beyond the human; he had rebuked all the kings, made a straw of Suyodhana, terrified Radha’s son, and censured Subala’s son again and again for the dice game of Dhritarashtra’s sons; and having tried once more, by words and by intrigue, to pull the kings apart, he had gone back to conciliation. Then, for the unity of the house and because the business at hand demanded it, he had spoken of gift. He had said: these heroes, the sons of Pandu, will set their pride aside and live in dependence on Dhritarashtra, Bhishma and Vidura. Let the kingdom be yours. Let them have no power. Let everything be as the king, as Ganga’s son and as Vidura say for your good. Keep the kingdom; give up only five villages; without any doubt they deserve to be supported by your father. And even so, Krishna said, that wicked soul would not give you your share. So I see that punishment, and nothing else, is now the instrument to be used against those sinful men. All those kings have already marched to Kurukshetra. I have told you everything that happened in the assembly of the Kurus. They will not give you your kingdom without a battle, son of Pandu. Death is waiting in front of them, and all of them have become the cause of a universal destruction.

A key to reading this (the two precedents and the four instruments): Dhritarashtra’s two stories teach two different rules. Yadu shows that an eldest son can forfeit the throne by disobedience; Devapi shows that an eldest son with a bodily defect is passed over. It is the second rule that the blind king applies to himself, which is why he can tell Duryodhana that he is “no king’s son.” The city named for the elephant is Hastinapura. Pushya is a lunar mansion held auspicious for setting out. Krishna’s accounting follows the classical order of statecraft: conciliation (saman), division (bheda), gift (dana), and punishment (danda); the offer of five villages was the gift.

The gist: Dhritarashtra takes two stories out of his own ancestry to tell his son that the kingdom belongs to Yudhishthira. Duryodhana walks out red-eyed, and that same day, under Pushya, eleven akshauhinis move toward Kurukshetra behind Bhishma’s palm banner. Krishna closes his ledger: conciliation, division and gift have all failed, and only punishment remains.

Who leads the seven: four brothers name four men, and Krishna names one

The report was finished. Krishna had carried the whole of that day in Hastinapura back to Upaplavya and laid it out in the lamplight, speech by speech, and now there was nothing left to argue about. Yudhishthira understood that as well as anyone in the room. He turned to his brothers, with Keshava still seated among them, and spoke as a king speaks when the season for pleading has ended. You have heard everything that happened in the court of the assembled Kurus, he said. You have understood what Keshava has told us. So draw up my forces now, best of men, in the order in which they are to fight. Seven akshauhinis have gathered here for our victory. Hear the names of the seven celebrated warriors who will lead them: Drupada, Virata, Dhrishtadyumna, Shikhandi, Satyaki, Chekitana, and Bhimasena of great energy. These heroes will be the leaders of my troops. All of them know the Vedas; all of them are brave; all have kept excellent vows. They are modest, they understand policy, they are accomplished in war, and there is no weapon they cannot use. Then he did what he had done all his life when a decision weighed on him: he asked the youngest first. Tell us now, Sahadeva, son of Kuru’s line, which warrior, versed in every kind of battle array, should become the leader of these seven, and stand in battle against Bhishma, who is a fire whose flames are arrows. Give us your own opinion, tiger among men. Who is fit to command our whole host?

Sahadeva answered with gratitude, which was the truest thing in him. He named the man in whose kitchens his brothers had hidden for a year. Closely related to us, he said, sharing our distress, endowed with great might, versed in every virtue, skilled in weapons, irresistible in battle: the mighty king of the Matsyas, Virata, on whom we rely to recover our share of the kingdom, will be able to bear in battle both Bhishma and all those great chariot warriors. Nakula, who had a talent for speech, answered with lineage and with the memory of a fire. He that is respectable in years, in knowledge of the scriptures, in perseverance, in family and birth; he that possesses modesty, strength, and prosperity; he that is versed in every branch of learning; he that studied the science of weapons with the sage Bharadvaja; he that is irresistible and firmly devoted to truth; he that always challenges Drona and mighty Bhishma; he that belongs to one of the foremost royal houses; he that is a famous leader of hosts; he that resembles a tree of a hundred branches because of the sons and grandsons who surround him; that king who, with his wife, moved by wrath, performed the severest penances for the destruction of Drona; that ornament of assemblies, that bull among monarchs who cherishes us always like a father, our father-in-law Drupada, should be our commander. It is my opinion that he will be able to withstand both Drona and Bhishma when they rush to battle, for that king was once the friend of Drona, Angiras’s descendant, and he knows the celestial weapons. There was an old wound under those words. Drupada had been Drona’s boyhood friend, and Drona’s humiliation at his hands had cost Drupada half his kingdom, and out of that shame had come the sacrifice by which Drupada begged the gods for a son to kill Drona. The gods had given him two children from that fire. One was the woman these five men were married to. The other was the man Arjuna now named.

Arjuna did not argue with his younger brothers. He simply described someone, and let the description do the arguing. This celestial person of the hue of fire, with mighty arms, who came into life through the power of penance and the gratification of sages; who rose from the sacrificial fire pit armed with bow and sword, in armor of steel, mounted on a chariot yoked to horses of the best breed, the clatter of whose wheels was as deep as the roar of massed clouds; this hero whose energy and strength, whose frame and prowess are the lion’s, with a lion’s shoulders and arms and chest and a lion’s voice; this warrior of handsome brows and fine teeth, round cheeks, long arms, stout build, excellent thighs, large wide eyes, excellent legs, and a strong frame; this prince whom no weapon can pierce, who looks like an elephant with the temples split by rut; this Dhrishtadyumna, truthful in speech, with his passions under control, was born for the destruction of Drona. I think it is Dhrishtadyumna who will be able to bear Bhishma’s arrows, which strike with the force of the thunderbolt and look like snakes with blazing mouths, which come with the speed of Yama’s messengers and fall like flames of fire, and which only Rama of the Bhrigus ever bore before in battle. I do not see the man, king, except Dhrishtadyumna, who can withstand Bhishma of the great vows. That is what I think. Quick of hand, versed in every mode of warfare, cased in mail that no weapon can enter, this handsome hero who looks like the leader of a herd of elephants is, in my opinion, the man to lead us. Bhima, when his turn came, reached past Drona to the older and harder problem, the man on the other side whom none of them could bring themselves to want dead. That son of Drupada, Shikhandi, he said, who was born for the destruction of Bhishma, as the sages and Siddhas assembled together have said, king, whose form on the field of battle, when he displays the celestial weapons, men will see as the form of the illustrious Rama himself; I see no man who can pierce that Shikhandi with weapons when he stands for battle on his chariot in his armor. Except the heroic Shikhandi there is no other warrior who can slay Bhishma in single combat. For that reason, king, I think Shikhandi is fit to be our commander.

Four brothers, four names, and each name was a portrait of the man who spoke it. Yudhishthira had listened to all of them and he set all of them aside, gently, the way he set aside most things that were merely his own. Krishna, he said, the strength and weakness, the might and feebleness of everything in the universe, and the intentions of every person here, are known to virtuous Keshava. Skilled or unskilled in weapons, old or young, let him be the leader of my forces whom Krishna of the Dasharha line indicates. He is the root of our success or our defeat. In him are our lives, our kingdom, our prosperity and adversity, our happiness and misery. He is the Ordainer, he is the Creator. In him rests the fulfillment of our desires. So let him be the leader of our host whom Krishna names. Let that foremost of speakers say it, for the night is coming on. Having chosen our leader, and worshiped our weapons with flowers and perfumes, we will march at daybreak under Krishna’s orders to the field of battle. The lotus-eyed one looked at Arjuna as he answered, at the man whose chariot he would drive, and what he said first was a blessing on all four proposals. King, I fully approve of every one of the powerful warriors you have named to lead your troops. All of them are competent to withstand your enemies. They could frighten Indra himself in a great battle, let alone the covetous and evil-minded sons of Dhritarashtra. And then the accounting, which was the real matter. Mighty-armed one, for your good I made great efforts to prevent this battle by bringing about peace. By that we have been freed from the debt we owed to virtue. Fault-finding people will not be able to reproach us for anything. Foolish Duryodhana, who has no understanding, thinks himself skilled in weapons, and, though really weak, thinks himself strong. Array your troops soon, for slaughter is the only means by which they can be made to yield to our demands. The sons of Dhritarashtra will never be able to keep their ground when they see Dhananjaya with Yuyudhana beside him, and Abhimanyu, and the five sons of Draupadi, and Virata and Drupada and the other kings of fierce prowess, all of them lords of akshauhinis. Our army is possessed of great strength; it is invincible and cannot be withstood. Without doubt it will slay the host of Dhritarashtra’s sons. As for our leader, I name that chastiser of foes, Dhrishtadyumna. He had chosen Arjuna’s man, the one who had come out of a fire with a purpose already written on him, and in choosing him he had also, without saying so, kept Shikhandi in reserve for the one task no commander could give him.

A key to reading this (the fire and the two children): Drupada and Drona were boyhood friends; when the impoverished Drona came to the grown king for help and was mocked, he had his pupils, the Pandavas, defeat Drupada and took half his kingdom as a teacher’s fee. Drupada then performed a sacrifice to obtain a son who would kill Drona, and from that fire rose Dhrishtadyumna, armed and armored, and after him Draupadi. That is the origin Arjuna is describing. “Rama” in Arjuna’s speech is Parashurama, the Bhrigu warrior-sage, the only man who ever withstood Bhishma’s arrows; the story of that duel is told later in this chapter, and it is the same story that explains why Bhima names Shikhandi. An akshauhini is the largest unit of the ancient army; its arithmetic is given a few scenes on.

The gist: Yudhishthira lists the seven leaders of his seven akshauhinis and asks who should command them all. Sahadeva says Virata, from gratitude; Nakula says Drupada, from lineage; Arjuna says Dhrishtadyumna, born from a fire to kill Drona; Bhima says Shikhandi, born to kill Bhishma. Yudhishthira hands the choice to Krishna, who declares the peace effort finished and the debt to virtue paid, and names Dhrishtadyumna.

