Mahabharata · Chapter 20 · Part 3 of 3 · The count of chariot-warriors and the story of Amba

About 120 minutes · in 4 sittings

Rathas and Atirathas: Bhishma weighs the warriors of his own side

In the dark of the Hastinapura palace, the blind king asked the question that had been sitting on his chest since the report of Arjuna’s vow. Phalguna has sworn to kill Bhishma in battle, Dhritarashtra said to Sanjaya. What did my wicked sons do then, Duryodhana and the rest? I can already see it. I can see my father, the son of Ganga, brought down by that archer of the unshaking grip, Partha, with Vasudeva at his side. And what did Bhishma say, that great bowman of immeasurable wisdom, when he heard what Partha had said? He has accepted the command of the Kauravas. What did he do with it? Sanjaya told him everything, and what he told him began with a promise. On the day Bhishma took the command, he turned to Duryodhana and spoke words that lifted the young king’s heart. I bow to Kumara, the lance-bearing leader of the armies of heaven, and with his blessing I will be the commander of your army today. I know the great affairs of war and the many kinds of array. I know how to get their work out of regular soldiers and out of volunteers. In marching an army, in arraying it, in the shock of encounter and in withdrawal, I am as practiced as Brihaspati, who counsels the gods. Every form of array that is used among the celestials, the Gandharvas and men is known to me, and with these I will confound the Pandavas. Let the fever leave your heart. I will fight by the rules of the science, and I will keep your army whole while I do it. Let the fever leave your heart, king.

Duryodhana answered him in the voice of a man who has just been handed a shield the size of the sky. Son of Ganga, I tell you truly, I have no fear even of all the gods and the Asuras together. How much less can I fear anything now, when your unconquerable self leads my forces and Drona, that tiger among men, waits willingly for the fight. With the two of you engaged on my side, victory is a small thing; the kingdom of heaven itself would be within my reach. But there is one thing I want to know, and I want these lords of the earth to hear it with me. Among the warriors of the enemy and among my own, who is to be counted a Ratha and who an Atiratha? You know the fighters on the other side as well as you know ours. Tell us. And so the counting began, the roll that the epic calls the reckoning of Rathas and Atirathas, an old commander going down two armies name by name on the night before the war and putting a weight on every man. Listen, son of Gandhari, Bhishma said. In your army there are Rathas by the thousands, by the millions, by the hundreds of millions. I will name only the principal ones. First, you yourself, with your hundred brothers, Duhshasana and the rest, are among the foremost of Rathas. All of you are skilled in striking, in cutting chariots to pieces, in piercing. All of you can drive from the driver’s box and manage an elephant from its neck. You are clever with the mace, the bearded dart, the sword and the buckler; you are trained in weapons and fit to carry the burdens of responsibility; in arrows and in every other arm you are disciples of Drona and of Kripa, son of Sharadvat. Wronged by the sons of Pandu, these energetic sons of Dhritarashtra will surely kill the Panchalas, who are so hard to withstand. And then there is myself, the leader of all your troops, who will destroy your enemies by defeating the Pandavas. It does not become me to speak of my own merits. You know me.