The march: from Upaplavya to Kurukshetra, and a camp on the Hiranvati

The name did something to the room. When Krishna said Dhrishtadyumna, the monarchs who had been waiting through a long night of speeches were filled with joy, and the shout they sent up was tremendous, and before it had died the camp outside was already moving. Draw up, draw up, the troops were shouting to one another, and the sound that rose from the plain around Upaplavya was made of every noise an army can make at once: the neighing of horses, the roaring of elephants, the clatter of chariot wheels, the blare of conches, the beat of drums. Chariots and foot soldiers, horses and elephants, men strapping on their mail and calling their war cries, that invincible host of the Pandavas surging this way and that looked like the Ganga in full flood, churned by fierce eddies and waves. In the van marched Bhimasena, and the two sons of Madri in their coats of mail, and Subhadra’s son, and the five sons of Draupadi, and Dhrishtadyumna of Prishata’s line. Behind Bhimasena came the Prabhadrakas and the Panchalas. The din of that joyful march was like the roar of the deep at the highest tide on the day of the new moon; it seemed to reach the sky. Breakers of hostile ranks, cased in armor, they went out like that, glad of it.

Yudhishthira marched in the middle of them, and what moved with him tells you what kind of king he was. He brought the chariots and vehicles for transport, the stores of food and fodder, the tents, the carriages and draft cattle, the cash chests, the machines and weapons, the surgeons and physicians, the sick, and all the emaciated and weak soldiers, and every attendant and camp follower. A war, in his hands, carried its own hospital. Draupadi stayed. The truthful princess of Panchala remained at Upaplavya with the ladies of the household, surrounded by her servants and maids, and the treasure and the women were guarded by bodies of soldiers, some stationed as a fixed ring around them and some ordered to patrol at a distance from that ring. So the Pandavas set out with their great host. They gave cows and gold to the Brahmins, who walked around them and pronounced blessings, and then the sons of Pandu took to their jeweled chariots and the march began in earnest. The princes of Kekaya, and Dhrishtaketu, and the son of the king of Kashi, and Shrenimat, and Vasudana, and the invincible Shikhandi, all hale, in armor, armed, and decked with ornaments, marched behind Yudhishthira with the king kept at their center. In the rear were Virata, and Yajnasena’s son Dhrishtadyumna of the Somaka line, and Susharma, and Kuntibhoja, and Dhrishtadyumna’s sons, with forty thousand chariots, five times that number of cavalry, foot soldiers ten times more numerous than the horse, and sixty thousand elephants. Anadhrishti and Chekitana and Dhrishtaketu and Satyaki marched in a ring around Vasudeva and Dhananjaya.

They came onto the field of Kurukshetra with their forces already in battle array, and the sons of Pandu looked, as they crossed onto that ground, like roaring bulls. Entering the field, those chastisers of foes blew their conches, and Vasudeva and Dhananjaya blew theirs. When the warriors heard the blare of Panchajanya, which rolled like thunder, every man in the Pandava army was filled with joy, and their lion roars, from men quick of hand and quick of foot, mingled with the conches and the drums until the whole earth and the sky and the oceans rang with it. It was the sound of a decision that could no longer be taken back.

Then Yudhishthira chose where to sleep, and he chose it as carefully as he had chosen everything else. He had the troops encamp on a part of the field that was level and cool and rich in grass and fuel, and he kept clear of cemeteries, of temples and the compounds consecrated to the gods, of the hermitages of sages, of shrines and every other sacred plot. On a delightful, fertile, open, and holy stretch of the plain the high-souled son of Kunti pitched his camp. When the animals had been given enough rest he rose again and went on, glad, surrounded by hundreds and thousands of kings. Keshava and Partha ranged ahead, scattering the outposts of Dhritarashtra’s men that had been set to watch the approaches. Dhrishtadyumna of Prishata’s line and that great chariot warrior Yuyudhana, whom men also call Satyaki, measured out the ground for the encampment. They had reached the holy Hiranvati, which flows through Kurukshetra, a river of sacred water whose bed was free of sharp pebbles and mud and which was counted an excellent tirtha, and there Keshava had a moat dug and stationed enough troops to hold it, with proper instructions. The rules that governed the tents of the high-souled Pandavas he applied to the tents he had raised for the kings who had come as allies, so that no ally would feel himself housed as a lesser man.

The camp that grew on the Hiranvati was a city with a war for its reason. Costly tents, proof against attack, stood apart from one another by hundreds and thousands on the surface of the earth, and they looked like palaces, and they were stocked with fuel and food and drink. Hundreds upon hundreds of skilled mechanics were assembled there on regular wages, and surgeons and physicians versed in their own science, furnished with every ingredient they might need. In every pavilion Yudhishthira had piled up stores as high as hills: bowstrings and bows and coats of mail and weapons; honey and clarified butter, pounded lac, water, fodder for the cattle, chaff and coals; heavy machines, long shafts, lances, battle-axes, bow staves, breastplates, scimitars, and quivers. Elephants huge as hills stood cased in plates of steel set with spikes, each of them able to fight against hundreds and thousands, and there were more of them than anyone could count. And when word went out that the Pandavas were encamped on that field, their allies began to march toward it with their forces and their animals, and many kings who had kept the vows of Brahmacharya, who had drunk the consecrated Soma, who had made great gifts to the Brahmins at their sacrifices, came there for the success of the sons of Pandu. The field was filling from one side. The other side had not yet arrived.

A key to reading this (numbers and places): The rear division’s count, given in multiples, works out to forty thousand chariots, two hundred thousand cavalry, two million foot soldiers, and sixty thousand elephants. The Hiranvati is a river that runs through Kurukshetra; the Pandavas camp on it here, and Duryodhana will camp on the same river a little later. Draupadi’s staying behind is worth marking: she spends the eighteen days of the war in Virata’s city, not on the field. The Prabhadrakas are a picked corps of the Panchalas. Panchajanya is Krishna’s conch.

The gist: Dhrishtadyumna’s name sets the army in motion. Bhima leads the van, Yudhishthira marches in the middle with the stores, the sick, and the physicians, and Virata and Drupada’s divisions bring up the rear; Draupadi stays in Upaplavya under guard. On reaching Kurukshetra the conches sound. Yudhishthira picks a campsite that spares every sacred plot, Krishna has a moat dug on the Hiranvati, the pavilions fill with mountains of weapons, ghee, and honey, and the allied kings begin to arrive.

Hastinapura arms itself: Duryodhana’s orders, and a city that turns into an ocean

Janamejaya stopped the telling here, the way a listener does when the story has run ahead of him. He had heard that Yudhishthira wanted battle, that the Pandava columns had marched and pitched their camp on Kurukshetra, that Vasudeva stood guard over the king, that Virata and Drupada were there with their sons, that the Kekayas and the Vrishnis and kings by the hundred ringed the camp, and that mighty chariot-warriors watched over it the way the Adityas watch over Indra himself. What he wanted now was the other side of the field. What did Duryodhana do when that news reached him? He wanted every measure the king had taken, in order, and he wanted it in detail, because the force that had gathered around Pandu’s son was one he could not picture any army resisting. Vasudeva. Virata. Drupada. Dhrishtadyumna, the prince of Panchala. Shikhandi, a chariot-warrior of the first rank. Yudhamanyu, whom the gods themselves could not stop. Put such men together, Janamejaya said, and they would trouble the deities in battle, with Indra at their head. So tell me, he asked the sage, everything that the Kurus and the Pandavas did on that frightful occasion in Kurujangala, as it happened.

Vaishampayana took him back to the hour when Krishna’s chariot rolled out of the Kuru court. The hall had emptied around Duryodhana. The old men had spoken and been laughed at, the envoy had gone, and the silence that was left belonged to the king. He used it to call three men to him, and only three: Karna, on whose bow he counted every victory already won; Duhshasana, whose hand had once closed on Draupadi’s hair; and Shakuni, whose dice had never yet fallen against him. What he said to them was clear-eyed in a way that his behavior in the assembly had not been. Keshava had gone back to the sons of Pritha without getting what he came for. He was angry, and an angry Keshava would push the Pandavas toward war, which was, in any case, what Vasudeva wanted; Bhimasena and Arjuna were always of one mind with him, and Yudhishthira was very much under Bhimasena’s sway. Duryodhana did not pretend to be the injured party. He said plainly that he had persecuted Yudhishthira and all his brothers before this, and that Virata and Drupada, kings he had made enemies of, now took Vasudeva’s orders and led Yudhishthira’s host. The battle that was coming would be fierce and terrible. Therefore, he told the three of them, cast off every trace of sloth and see to the preparations.

The orders that followed were the orders of a man who understood logistics better than he understood restraint. The allied kings were to pitch their tents on Kurukshetra by the hundred and by the thousand, and each encampment was to be spacious, impossible for an enemy to approach, close to water and to fuel, and sited so that the supply roads feeding it could never be cut by the foe. Every camp was to be stocked with weapons of every kind and dressed with streamers and flags. The road from the city to the camp was to be leveled for the march. And a proclamation was to go out that very day, without an hour lost: the army marches tomorrow. The three men answered with a single phrase, so be it, and when the morning came they had done everything the king commanded for the housing of the monarchs.

Consider what those orders assumed. Duryodhana had eleven armies pledged to him and kings arriving from Avanti and Kamboja and Sindhu and the far Vahlika country, and every one of those kings traveled with elephants that drank rivers and horses that ate fields. A camp that stood on Kurukshetra for weeks would starve unless grain and fodder came up the road from the city every day, and it would be helpless the first night an enemy raiding party found the wells. So the first thing the king secured was water, and the second was fuel, and the third was the road. Only then did he speak of banners. He was, whatever else the poets say of him, a prince who had spent thirteen years planning against the day his cousins came home, and the plan showed. Karna, Duhshasana, and Shakuni went out into the night with it, and by dawn the criers were in the streets, the leveling gangs were on the road, and the quartermasters were measuring out ground on the plain by the hundred tents.

The monarchs themselves needed no second summons. As the king’s word went through the city, they rose from their costly seats with an anger that already had its object, and they began, slowly, to knead arms that were like maces, arms blazing with bracelets of gold and scented with sandal paste. With hands the poets compared to lotuses they tied on their head-dresses and drew on their lower and upper garments and hung themselves with ornaments of every sort. The great chariot-warriors went to see their chariots fitted out. Men who knew horses harnessed the horses; men who knew elephants equipped the elephants. Warriors laced themselves into beautiful gold-worked mail and took up weapon after weapon, and the foot-soldiers followed them, arming and armoring in gold of their own. By the end of that day Duryodhana’s city, packed with millions of rejoicing people, had the bright look of a festival.

Vaishampayana gave Janamejaya one picture to hold it all. The Kuru capital at the prospect of war was the ocean when the moon rises. The crowds of humanity were its waters, with eddies turning in them; the chariots and elephants and horses were its fish; the tumult of conchs and drums was its roar; the treasure-chests were its jewels and gems; the ornaments and armor were its waves; the bright weapons were its white foam; the rows of houses were the mountains on its shore; and the roads and the shops were its lakes. That was Hastinapura on the night before it marched.

A key to reading this (Kurujangala, and who is listening): Kurujangala is the wooded heart of the Kuru country, the region that holds both Hastinapura and the plain of Kurukshetra; Janamejaya names the whole stage with a single word. The interruption also shows the frame the whole epic sits in. Vaishampayana is reciting to Janamejaya, Arjuna’s great-grandson, at the snake sacrifice where the Mahabharata was first told, and Janamejaya asks the questions a descendant would ask: what did the other side do, and when.

The gist: The moment Krishna leaves the court, Duryodhana treats war as settled and thinks first about camps, water, fuel, and supply roads. He orders the tents pitched on Kurukshetra, the road leveled, and the march proclaimed for the next morning. In one day the city becomes a festival, and by nightfall the poet sees it as an ocean under a rising moon.

Yudhishthira’s sigh and Krishna’s one word; Duryodhana’s eleven akshauhinis

In the Pandava camp the question came back, because for Yudhishthira it always came back. He had turned Vasudeva’s report over in his mind through the night, and in the morning he put it to him again, in front of the kings. How could the wicked Duryodhana have said such things? And now that this hour had arrived, what were they to do? How were they to act so as to stay on the track of their duty? He laid out everything Krishna already knew, as if hearing the list aloud might change its sum: Krishna knew the minds of Duryodhana and Karna and Shakuni, Suvala’s son. He knew the minds of Yudhishthira and his brothers. He had heard what Vidura said and what Bhishma said. He had heard, in their entirety, the words of wisdom Kunti had spoken. Weighing all of that, Yudhishthira asked, tell us after reflection, and without hesitating, what is good for us.

Krishna’s answer came in a voice the poet compares to clouds and to cymbals, and it did not hesitate. What he had said in the Kuru court had been for Duryodhana’s own advantage and consistent with both virtue and profit, and it had found no response in a prince for whom deceit did the work of wisdom. That man listened to nothing from Bhishma, nothing from Vidura, nothing from Krishna. He rode over everyone. He had no wish to earn virtue and no wish for fame; leaning on Karna, he regarded everything as already won. Krishna told them the thing the court had not spoken of: Suyodhana, sinful in his resolves, had actually ordered Krishna seized and held, and had failed to get his wish, and neither Bhishma nor Drona had said a word about it. All of them followed Duryodhana, Krishna said, except Vidura. Shakuni, Karna, and Duhshasana, three fools of equal measure, had fed a foolish and vindictive prince every kind of improper advice about the Pandavas. There was no point in repeating what the Kuru prince had said; the short form was that he bore Yudhishthira no goodwill at all. Then Krishna said the sentence the kings had been waiting for. In all the monarchs gathered in Yudhishthira’s army together there was less sinfulness and less wickedness than lived in Duryodhana alone. We do not want peace with the Kauravas at the price of our property, he said. War is what should happen now.

Nobody spoke. Every king in the tent looked at Yudhishthira’s face, and Yudhishthira read what the looking meant. He turned to Bhima, to Arjuna, to the twins, and gave the order: draw up the troops in battle array. The word ran outward through the camp from tent to tent, a great roar went up, and every soldier in the Pandava host was glad. The king did not share it. Watching the joy, and seeing behind it the slaughter of men who did not deserve to be slain, he began to sigh, deeply, and what he said to Bhimasena and to Arjuna was the confession of a man who has gotten what he worked for and finds it is the wrong thing. The very thing for which he had accepted exile in the forest and suffered so much misery, that great calamity, was now coming at them on purpose, as if by design. The thing they had striven so hard for was leaving them, as though the striving itself had driven it off, and a great distress they had done nothing to invite was arriving instead. How, he asked, shall we fight with those reverend elders whom we can on no account slay? What kind of victory is it that we win by killing our teachers, men of venerable age?

Arjuna answered him, and he answered with borrowed words, because his own would not have carried the weight. He repeated to his elder brother everything Vasudeva had said, and then he added what he had come to believe. You have certainly understood, he told the king, all the words Kunti and Vidura spoke, which Devaki’s son repeated to you. I know for certain that neither Vidura nor Kunti would ever say anything sinful. And beyond that, son of Kunti, we cannot withdraw now without a battle. Vasudeva turned to Partha and said, it is even so. That settled it. The sons of Pandu made up their minds for war, and, the poet says, they passed that night with their soldiers in great happiness, which is the kind of sentence that tells you how far the mood of a camp can be from the mood of its king.

Across the plain, when that night had passed, Duryodhana was doing arithmetic. He took his eleven akshauhinis and distributed them in proper order, sorting his men, elephants, chariots, and horses into three grades, superior, middling, and inferior, and placing them in the van, the center, and the rear of the ranks accordingly. Vaishampayana lets the inventory of that army run on for a long time, and the length is the point. Timber and planks to repair chariots damaged in the press; great quivers carried on chariots; tiger-skins and other stiff leather to sheathe the sides of the chariots; barbed javelins for the hand; quivers on the backs of horses and elephants and foot-soldiers; long-handled iron spears; heavy wooden clubs; flagstaffs and banners; long heavy arrows; nooses and lassoes of every kind; armor of every kind; oil, treacle, and sand; earthen pots filled with poisonous snakes; powdered lac and other things that burn; short spears hung with tinkling bells; engines for hurling hot treacle and water and stones; whistling clubs of hard wood; wax and heavy mallets; wooden clubs studded with iron spikes; plow-poles and poisoned darts; long syringes for pouring warm treacle; battle-axes, forked lances, spiked gauntlets, pointed iron spikes; chariots covered with the skins of tigers and leopards; sharp-edged circular planks; horns; axes of the kuthara kind and spades; cloths steeped in oil; and clarified butter. Dressed in gold-embroidered robes and jewels, filled with handsome men, the divisions of Duryodhana blazed like fire.

The chariots were the heart of it. Brave men of good birth, mailed, skilled in weapons and in horse-lore, were employed as drivers. Every chariot carried drugs and medicines, horses with rows of bells and pearls on their heads, banners and flagstaffs, ornaments on its turrets, shields, swords, lances, javelins, and spiked maces. Four horses of the best breed were yoked to each chariot, and a hundred bows were kept on each. One driver managed the pair in front, and two more managed the pair at the wheels, and both of those were themselves skilled chariot-warriors, just as the chariot-warrior himself could drive. Thousands of such chariots, gilded, guarded like fortified towns, stood on every side. The elephants were hung with bells and pearls and ornaments until they looked like hills studded with jewels, and on the back of each rode seven men: two with hooks, two excellent bowmen, two first-rate swordsmen, and one armed with lance and trident. The Kuru king’s army teemed with maddened elephants carrying loads of weapons and quivers full of arrows. There were thousands of horses, ridden by mailed, ornamented, flag-bearing soldiers, horses by the hundred thousand, all of them cured of the habit of pawing the ground, all trained and gold-decked and obedient to their riders. Of foot-soldiers there were hundreds of thousands, of every appearance, in every kind of armor, with every kind of weapon, decked in gold. To each chariot ten elephants were assigned as protectors, to each elephant ten horses, to each horse ten foot-soldiers. A large body was held in reserve to rally the ranks that broke, and in that reserve each chariot had fifty elephants attached to it, each elephant a hundred horses, each horse seven men on foot.

Then the poet gives the units, as a quartermaster would. Five hundred chariots and as many elephants, with fifteen hundred horses and two thousand five hundred foot-soldiers, make a Sena. Ten Senas make a Pritana, and ten Pritanas a Vahini, although in ordinary speech Sena, Vahini, Pritana, Dhvajini, Chamu, Akshauhini, and Varuthini are all used to mean the same thing. So the intelligent Kaurava arrayed his force. Between the two sides the total came to eighteen akshauhinis, seven for the Pandavas and ten and one more for the Kauravas. Five times fifty men make a Patti; three Pattis a Senamukha, or Gulma; three Gulmas a Gana; and Duryodhana’s army held such Ganas by the hundreds and thousands, full of men who could strike and were longing to. From among them the mighty-armed king chose the brave and the intelligent and made them his captains, and he placed one akshauhini under each of eleven men: Kripa, Drona, Shalya, Jayadratha the king of the Sindhus, Sudakshina the ruler of the Kambojas, Kritavarma, Drona’s son Ashvatthama, Karna, Bhurishravas, Shakuni the son of Suvala, and the mighty Vahlika. He had them before him daily and at all hours, he spoke with them, and he honored them repeatedly before his own eyes, until every warrior in the host, with all his followers, wanted only to do what pleased the king most.

A key to reading this (the akshauhini): This is the epic’s own arithmetic. The Adi Parva defines an akshauhini as 21,870 chariots, as many elephants, 65,610 horses, and 109,350 foot-soldiers; the Udyoga Parva here climbs the ladder from Patti to Gulma to Gana to Sena, Pritana, and Vahini, and then admits that in everyday speech the names are interchangeable. Seven and eleven are the numbers to keep. Eighteen akshauhinis came to Kurukshetra, and the war lasted eighteen days.

The gist: Yudhishthira asks once more what dharma requires, and Krishna answers in a single word: war. The order to array the troops brings joy to everyone in the camp except the king, who sighs at the thought of killing his elders; Arjuna steadies him with Kunti’s and Vidura’s words. On the other side of the same night Duryodhana grades his eleven akshauhinis and hands them to eleven captains: Kripa, Drona, Shalya, Jayadratha, Sudakshina, Kritavarma, Ashvatthama, Karna, Bhurishravas, Shakuni, and Vahlika.