Then he went down his own side. Kritavarma, the Bhoja chief, the foremost of all who wield weapons, is an Atiratha; no master of arms can humble him, he hurls his weapons a great distance and strikes hard, and he will break the enemy’s ranks as Indra broke the Danavas. Shalya, the king of the Madras and a mighty bowman, is in my judgment an Atiratha; in every battle he fights, that man boasts that he is Vasudeva’s equal. He has abandoned his own sister’s sons and become yours, and he will meet the great chariot-warriors of the Pandava side and drown them in arrows like the surges of the sea. Bhurishravas, son of Somadatta, accomplished in arms and one of your well-meaning friends, is a leader of the leaders of chariot divisions, and he will make great havoc among your enemies’ fighters. The king of the Sindhus, Jayadratha, is in my judgment equal to two Rathas. Humiliated by the Pandavas when he carried off Draupadi, carrying that humiliation in his mind, he practiced the severest austerities afterward and won a boon that is very hard to win, a boon for meeting the Pandavas in battle. Remembering that old hostility, that tiger among chariot-warriors will fight for you without a thought for the life that is so hard to lay down. Sudakshina, ruler of the Kambojas, is equal to a single Ratha; you will see the prowess of that lion of chariot-warriors used for you as if it were Indra’s, and his Kambojas, hard strikers of fierce impetus, will cover the ground like a flight of locusts. Nila of Mahishmati, armored in blue, is one of your Rathas; he has a quarrel of his own with Sahadeva, and for that reason he will fight for you and keep fighting. Vinda and Anuvinda, the two princes of Avanti, are both counted excellent Rathas; with maces and bearded darts, swords and long shafts and javelins hurled from the hand, those two will consume your enemies’ troops, ranging the field like a pair of bull elephants sporting among the herds, each of them a Yama. The five royal brothers of Trigarta, with Satyaratha first among them, are all Rathas in my judgment. The sons of Pritha made enemies of them at Virata’s city on that well-known occasion, and they still remember what Bhima’s younger brother did to them from his chariot of white horses when he was conquering the kings of the earth; they will churn the ranks of the Parthas the way huge makaras churn the crested current of the Ganga. Your son Lakshmana and the son of Duhshasana, those two tigers among men, never turn from a fight; young, delicate of limb, quick, versed in battle and able to lead, they are two of our best Rathas and will do great things. Dandadhara is equal to a single Ratha and will fight for you guarded by his own men. Brihadbala, king of the Kosalas, of great impetus and prowess, is equal to one Ratha; fierce in arms, devoted to the good of your house, he will gladden his friends by the way he exerts himself. And Kripa, son of Sharadvat, is a leader of the leaders of chariot ranks. Born in a clump of heath as the son of the sage Gautama who was called Sharadvat, he is as unconquerable as Kartikeya himself, and careless even of the life that is so dear he will roam the field like a blazing fire, burning up warriors beyond counting.

He kept going, and the names kept coming, each one set on the scale and read. Shakuni, your maternal uncle, is equal to a single Ratha; he is the one who brought on these hostilities with the sons of Pandu, and there is no doubt that he will fight; his troops are irresistible when they rush, armed with weapons of every kind in abundance, and in speed they are equal to the wind. Then Bhishma came to Ashvatthama, and for a moment the old man’s voice was pure admiration. Drona’s son surpasses all bowmen. He knows every mode of warfare, his weapons never fail, he is a Maharatha. Like the wielder of Gandiva, he shoots so that his arrows go in a continuous line, each touching the next. If he wished it, he could consume the three worlds. His austerities in his hermitage have increased both his fury and his energy, and his father has given him every celestial weapon. And then the voice changed. But there is one great defect in him, bull of the Bharatas, and because of it I count him neither Ratha nor Maharatha. This twice-born man is exceedingly fond of living. Life is very dear to him. There is no one in either army who is his peer; on a single chariot he could annihilate the army of the gods; with the slap of his bowstring against the leather guard on his left arm he could split mountains; he will wander the field like Yama with the mace in his hand, like the fire at the end of the age, lion-necked, blazing, and he will put out the embers of this war between Bharatas. And still: life is very dear to him. His father, Drona, is old and still better than many young men, and he will do great things; standing immovable on the field, he will burn Yudhishthira’s army, which will be the dry grass and fuel of that fire while the force of his weapons is the wind that fans it. He is the preceptor of every Kshatriya of royal blood, and he will exterminate the Srinjayas. But Dhananjaya is dear to him. Remembering his own celebrated service as a teacher, that great bowman will never be able to kill Partha, who does great things without effort. Drona always boasts of Partha’s accomplishments; he looks on Arjuna with more affection than on his own son. Still he is one of your Maharathas, a breaker of hostile chariot-ranks, one of your foremost, and at the head of his large force he will burn the Panchalas like a heap of dry grass. Brihadbala, of true fame, is equal to a single Ratha and will roam among your enemies like Death, with his men in their varied mail and varied weapons killing all who stand against them. Vrishasena, Karna’s son, is a Maharatha and one of your foremost chariot-warriors, and will consume the enemy’s troops. Jalasandha of Madhu’s race is prepared to throw away his life; skilled and strong-armed, scattering ranks before him, he will fight from a chariot or from an elephant’s back. Bahlika never retreats; brave, like Yama himself, he is in my judgment an Atiratha, and once he rushes he does not come back, and he will kill hostile warriors like the wind. Satyavan, a commander of your forces, a router of chariot ranks, is a Maharatha who never grieves at the prospect of battle and falls upon whatever stands in the way of his chariot. Alambusha, the Rakshasa chief of cruel deeds, is a Maharatha, the best of Rathas among all the Rakshasa fighters, a master of illusion, firm in enmity, remembering old hostilities. And Bhagadatta, the brave ruler of Pragjyotisha, is the foremost of all who hold the elephant hook and is skilled from a chariot as well. He and the wielder of Gandiva once fought for days on end, each wanting victory over the other, and then Bhagadatta, who counted Indra his friend, made friends with Indra’s son. From the neck of his elephant this king will fight as Vasava fights among the gods from Airavata.