Bhishma takes command: the tale of the Haihayas, Karna’s vow, and blood from a clear sky

With the eleven captains named, one thing remained, and Duryodhana understood it well enough to go and ask for it with folded hands. He brought all the kings with him to Bhishma, son of Shantanu, and what he said to the old man was a small treatise on command. An army without a commander, even a mighty one, is routed in battle like a swarm of ants. Two minds never agree. Rival commanders grow jealous of one another’s prowess. Then he told a story, because in this family the way to persuade an elder is with a story from before his time. Once, he said, the Brahmins raised a standard of kusha grass and went to war against the Kshatriyas of the Haihaya clan, men of immeasurable energy. The Vaishyas and the Shudras followed the Brahmins, so that three orders stood on one side and the Kshatriyas stood alone on the other. Battle after battle, the three orders broke, and the Kshatriyas, alone, kept beating the large army that faced them. At last the best of the Brahmins went to the Kshatriyas themselves and asked why. The virtuous among the Kshatriyas gave them a true answer: in battle we obey one man of great intelligence, while you are divided from one another and each of you acts on his own understanding. So the Brahmins chose one from among themselves who was brave and versed in policy, made him their commander, and then they won. That is how men conquer their enemies, Duryodhana said, by appointing a skilled, brave, and sinless commander who looks to the good of the troops beneath him.

Then he turned the argument on Bhishma directly, and the flattery was real, which is what made it work. You are the equal of Ushanas himself, he said, and you always seek my good; you cannot be slain, and you are devoted to virtue. Be our commander. As the sun among the lights of heaven, as the moon to the sweet herbs, as Kubera among the Yakshas, as Vasava among the gods, as Meru among mountains, as Suparna among birds, as Kumara among the gods, as Havyavaha among the Vasus, so are you among us. Guarded by you, as the gods are guarded by Shakra, we shall be invincible even to the gods. March at our head as Agni’s son marches at the head of the gods, and let us follow you the way calves follow a great bull.

Bhishma agreed, and then he did what he always did, which was to tell the truth in a way that left everyone uneasy. It is as you say, mighty-armed one, he told Duryodhana. But the Pandavas are as dear to me as you are. Therefore I should certainly seek their good as well, although I shall certainly fight for you, since I gave you my pledge to do so. He then measured himself, aloud, against the world. He saw no warrior on earth who was his equal, except one, the tiger among men, Dhananjaya, son of Kunti, who possessed great intelligence and knew innumerable celestial weapons, and who, Bhishma said, would never fight him openly. With the power of his weapons he could destroy this universe of gods, Asuras, Rakshasas, and men in an instant; and yet the sons of Pandu could not be exterminated by him. So this was what he offered: he would slay ten thousand warriors every day, and if they did not kill him in battle first, he would go on slaughtering their forces at that rate. And there was one more understanding on which he would take the command, and Duryodhana had better hear it. Either Karna fights first, lord of earth, or I fight first. The Suta’s son is always boasting of his prowess in battle and comparing it with mine.

Karna answered before the king could. As long as Ganga’s son lives, he said, I shall never fight. After Bhishma is slain, I shall fight with the wielder of Gandiva. It was a vow, and like every vow in this story it would be kept to the letter and paid for in full. Consider what the kings standing around them had just heard. The old man had said that he would spare the Pandavas’ lives and kill their soldiers by the ten thousand, and the greatest bowman on the Kaurava side had answered by removing himself from the field for as long as the old man lived. Duryodhana, who had just given away eleven armies to eleven captains, had in the space of two speeches been told that his commander would not finish the war and his champion would not start it. He let it stand. There was nothing else he could do. He installed Bhishma as commander of his force with all the proper rites and distributed lavish gifts, and the old man, consecrated, blazed with beauty. At the king’s word the musicians beat their drums with a will and blew conchs by the hundreds and thousands. Lion-roars rose from the ranks, and every animal in the camp cried out at once.

And then the sky answered. It was cloudless, and out of it fell a shower of blood that turned the ground to mire. Fierce whirlwinds rose. The earth shook. Elephants trumpeted, and the hearts of the warriors sank under the noise. Bodiless voices were heard in the air, and meteors streaked and fell. Jackals howled, fiercely, the way they do before a great calamity. These and a hundred other kinds of fearful portent showed themselves at the hour the king placed Ganga’s son at the head of his troops. Duryodhana went on as if the omens were part of the ceremony. Having made Bhishma, that grinder of hostile hosts, his general, having given the Brahmins abundant cattle and gold so that they would pronounce blessings on him, and glorified by those blessings, he marched to Kurukshetra with his vast host, his brothers beside him and Ganga’s son in the van. With Karna at his side he rode over the plain and had his camp measured out on a level stretch of it, and the camp, set on a pleasant, fertile place with grass and fuel in plenty, shone like Hastinapura itself.

A key to reading this (names, and two vows): Ushanas is Shukracharya, preceptor of the Asuras and the great teacher of statecraft; with that comparison Duryodhana is praising Bhishma’s judgment as much as his bow. Kumara is Kartikeya, Agni’s son and the commander of the army of the gods; Havyavaha is a name of Agni, who is counted among the eight Vasus; Suparna is Garuda; Shakra and Vasava are both Indra. The war between the Brahmins and the Haihaya Kshatriyas appears here only as Duryodhana’s illustration. The two vows spoken in this scene, Bhishma’s ten thousand a day and Karna’s refusal to fight while Bhishma lives, fix the shape of the first ten days of the Bhishma Parva.

The gist: Duryodhana asks Bhishma, with folded hands and a parable about the Haihayas, to take sole command. Bhishma accepts on his own terms: he will fight for Duryodhana and still wish the Pandavas well, he will kill ten thousand a day rather than try to exterminate them, and either he or Karna fights, never both. Karna vows to keep his bow down while Bhishma lives. Blood rains from a clear sky at the consecration, and the army marches to Kurukshetra.

Seven leaders for seven armies, and Balarama in blue silk, who comes only to leave

Janamejaya wanted to know what happened on the other side of the news. When word crossed the field that Bhishma, the son of Ganga, the grandsire of every Bharata alive, the foremost of all who had ever held a weapon, a man the poets measured against Brihaspati for intellect and against the ocean for gravity, against Himavat for stillness and against the sun for heat, a man who could empty an enemy army with arrows the way Indra empties the sky with rain, had been installed as commander of the Kuru forces until death removed him, on the eve of a sacrifice whose offerings would be men, what did the mighty-armed son of Pandu say? What did Bhima say, and Arjuna? And what did Krishna say?

Vaishampayana answered that Yudhishthira received the news the way he received everything, quietly, and that he understood at once what it meant, because he had spent thirteen years learning what danger looked like before it arrived. He sent for his brothers and for the eternal Vasudeva. When they were before him he spoke in his mild voice, the voice that was easy to mistake for softness. Go among the soldiers, he said. Put on your armor and stay in it. Our first encounter will be with our grandfather. And find me seven leaders, one for each of the seven akshauhinis of our army. Krishna heard him out and approved without ornament. Those were the words the occasion required, he said, and Yudhishthira had said them; now let the next thing be done. Let the seven be chosen.

So the men who had come hungry for this war were called in, and Yudhishthira set each of them over a division with the formalities such an appointment deserved: Drupada, king of Panchala; Virata, in whose house the Pandavas had spent their year in hiding; Satyaki, the bull of the Shini clan, the Vrishni who had come with Krishna and stayed; Dhrishtadyumna, prince of Panchala; Dhrishtaketu, the Chedi king whose father Shishupala had died under Krishna’s discus; Shikhandi, the other prince of Panchala, whose name Bhishma would soon have his own reasons to explain; and Sahadeva, ruler of Magadha, the son of the Jarasandha whom Bhima had torn in two. Seven leaders, seven armies. Above the seven, over the whole host, Yudhishthira placed Dhrishtadyumna, the man who had stepped out of Drupada’s sacrificial fire already grown and already armed, for one purpose: the death of Drona. Above the leaders, as leader of leaders, he placed Arjuna of the curling hair. And for Arjuna there was one more appointment, which needed no ceremony because everyone had assumed it for years. Janardana, the beautiful and deep-thinking younger brother of Sankarshana, would be his guide and would drive his horses.

The war now had a shape on both sides, and it was at this moment, with the slaughter visible on the horizon like weather, that Balarama came into the Pandava camp. He did not come alone. Around him walked the flower of the Vrishni clan: Akrura, Gada, Samba, Uddhava, Pradyumna the son of Rukmini, the sons of Ahuka, Charudeshna and the rest, a ring of men who moved like a pride of great tigers, so that the one at their center looked like Indra walking among the Maruts. Dressed in blue silk, as tall and pale as a peak of Kailasa, he walked with the loose, playful gait of a lion, and the corners of his eyes were red with drink. Everyone stood. Yudhishthira stood, and Krishna in all his brightness stood, and Bhima of the terrible deeds, and Arjuna with the Gandiva bow, and every king in the tent rose from his seat, and they worshiped Halayudha, the man whose weapon was a plow, as he came in among them. Yudhishthira took Balarama’s hands in his own. Balarama greeted them all in return, beginning with Vasudeva, and then did something that told the room what kind of man he was: he turned to Virata and to Drupada, the two who were older than he was, and saluted them with the respect that age was owed. Only then did he sit, and he sat on Yudhishthira’s own seat, beside him.

When the kings had settled, the son of Rohini looked across at Krishna, and it was to Krishna that he spoke, though the whole tent heard him. This slaughter was coming, he said, and it was fierce and it was terrible and it could not be turned aside; fate had written it, and he for one did not believe anyone could unwrite it. He hoped, all the same, to see every man present come out of it alive and whole, with his friends around him and his body sound. But he did not believe it. Every Kshatriya on earth had gathered in one place, and their hour had come, all of them together, and there was going to be a melee in which men would wade through a mire of flesh and blood. Then he said the thing he had come to say. He had told Vasudeva, more than once and in private: those who are related to us equally should be treated by us equally. The Pandavas are ours; so is Duryodhana. Give him the same help you give them. Duryodhana had asked for that help, repeatedly. And for your sake, Balarama said, looking at the Pandavas now, the slayer of Madhu paid no attention to my words. He looked at Arjuna and gave his whole heart to your cause. So Balarama was certain of one thing, which was that the Pandavas would win, because Krishna wished it, and what Krishna wished was what happened. As for himself, he did not dare look at the world without Krishna beside him, and so he followed wherever Krishna’s purpose led. But there was a second bond, and he named it plainly. Both of the heroes who would decide this war with the mace were his pupils. He had trained Bhima’s arms and he had trained Duryodhana’s, and his affection for the one was exactly equal to his affection for the other. For all these reasons he would go now to the tirthas of the Sarasvati and bathe there, because he could not stand on this field and watch the Kauravas destroyed with a level face.

He rose. He took his leave of the Pandavas, and when Krishna made to walk out with him he stopped him, gently, and made him stay. Then the mighty-armed Rama, who had come in blue silk with a pride of Vrishnis around him, went out of the camp and set his face toward the sacred waters, and the war lost the greatest mace-fighter alive before its first arrow was shot.

A key to reading this (names and ties): Halayudha, Rama, and the son of Rohini all mean Balarama; Sankarshana is another of his names, which is why Krishna is called Sankarshana’s younger brother. Satyaki is the bull of the Shini clan. The Sahadeva who commands a division here is the king of Magadha, Jarasandha’s son, and should not be confused with the Pandava twin. Dhrishtadyumna’s birth from Drupada’s fire, and the purpose attached to it, are told in the Adi Parva. Balarama’s pupils are Bhima and Duryodhana; their final duel with the mace in the Shalya Parva is the scene he is refusing, in advance, to watch.

The gist: The news that Bhishma commands the Kaurava host is answered with an org chart: seven leaders for seven akshauhinis, Dhrishtadyumna over all of them, Arjuna over the leaders, Krishna at Arjuna’s reins. Then Balarama arrives in state, sits beside Yudhishthira, tells the tent that he asked Krishna to treat both sides alike and was refused, admits that Bhima and Duryodhana are equally his pupils, and leaves for the Sarasvati rather than watch either of them die.

Rukmi and the bow called Vijaya, refused by Arjuna and then by Duryodhana; and Dhritarashtra’s first question to Sanjaya

The second visitor arrived at about the same time, and he arrived the way he did everything, at the head of an army and under a banner that hurt the eyes. His name was Rukmi, and he was the son of Bhishmaka, the king the poets also call Hiranyaroman, a friend of Indra, the most illustrious of the Bhojas and master of the whole southern country. Rukmi had been schooled on Gandhamadana by a lion among the Kimpurushas named Drona, and from that teacher he had taken the entire science of arms in all four of its divisions, and something more: a bow of celestial workmanship that had belonged to the great Indra, the bow called Vijaya, which in its energy stood level with Gandiva and with Sharnga. The heavens had owned three such bows. Gandiva had been Varuna’s; Vijaya had been Indra’s; and the third, the bow of great energy that put fear into the hearts of enemy warriors, had been Vishnu’s, and that one, Sharnga, was now in Krishna’s hands. Arjuna had received Gandiva from Agni at the burning of the Khandava forest. Rukmi had received Vijaya from Drona of Gandhamadana. And Krishna had won Sharnga on the day he broke the nooses of Mura and killed that Asura by main strength, defeated Naraka the son of the Earth, and carried home the jeweled earrings of Aditi, sixteen thousand captive girls, and heaps of gems. Rukmi came to the Pandavas with Vijaya in his hand, and the twang of that bow was the sound of clouds breaking, and he walked into the camp as though he expected the whole universe to be afraid of him.

There was history under his arrival, and everyone in the camp knew it. Years earlier, proud of the strength of his arms, Rukmi had refused to accept that the wise Vasudeva had carried off his sister Rukmini in front of a hall full of suitors. He had sworn an oath that he would not come home until Janardana was dead, and he had ridden out after him with a four-limbed army so large it covered a good part of the earth as it moved, men in beautiful mail carrying every weapon that had a name, a host like the Ganga in flood. He had caught up with the Vrishni who is lord of everything austerity can obtain. And he had been beaten, thoroughly, and covered in shame. The oath still stood, so he did not go back to Kundina. On the ground where Krishna had defeated him he built a city and named it Bhojakata, and that city, thick with elephants and horses and troops, is still known on earth by that name. This was the man who now rode into the Pandava lines cased in armor, carrying bow and shield and sword and quivers, with a full akshauhini of troops around him and a standard as bright as the sun above him, and announced himself to the Pandavas, saying that he had come to do what would please Vasudeva. Yudhishthira walked a few steps forward to receive him with honor. Rukmi returned the courtesy, accepted the praise the Pandavas offered, and rested with his army for a while.

Then, in the middle of the assembled heroes, he addressed Arjuna, and the speech he made was the kind that ends friendships. If you are afraid, son of Pandu, he said, I am here to help you in the battle, and the help I give will be more than your enemies can bear. There is no man in this world who equals me in prowess. Point out the enemies you want dead and I will kill them. Drona, Kripa, Bhishma, Karna: I will kill one of those heroes for you. Or let all these kings of the earth stand aside, and I will kill your enemies by myself and hand you the earth. He said this in front of Yudhishthira the Just and in front of Krishna, with every monarch in the camp listening. Arjuna looked at Krishna and looked at his elder brother, and then he answered, smiling, in a voice that stayed friendly the entire way through. He had been born in the line of Kuru, he said, and more than that he was Pandu’s son. He named Drona as his teacher. He had Vasudeva for his ally. And on top of all of that he carried the bow called Gandiva. How could such a man say the words “I am afraid”? When he fought the mighty Gandharvas during the affair of the cattle, who had been there to help him? At Khandava, in that terrible fight against gods and Danavas banded together in their multitudes, who had been his ally? When he fought the Nivatakavachas, and the other Danavas called the Kalakeyas, who stood with him? At Virata’s city, against the Kurus beyond counting, who was his ally then? He had paid his respects, for battle’s sake, to Rudra, to Indra, to Vaishravana, Yama, Varuna, Pavaka, to Kripa and to Drona and to Madhava; he held the tough celestial bow of great energy called Gandiva, his quivers could not be emptied, and he was armed with the weapons of the gods. Could a man like that say to Indra himself, thunderbolt in hand, “I am afraid,” words that strip a man of every scrap of his fame? Mighty-armed one, I am not afraid, Arjuna said, and I have no need of your help. Go, or stay, whichever pleases you. Rukmi listened, gathered up his sea of an army, and went to Duryodhana, and to Duryodhana he made the same speech. And Duryodhana, who was proud of his own bravery, sent him away in the same manner. So two men withdrew from the war before it began: Balarama of the Vrishnis, and King Rukmi. When the one had gone to his tirthas and the other had gone wherever a twice-refused man goes, the sons of Pandu sat down once more to take counsel, and that assembly, with Yudhishthira the Just presiding and kings crowded thick around him, shone like the night sky with the moon in the middle of it.

Janamejaya asked what the Kauravas did next, once the armies had been drawn up on the field of Kurukshetra, driven as they were by destiny itself. Vaishampayana said that when the soldiers stood in their ranks, Dhritarashtra turned to Sanjaya. Come, Sanjaya, the blind king said, and tell me everything that has happened in the camps of the Kurus and the Pandavas, in full. I hold destiny to be the stronger thing and effort to be useless, because I understand the consequences of this war, which lead nowhere but to ruin, and still I cannot restrain my son, who delights in gambling and takes deceit for wisdom. I understand everything, and I cannot secure my own welfare. Suta, my understanding can see the flaws in a plan, and then I go near Duryodhana and that same understanding turns away from the right road. Since that is how things are, what must be will be. And after all, to offer one’s body up in battle is the duty a Kshatriya is praised for.

Sanjaya’s reply was courteous and did not let him off. The question was worthy of the king, he said, but it would not do to lay the whole fault on Duryodhana alone, and he would explain that at length if the king would listen. A man who comes to grief by his own misconduct has no business blaming either the times or the gods. A man who does every wicked thing deserves to die for the things he has done. The sons of Pandu, injured in the matter of the dice, bore every injury quietly along with all their counselors, and they bore it, Sanjaya said, looking to one face alone, which was the king’s. So let the king hear, in full, of the slaughter of horses and elephants and kings of immeasurable energy that was about to take place, and when he had heard patiently of the destruction of the world in the fierce battle that had been brought about, let him arrive at one conclusion and no other: that man is never the agent of his own acts, right or wrong. Like a wooden machine, Sanjaya said, a man is not the doer of what he does. Three opinions were held on the matter. Some said everything was ordained by God; some said that acts were the fruit of free will; and some said that acts were the fruit of acts done in earlier lives. Whichever was true, the king should listen with patience to the evil that had now come upon them all.

A key to reading this (two Dronas, and the wars Arjuna counts): Rukmi’s teacher Drona is a Kimpurusha of Gandhamadana and has nothing to do with the Kauravas’ preceptor beyond the name. Bhishmaka is the king of Vidarbha and the father of Rukmini; Kundina is his capital. The story of Mura and Naraka and the earrings of Aditi is told at length in the Harivamsha and the Bhagavata; here it is a single clause on the way to explaining where Sharnga came from. Every battle Arjuna lists is in this Mahabharata already: the Gandharvas during the Kaurava cattle expedition (Vana Parva), the burning of Khandava (Adi Parva), the Nivatakavachas and Kalakeyas during his years in Indra’s heaven (Vana Parva), and the cattle raid at Virata’s city (Virata Parva).

The gist: Rukmini’s brother, who once swore to kill Krishna and built a city on the spot where he lost, arrives with an akshauhini and Indra’s bow and offers to kill Bhishma or Drona for Arjuna, if Arjuna is afraid. Arjuna counts the wars he fought alone and sends him away; Duryodhana does the same. With Balarama and Rukmi out, the war has its final roster. Then the frame shifts to Hastinapura, where Dhritarashtra confesses that his judgment fails whenever he is near his son, and Sanjaya answers that the fault is not Duryodhana’s alone, and that whether man is the doer of his deeds is a question with three answers.