A key to reading this (the scale): A Ratha is a warrior who can hold his own from a single chariot against many bowmen. An Atiratha stands above that, one who can face numberless opponents. A Maharatha is the highest grade, a master of all weapons who can fight thousands alone. A half-Ratha, which Bhishma will use in the next scene, is a man who falls short of the first grade. Shalya’s “sister’s sons” are Nakula and Sahadeva, whose mother Madri was Shalya’s sister. Jayadratha’s abduction of Draupadi and the boon he won afterward are in Chapter 14. Kripa’s birth in a clump of heath, from the seed of the sage Sharadvat, is told in the Adi Parva; his sister Kripi is Drona’s wife, which makes Ashvatthama his nephew.

The gist: The night before the war, Duryodhana asks his new commander to weigh every warrior on both sides, and Bhishma begins with his own. Duryodhana’s brothers, Kritavarma, Shalya, Bhurishravas, Jayadratha, Sudakshina, Nila, the princes of Avanti, the Trigartas, Lakshmana, Kripa, Shakuni, Ashvatthama, Drona, Vrishasena, Jalasandha, Bahlika, Satyavan, Alambusha, Bhagadatta: each gets a weight, and two get a warning attached. Ashvatthama loves his life too much. And Drona will never be able to kill Arjuna.

Half a Ratha: Bhishma’s verdict on Karna, and the anger that breaks open the council

Two more names came first, and they came easily. Achala and Vrisha, the brothers, are both Rathas, Bhishma said; invincible, they will kill your enemies; strong, tigers among men, foremost of the Gandharas, firm in anger, young and handsome. Then the old commander’s eyes moved along the line of kings to the man who sat closest to Duryodhana, and the room understood before he opened his mouth what was about to happen. As for this ever-dear friend of yours, Bhishma said, this one who is always boasting of his skill in battle, this one who is always urging you to fight the Pandavas, this vile braggart, this son of Surya, Karna, your counselor and your guide and your friend, this vain creature without sense: this Karna is neither a Ratha nor an Atiratha. Without sense, he has let himself be stripped of the coat of mail he was born in. Always kind, he has let himself be stripped of his celestial earrings. Because of the curse of Rama, who taught him arms, and because of the words of a Brahmin who cursed him on another occasion, and because he has been robbed of the equipment of war, he is, in my judgment, half a Ratha. When he comes up against Phalguna he will certainly not escape with his life. And Drona, the foremost of all who wield weapons, did the one thing that could make the verdict worse. He agreed. It is just as you have said, Drona told him, and it is not untrue. He boasts on the eve of every battle and he is seen to retreat from every engagement. Kind out of season, and blundering: that is why Karna, in my judgment too, is only half a Ratha.