Uluka is sent: Duryodhana’s last message, and the cat who prayed on the riverbank

The Pandavas had pitched their tents along the Hiranvati, Sanjaya told the blind king, and across the plain the Kauravas pitched theirs. Duryodhana did the work of a commander properly. He posted his divisions, paid his respects to every king who had come to fight under him, planted outposts, set companies of soldiers to guard the sleeping warriors. Then he called Karna, Duhshasana and Shakuni to him and took counsel. He spoke first with Karna alone. He spoke next with Karna, his brother, and his uncle together. And when the four of them had agreed on what was to be done, he sent for Uluka, Shakuni’s son, the child of the man who had won a kingdom with dice, and took him aside where no one else could hear. What he wanted was a messenger, and what the messenger would carry was a wound. Go to the Pandavas and the Somakas, he said, and repeat my words to Yudhishthira where Vasudeva can hear them. The war that has been expected between the Kurus and the Pandavas for so long has finally come. Those boastful words that Sanjaya brought me, spoken in a great roar by the son of Kunti and his younger brothers and Vasudeva, the time has come to make them good. Let them do everything they have pledged to do.

Then he composed, sentence by sentence, the speech that Uluka was to deliver to the eldest Pandava. It began with reproach dressed as concern. You are a righteous man, Yudhishthira; how can you and your brothers, with the Somakas and the Kekayas, set your heart on unrighteousness? How can you, who should be dispelling the fears of every creature, wish for the destruction of the world? And then it turned to a story, because Duryodhana had a story ready. There was a verse, he said, sung long ago by Prahlada when the gods had taken his kingdom from him: the man whose banner of righteousness is always flying, and whose sins are always hidden, is said to follow the way of the cat. And Narada had once told the king’s father how the cat came into the saying. A wicked cat took up residence on the banks of the Ganga, gave up every occupation, raised its paws in the posture of a devotee, and announced to all creatures, with a show of purified heart, that it was now practicing virtue. For a long time nothing happened. Then the birds began to trust it. They gathered around it, they praised it, and the eater of feathered things, worshiped by feathered things, judged its purpose accomplished. After a while the mice came too. They saw an ascetic keeping vows, and they held a council of their own. We have many enemies, they said. Let this one be our maternal uncle and protect our old and our young. So they went to the cat and asked it to be their shelter, their great friend, their protector, as the wielder of the thunderbolt protects the gods. The cat’s answer was a masterpiece. I do not see how my austerities and this protection you ask for can go together, it said, but I cannot refuse to do you good when you ask. Only you must always obey me. My vow has left me weak, and I can no longer move from place to place, so every day you must carry me to the riverside. The mice agreed, and they handed over their old and their young. And the cat ate mice, and grew fat and glossy and strong in the limbs, and the mice grew fewer. Our uncle is stouter every day, they said to one another, and we are fewer every day. A wise mouse named Dindika proposed that they all go to the river together and he would follow behind with the uncle. Everyone praised the plan. The cat, who knew nothing of the plan, ate Dindika that day. And it was a very old mouse, Kilika, who finally said the thing aloud in front of all his kin. Our uncle does not want virtue. He has made himself our friend like a hypocrite when he is our enemy. The droppings of a creature that lives on fruits and roots do not contain fur. His limbs are growing and our numbers are shrinking. And Dindika has not been seen for eight days. The mice scattered in every direction, and the cat went back where it had come from.

You, Duryodhana said, are a practitioner of that feline conduct. You behave toward your kinsmen as the cat behaved toward the mice. Your speech is one thing and your conduct another; your devotion to scripture and your peaceable manner are for display. Give up the hypocrisy and act like a Kshatriya. Win the earth with your arms, make gifts to the Brahmins and offerings to your ancestors, dry your mother’s tears after her years of distress, and honor her by winning. With great abjectness you asked for only five villages; even that we refused, because all we wanted was to bring on the war and make the Pandavas angry. Remember that it was for your sake that we drove out the wicked Vidura, that we tried to burn you all in the house of lac. Be a man now. When Krishna set out from Upaplavya you sent word through him: I am ready for war or for peace. Know that the hour of war has come; I have made all these preparations for it. What does a Kshatriya value more than battle? You were born in the order, you are known in the world, you have your weapons again from Drona and Kripa. Why then do you lean on Vasudeva, who belongs to the same order of life as you and is no stronger? And for Vasudeva himself, to be spoken in front of the Pandavas, Duryodhana had prepared his most calculated insult. Withstand me in battle for your own sake and for theirs. Take again that form you assumed in the Kuru court and rush at me with Arjuna. A conjuror’s tricks may frighten someone; to a man standing armed for battle they only give offense. We too can go by illusion to heaven or the sky or the underworld or Indra’s city; we too can show many forms in one body. The Ordainer subdues creatures by a flat of his will, never by tricks. You are always saying that you will have the sons of Dhritarashtra slain and give undisputed sovereignty to the sons of Pritha; Sanjaya brought me those words. You said the Kauravas have provoked hostilities with Arjuna and you as his second. Keep that pledge and fight with all your strength. Show us that you can be a man. Without reason, Krishna, your fame has spread in the world; it will soon be seen that there are many eunuchs who bear the signs of manhood. You are Kansa’s slave. A king like me should not even put on armor against you.

He had something for each of the rest, and each was aimed at the tenderest place. To Bhima, whom he called stupid, ignorant, gluttonous, a bull without horns: in Virata’s city you became a cook named Vallabha, and that is the proof of your manhood. Do not let the vow you made in the Kuru court be false; drink Duhshasana’s blood if you can. You keep saying you will quickly slay Dhritarashtra’s sons; the time has come. You deserve a prize for cookery, Bharata, but there is a great difference between dressing food and fighting. You will lie on the earth without life, embracing your mace, and the boast you made in the assembly will be empty, Vrikodara. To Nakula: fight patiently; we want to see your manliness, your reverence for Yudhishthira, and your hatred of me; remember everything that Krishna suffered. To Sahadeva, before the assembled kings: fight now with all your might, and remember all your woes. To Virata and Drupada, the two old kings who had thrown their houses behind the exiles, something colder: since the beginning of creation even accomplished slaves have never fully understood their masters, nor wealthy kings their slaves; perhaps you have come against me believing this king deserves no praise. Fight together for my death, then, and accomplish your purposes and the Pandavas’. To Dhrishtadyumna: your hour has come, and you have come for your hour; approach Drona in battle and you will learn what is best for you. Do your friend’s business; achieve what is hard to achieve. And to Shikhandi, repeated so it would not be missed: the mighty-armed Kaurava, foremost of bowmen, the son of Ganga, will not slay you, knowing you for a woman. Fight without fear. Do what you can. We want to see your prowess. Duryodhana laughed aloud when he had finished, Vaishampayana says. And then he began again, because the longest part of the message, the part he had been saving, was for Arjuna, and it would be spoken in the hearing of Vasudeva.

A key to reading this (names and barbs): Uluka is Shakuni’s son, which is why Duryodhana addresses him as the son of an adept at dice; the choice of messenger is itself part of the insult. The cat story was told by Narada to Dhritarashtra, and Duryodhana turns it into a charge that Yudhishthira’s dharma is a costume. Vallabha is the name Bhima used as Virata’s cook during the year in hiding (the Gita Press text has Ballava). “Kansa’s slave” is a sneer at Krishna’s origins: Kansa was the king of Mathura whom Krishna killed. “That form you assumed in the Kuru court” refers to the cosmic form Krishna showed the assembly when he came as envoy and Duryodhana tried to seize him. Shikhandi’s story, and why Bhishma will not fight him, is told at length later in this chapter.

The gist: With both armies camped on the Kurukshetra plain, Duryodhana sends one last envoy, and the envoy carries no offer, only insults fitted to each man. Yudhishthira is the cat on the riverbank who preaches virtue and eats mice. Krishna is a conjuror and Kansa’s slave. Bhima is a cook, Shikhandi a woman Bhishma will not strike. Every line reopens a wound thirteen years old, and the worst is still to come, the speech reserved for Arjuna.

Uluka in the Pandava camp: the challenge to Arjuna, the rising of the assembly, and Bhima’s oath

He came into the Pandava camp with the caution of a man walking into a house where every person present has reason to want him dead, and the first thing he did was invoke the immunity of his office. You know what envoys say, he told Yudhishthira. Do not be angry with me if I repeat only the words Duryodhana instructed me to repeat. Yudhishthira gave him what he asked for. You have nothing to fear, Uluka. Tell us without anxiety what the covetous Duryodhana of limited sight has in mind. So Uluka stood in the middle of them, in the presence of the illustrious Pandavas, of the Srinjayas, of Krishna, of Drupada and his sons, of Virata, of every king who had come to the plain, and began to say, in order and without softening, everything he had been given: the cat on the riverbank for Yudhishthira, Kansa’s slave for Vasudeva, the cook’s apron for Bhima, and the barbs for Nakula, Sahadeva, Virata, Drupada, Dhrishtadyumna and Shikhandi, each in its turn. Then he took up the speech that had been saved for last, and delivered it first to Yudhishthira, as though the king should hear what was meant for his brother. You were defeated at dice and Krishna was dragged into the assembly; a man who considers himself a man would be justified in anger at that. Twelve years you were banished to the woods; one year you lived in Virata’s service. Remembering the reason for wrath, your exile and the persecution of Krishna, be a man, son of Pandu. Bhima, weak as he is, made a vow; let him drink Duhshasana’s blood if he can. Your weapons have been worshiped and their deities invoked. Kurukshetra is free of mire, the roads are even, your horses are well fed. Fight tomorrow, then, with Keshava as your ally. Without having yet met Bhishma in battle, why do you boast? You are like a fool boasting that he will climb Gandhamadana. Without defeating the invincible son of the Suta, and Shalya the foremost of the strong, and that first of all warriors, equal to Shachi’s lord in combat, why do you want sovereignty? A master of both the Vedas and the bow, who has reached the end of both branches of learning, who fights in the van, who cannot be shaken and whose strength never diminishes: Drona is the leader you want in vain to defeat. No one has heard that the wind crushed Sumeru. But the wind will carry Sumeru away, heaven will fall on the earth, and the ages will run backward, if what you have said to me comes true. Who that loves life, fighting from an elephant or a horse or a chariot, would come home safe after meeting that grinder of foes? What creature that walks the earth would escape with his life once Drona and Bhishma had pierced him with their shafts? Like a frog in a well, why can you not measure the strength of this host of assembled monarchs, which resembles the army of the gods, which is guarded by kings as the gods guard theirs, which swarms with the kings of the East, the West, the South and the North, with Kambojas, Shakas, Khasas, Shalvas, Matsyas, Kurus of the middle country, Mlecchas, Pulindas, Dravidas, Andhras and Kanchis, with many nations addressed for battle, and which cannot be crossed any more than the Ganga in flood? Fool of little understanding, how will you fight me when I stand in the midst of my elephants?

Then he turned his face to Jishnu, and the whole assembly understood that this was the part Duryodhana had laughed over. Fight without bragging, Arjuna. Why do you brag so much? Success comes from method; a battle is never won by boasting. If deeds in this world succeeded because of boasts, then everyone would have succeeded, for who is there who cannot brag? I know that Vasudeva is your ally. I know that your Gandiva is a full six cubits long. I know that there is no warrior your equal. Knowing all this, I still hold your kingdom. A man never wins success from the qualities of his lineage; it is the Supreme Ordainer alone who by his fiat makes hostile things friendly and subservient. For thirteen years I have enjoyed sovereignty while you wept, and I shall go on ruling in the same way, having slain you with your kinsmen. Where was your Gandiva when you were made a slave, won at stake? Where, Phalguna, was Bhimasena’s might then? Your deliverance came neither from Bhimasena with his mace nor from you with Gandiva; it came from the faultless Krishna. It was she, the daughter of Prishata’s house, who delivered all of you, sunk in slavery, doing work fit only for the low, serving as servants. I called you sesame seeds without kernel. That was true. Did Partha not wear a braid in Virata’s city? In Virata’s kitchens Bhimasena grew tired doing the work of a cook. That, son of Kunti, is the evidence of your manliness. Fleeing from an encounter, with braids and waistbands, your own hair plaited, you were teaching girls to dance. That is how Kshatriyas punish a Kshatriya. From fear of Vasudeva, or from fear of you, Phalguna, I will not give up the kingdom. Fight with Keshava as your ally. Neither deception nor conjuror’s tricks nor jugglery can frighten an armed man ready for battle; all of that only provokes his anger. A thousand Vasudevas and a hundred Phalgunas, approaching me whose aim and weapons never miss, will fly in every direction. Meet Bhishma in combat, or break your head against the hills, or cross the vast deep sea with your two arms alone. My army is a true ocean. Sharadvat’s son is its great fish, Vivimshati its smaller fish, Brihadbala its waves, Somadatta’s son its whale, Bhishma its mighty current, Drona its unconquerable alligator, Karna and Shalya its fishes and whirlpools, the Kamboja king its horse-headed fire, Jayadratha its hidden rock, Purumitra its depth, Durmarshana its waters, and Shakuni its shores. When you have plunged into that swelling ocean with its inexhaustible waves of weapons, when fatigue has taken your senses and all your relatives and friends lie slain, then repentance will possess your heart. Then your heart will turn from the thought of ruling the earth as the heart of a man of impure deeds turns from the hope of heaven. For you to win a kingdom to rule is as impossible as for a man without ascetic merit to reach heaven.

And then, Sanjaya says, Uluka said it all again. He was under orders. Arjuna was a snake of virulent poison and the words were verbal strokes, and Duryodhana had told his envoy to repeat them, so he repeated them. The Pandavas had been provoked enough the first time; hearing the censures a second time through the gambler’s son, they went past the limit of endurance. They rose to their feet. They began to stretch their arms. They looked at one another the way enraged snakes look at one another. Bhimasena, his face turned down, breathing heavily like a serpent, began to glance sidelong at Keshava from the blood-red corners of his eyes, and Krishna, seeing the son of the wind so afflicted and so near to breaking, smiled and gave the envoy his answer in one sentence. Go at once, son of the gambler, and say to Suyodhana: your words have been heard and their meaning understood. Let that happen which you desire. Having said it, the mighty-armed Keshava looked once more at Yudhishthira. Uluka went on regardless. Before the Srinjayas, before Krishna, before Drupada and his sons and Virata and every king assembled, he repeated the words to Arjuna a third time, like a man prodding an angry snake with a stake, and he said to Krishna and to all the others what Duryodhana had instructed him to say to each. Partha, hearing the harsh and deeply disagreeable words, was greatly stirred, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The assembly of kings could not bear to see him in that state. At the insult to Krishna and to the high-souled Partha the chariot-warriors of the Pandava side were shaken, and though they were men of great steadiness they began to burn. Dhrishtadyumna and Shikhandi and the mighty Satyaki, the five Kekaya brothers, the Rakshasa Ghatotkacha, the sons of Draupadi, Abhimanyu, king Dhrishtaketu, Bhimasena, and the twins, all sprang from their seats with reddened eyes, tossing their handsome arms decked with red sandal paste and gold.

Vrikodara read their gestures and their hearts and rose. Gnashing his teeth, licking the corners of his mouth, squeezing his hands together and turning his eyes fiercely on the envoy, he said what he said in a voice meant to be carried back exactly. Ignorant fool, we have heard the words Duryodhana gave you to provoke us, as if we were a set of imbeciles. Now hear the words you will repeat to the inaccessible Suyodhana in the midst of all the Kshatriyas, in the hearing of the Suta’s son and the wicked-hearted Shakuni. We have always sought to please our elder brother; it was for that, you of wicked conduct, that we tolerated your acts. Do you not count that as your great good fortune? It was only for the good of our race that king Yudhishthira the Just, endowed with great intelligence, sent Hrishikesha to the Kurus to bring about peace. Driven by fate, without doubt, you want to go to Yama’s abode. Come and fight with us; that will certainly take place tomorrow. I have vowed to slay you with your brothers. Sinful fool, do not entertain the slightest doubt, for it will be as I have vowed. The ocean, Varuna’s abode, may suddenly overflow its shores, the mountains may split, but my words can never be false. If Yama himself, or Kubera, or Rudra helps you, the Pandavas will still accomplish what they have vowed. I shall certainly drink Duhshasana’s blood at my pleasure. And I vow this also: whatever Kshatriya angrily approaches me, even with Bhishma himself at his head, I will send to Yama’s abode. What I have said in the midst of a Kshatriya assembly will be true. I swear it by my soul. Sahadeva rose after him, his eyes red, and said words that became a proud hero, words to be repeated to Uluka’s own father. Listen, sinful one. There would never have been a difference between us and the Kurus if Dhritarashtra had no relationship with you. Of sinful acts and the exterminator of your own race, you were born as the embodiment of quarrel, for the destruction of the whole world and of Dhritarashtra’s line. From our very birth, Uluka, that sinful father of yours has sought to injure us. I intend to reach the far shore of that hostility. Slaying you first before Shakuni’s eyes, I shall then slay Shakuni himself in the sight of all the bowmen.

A key to reading this (the envoy’s immunity): Uluka’s opening plea rests on an old rule of statecraft: an envoy only repeats his master’s words and cannot be punished for them. Yudhishthira grants him safety at once, and in the next scene Arjuna will use the same rule to check Bhima. Sahadeva’s vow names two victims, Uluka and then Shakuni, and the epic keeps his word: in the Shalya Parva he kills the son first, then the father. “Sesame seeds without kernel” is an insult Duryodhana had used for the Pandavas before, during their exile. The second delivery of the Arjuna speech, addressed first to Yudhishthira, is in the text; Duryodhana wanted the king to hear what his brother was being called.

The gist: Uluka stands in the Pandava assembly and delivers the whole message, saving the worst for Arjuna: where was Gandiva on the day of the dice, what manliness belongs to a man who plaited his hair and taught girls to dance, and how deep is the Kaurava ocean in which Bhishma is the current and Drona the alligator. The assembly rises as one. Krishna answers in a sentence, “let that happen which you desire,” and Bhima swears by his soul that he will drink Duhshasana’s blood. Sahadeva adds that Uluka will die before Shakuni.

The answer will come from Gandiva: the Pandava vows, Uluka’s return, and Dhrishtadyumna’s order of battle

It was Arjuna who lowered the temperature, and he did it by smiling at Bhima. Those who have provoked hostilities with you cannot live, Bhimasena, he said. They may sit happily in their homes, but those fools are already caught in the meshes of death. Uluka does not deserve harsh words from you. What fault do envoys commit, when they repeat only what they were told to say? Then he turned to the allies and well-wishers gathered around Dhrishtadyumna and spoke to them as the man whom the insults had been built for. You have heard the words of Dhritarashtra’s sinful son against Vasudeva and above all against me, and hearing them you have been filled with anger because you wish us well. But with Vasudeva’s might and your efforts behind me, I do not reckon all the Kshatriyas of the earth assembled together as anything at all. With your permission I will now tell Uluka what the reply to those words is, and what he should say to Duryodhana. When tomorrow comes, standing at the head of my division, I will give the answer to those words through Gandiva. Those who are eunuchs answer in words. The kings applauded, and marveled at the ingenuity of it, and Yudhishthira, having spoken mildly to each of them according to age and merit, at last addressed the envoy. No good king patiently bears an insult, he said. Having listened so long to what you had to say, I will now tell you my reply. Sanjaya, who reported all this to Dhritarashtra, was careful to describe what the reply cost him. The son of Dharma’s eyes went red. He breathed like a poisonous snake. He licked the corners of his mouth as if swelling with wrath, looked at Janardana and at his brothers, tossed his massive arms, and spoke words that were, Sanjaya says, full of both mildness and vigor. Go, Uluka, and say to Duryodhana, that ungrateful, wicked-minded embodiment of hostility, that infamous wretch of his race: sinful one, you always deal crookedly with the Pandavas. The man who shows his prowess relying on his own might, who summons his enemies to battle and fulfills his own words, he is a man of the Kshatriya order. Be a Kshatriya, sinful wretch, and summon us to battle yourself. Infamous one of your race, do not come to the field placing at your head others whom we profess to respect. Relying on your own might and that of your servants, summon the sons of Pritha to battle. Be a Kshatriya in every way. He who summons his foes relying on the might of others, and cannot receive them himself, is a eunuch. You think highly of yourself on the strength of others. Weak and incapable yourself, why do you roar at us? Krishna added his own message to the envoy’s load. Let that tomorrow come on which the battle is to be fought, and be a man, wicked one. You think Janardana will not fight, fool, since the Pandavas have chosen him only as a charioteer, and so you are not alarmed. That will not be so, even for a moment. If my anger is roused I could consume all the kings you have assembled like fire consuming a heap of straw. But at Yudhishthira’s command I shall only serve as charioteer to the high-souled Phalguna, whose senses are under complete control and who alone of the two of us will fight. If you fly beyond the limits of the three worlds, if you sink into the depths of the earth, at those places too you will see Arjuna’s chariot tomorrow morning. You think Bhima’s words were spoken in vain. Know that Duhshasana’s blood has already been drunk. And know this also: for all the cross and perverse words you have uttered, neither Partha nor king Yudhishthira nor Bhimasena nor either of the twins regards you as worth a straw.

Then Arjuna gave the envoy the message that would define the first ten days of the war. Gudakesha of great fame looked at the gambler’s son with eyes exceedingly red, looked at Keshava, tossed his massive arms, and said: he who relies on his own strength, summons his foes and fights them fearlessly, is called a man. He who relies on the strength of others to summon his foes is an infamous Kshatriya, and in consequence of his incapacity he is regarded as the lowest of men. Relying on the strength of others, coward that you are, you presume to rebuke your enemies. You have installed the oldest of all the Kshatriyas, whose heart is always bent on doing good, whose passions are under control, who is endowed with great wisdom, in command of your troops, and made him liable to certain death, and you brag about it. Your object is fully known to us, wretch of your race. You have done it believing that the sons of Pandu will not, from kindness, slay the son of Ganga. Know, son of Dhritarashtra, that I will slay that Bhishma first, in the sight of all the bowmen, the Bhishma on whose strength you build your boasts. Go back to the Bharatas, gambler’s son, and tell Duryodhana that Arjuna has said: so be it. When this night has passed, the fierce encounter of arms will take place. Bhishma of unfailing might, who holds firmly to truth, has told you in the midst of the Kurus: I will slay the army of the Srinjayas and the Shalveyas, let that be my task; excepting Drona I can slay the whole world; you need have no fear of the Pandavas. On the strength of that you regard the kingdom as your own and think the Pandavas have sunk into distress, and pride has filled you. You do not see the danger that is in yourself. Therefore I shall first slay Bhishma, the eldest of the Kurus, in battle before your very eyes. At sunrise, at the head of your troops, with your standards and your chariots, protect that leader of your forces who is firm in his promises. With my arrows I will throw down from his chariot, before the eyes of all of you, the man who is your refuge. When tomorrow comes, Suyodhana will learn what it is to brag, when he sees the grandsire covered with my arrows. You will very soon see fulfilled what Bhimasena said in anger, in the midst of the assembly, to your brother Duhshasana, that man of limited sight, wedded to unrighteousness, always quarrelsome, cruel in behavior. You will soon see the terrible effects of vanity and pride, of wrath and arrogance, of bragging and heartlessness, of cutting words and acts, of aversion from righteousness, of sinfulness and slander, of transgressing the counsel of the aged, of oblique sight, of every kind of vice. Scum of humanity, how can you hope for life or kingdom, if I, with Vasudeva for my second, give way to anger? After Bhishma and Drona have been quieted and the Suta’s son overthrown, you will be without hope of life, kingdom or sons. Hearing of the slaughter of your brothers and your sons, struck mortally by Bhimasena, you will remember all your misdeeds. Tell him, gambler’s son, that I do not vow a second time; I tell you truly that all this will be true. And say this to him as well: do not judge my conduct by the light of your own. Know the difference between your conduct and mine; it is the difference between truth and falsehood. I do not wish harm even to insects and ants. What shall I say of ever wishing harm to my kinsmen? It was for that reason that I asked for only five villages. Why, you of wicked understanding, do you not see the dire calamity that threatens you? Your soul overwhelmed with lust, you brag from a defect of understanding, and for the same reason you do not accept the beneficial words of Vasudeva. What need is there now of much talk? Fight against us with all your friends. And tell the Kuru prince who always does me injury: your words have been heard and their sense understood. Let it be as you wish.

The rest followed in order, each one adding a line to the ledger that the war would settle. Bhimasena again: tell the wicked-minded, deceitful, unrighteous Suyodhana, the embodiment of sin wedded to guile, that he will live either in the stomach of a vulture or in Hastinapura. Scum of humankind, I shall assuredly fulfill the vow I made in the assembly; I swear by Truth that I shall slay Duhshasana in battle and drink his lifeblood. Slaying your other brothers too, I shall smash your thighs. Without doubt I am the destroyer of all the sons of Dhritarashtra, as Abhimanyu is of all the younger princes. Hear me once more, Suyodhana: having slain you with all your uterine brothers, I shall set my foot on the crown of your head in the sight of king Yudhishthira the Just. Nakula, briefly: tell Suyodhana of Kuru’s race that all his words have been heard and their sense understood, and that I shall do everything he has commended me to do. Sahadeva, with grave weight: it will all be as you wish, Suyodhana, and you will have to repent, great king, with your children, kinsmen and counselors, just as you are now bragging joyously over our sufferings. Virata and Drupada, the two venerable kings whom Duryodhana had mocked as slaves: it is our wish to be the slaves of a virtuous person; whether we are slaves or masters, and who owns what manliness, will be known tomorrow. Shikhandi, answering the one barb that had been aimed at what he was: tell the king who is always addicted to sin to watch what fierce deed I do in battle. I shall throw down from his chariot that grandsire of yours on whose prowess you count for victory. Without doubt the high-souled Creator made me for the destruction of Bhishma. I shall assuredly slay Bhishma in the sight of all the bowmen. Dhrishtadyumna: tell prince Suyodhana that I shall slay Drona with all his followers and friends, and do a deed no one else will ever do. And Yudhishthira, last, in words full of clemency: I never desire the slaughter of my kinsmen, monarch; it is from your fault, wicked one, that all this will assuredly take place. I shall of course have to sanction these great feats by all these around me. Go from here without delay, Uluka. Or stay here, sire. Blessed be you, for we too are your kinsmen.

Uluka took his leave of the son of Dharma and went back to where Suyodhana was, carrying every word carefully in his mind, and when he arrived he represented to the vindictive Duryodhana everything Arjuna had charged him with, and faithfully the words of Vasudeva, of Bhima, of king Yudhishthira the Just, of Nakula and Virata and Drupada, of Sahadeva and Dhrishtadyumna and Shikhandi, and the words that Keshava and Arjuna had spoken afterward. Duryodhana listened. Then he ordered Duhshasana and Karna and Shakuni, and his own troops and the troops of his allies and all the assembled kings, to be arrayed in their divisions and ready for battle before sunrise. Messengers on Karna’s instructions mounted chariots and camels and mares and swift horses and rode through the whole encampment, promulgating one order at Karna’s command: array yourselves before sunrise tomorrow. On the other side of the plain Yudhishthira, having heard Uluka out, moved his army under Dhrishtadyumna and the others. It was a force of four kinds, foot and elephants and chariots and cavalry, terrible, immovable as the earth itself, guarded by chariot-warriors led by Bhimasena and Arjuna, and it lay, Sanjaya says, like the vast ocean in stillness. At its head was the prince of Panchala, the great bowman invincible in battle, who wanted Drona for his antagonist. And Dhrishtadyumna began to select combatants from his own army to pit against particular warriors of the enemy, giving orders to his chariot-warriors suited to their strength and courage. Arjuna against the Suta’s son. Bhima against Duryodhana. Dhrishtaketu against Shalya, Uttamaujas against Gautama’s son Kripa, Nakula against Kritavarma, Yuyudhana against the ruler of the Sindhus. Shikhandi he placed in the van, against Bhishma. Sahadeva he sent against Shakuni, Chekitana against Shala, the five sons of Draupadi against the Trigartas. Subhadra’s son Abhimanyu he set against Vrishasena, Karna’s son, and against all the rest of the kings as well, because he considered Abhimanyu superior to Arjuna himself in battle. Having distributed his warriors individually and collectively, the great bowman of the hue of blazing fire kept Drona for his own share, and having arrayed his troops duly, that leader of leaders waited for battle with a firm heart, his mind collected, for the victory of the sons of Pandu.

A key to reading this (the vows and the pairings): Nearly every great vow of the war is gathered in this scene: Arjuna’s that Bhishma will fall first, Bhima’s for Duhshasana’s blood and Duryodhana’s thighs, Sahadeva’s for Uluka and Shakuni, Shikhandi’s for Bhishma, Dhrishtadyumna’s for Drona. Arjuna also quotes Bhishma’s own pledge, that excepting Drona he can slay the whole world, and reads its silence about the Pandavas as the danger Duryodhana cannot see. In Dhrishtadyumna’s pairings, Gautama’s son is Kripa, the ruler of the Sindhus is Jayadratha, and Yuyudhana is Satyaki. Krishna’s “Duhshasana’s blood has already been drunk” speaks of the future as a thing accomplished.

The gist: Arjuna checks Bhima, because an envoy is blameless, and then tells Uluka that Gandiva will give the answer at dawn. Yudhishthira’s anger breaks through for the first time: a man who roars on the strength of others is a eunuch. Krishna reminds Duryodhana that he is only a charioteer, and could burn every king on the plain like straw. Arjuna swears to bring down Bhishma first, Bhima swears to Duhshasana’s blood and Duryodhana’s thighs, Shikhandi and Dhrishtadyumna claim Bhishma and Drona, and Yudhishthira ends by calling the envoy kinsman and offering him a place to stay. Uluka carries it all back word for word. Karna’s riders cry the order to array before sunrise, and across the plain Dhrishtadyumna assigns every warrior his opposite.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Udyoga Parva. This part follows K. M. Ganguli, sections CXLVII-CLXV (147-165); the Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters a digit or two apart. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. Dialogue and commentary are adapted, not a verbatim translation. About the sources.