Karna’s eyes went wide with rage. What he said next he said to Bhishma directly, and the epic compares his words to sharp hooks. Grandfather, I am innocent, and yet out of your aversion to me you mangle me like this at every step, with your arrows of words, as it pleases you. I put up with all of it for Duryodhana’s sake. You call me half a Ratha and you count me worthless, as if I were a coward. What doubt is there about what you are doing? I do not lie when I say that you, son of Ganga, are an enemy of the whole universe, and of the Kurus most of all. The king does not know it. Who else would try, as you try out of your hatred of merit, to divide these kings, who are all equal and all equally brave, and to sap their strength? Kaurava, neither years nor wrinkles nor wealth nor a crowd of friends entitle a Kshatriya to be called a Maharatha. It has been said that a Kshatriya wins eminence through might alone, as Brahmins win it through mantras, Vaishyas through wealth and Shudras through age. But you, moved by lust and envy, acting out of ignorance, have handed out Rathas and Atirathas according to nothing except your own caprice. Then he turned to the king. Duryodhana, strong-armed one, be blessed, and judge properly. Abandon this wicked Bhishma, who only wrongs you. Once your warriors are divided they are hard to unite again; your main army will be hard to hold together in such a state, and an army gathered from many provinces harder still. Look, Bharata, the doubt has already entered your warriors’ hearts. This Bhishma is draining our strength in front of our faces. What has the task of judging Rathas got to do with a Bhishma of so little understanding? I alone will hold back the Pandava army. My arrows never go for nothing; when the Pandavas and the Panchalas meet me they will run in all directions like oxen that have met a tiger. Where is battle, the crush of armed encounter, good counsel and well-chosen words, and where is this superannuated, wicked-souled Bhishma, whom the fates themselves are driving to become the Pandavas’ victim? Alone he challenges the whole universe. His sight is false; he counts no one else a man. Yes, the scriptures say the words of the old should be listened to. That does not apply to the very old, because in my judgment the very old become children again.

And then Karna made the vow that would shape the first ten days of the war. I alone will exterminate the army of the Pandavas. But the fame of that feat would go to Bhishma, tiger among kings, because you have made him the commander of your forces, and renown always attaches to the leader; the men who fight under him get none of it. So I will not fight, king, as long as the son of Ganga lives. After Bhishma has been laid low, I will fight all the great chariot-warriors of the enemy together. Bhishma’s answer was quiet and it was terrible. The burden of Duryodhana’s war with the Pandavas is vast as the ocean, he said, and I am about to take it up. I have thought about it for many years. Now that the hour has come for that dreadful encounter, it is not for me to create dissension among ourselves. That, son of a Suta, is why you are alive. Otherwise, old as I am and young as you are, I would quench your desire for battle and crush your hope of life. Rama, son of Jamadagni, your own teacher, shooting his great weapons at me, could not cause me the slightest pain. What can you do to me? Good men do not approve of self-praise; understand, disgrace of your race, that I indulge in a little boasting because I am angry. At the swayamvara of the daughters of the king of Kashi I defeated all the assembled Kshatriyas of the world from a single chariot and carried those maidens away. Alone, on the field, I stopped the rush of countless kings and their soldiers. Now that the Kurus have you, the very embodiment of strife, a great calamity is ready to overtake them. So strive to kill our enemies. Be a man. Fight that Partha whom you challenge so often. Wicked-minded one, I want to see you come out of that encounter alive. Duryodhana stood between them with a war on his hands and a night to hold his army together. Look at me, son of Ganga, he said. There is great business ahead. Think hard about how I may best be served; both of you will do me great service. Now I want to hear about the best chariot-warriors of the enemy, who among them are Atirathas and who are leaders of chariot divisions. I want to know the strength and the weakness of my foes, Kaurava, because when this night ends, our great battle begins.

A key to reading this (Karna’s three losses): Bhishma’s arithmetic rests on three things Karna no longer has. The armor and the earrings he was born with, which Indra took from him in the guise of a Brahmin at the end of the Vana Parva (Chapter 15). Parashurama’s curse, laid on Karna when the teacher discovered that his supposed Brahmin pupil was a Kshatriya: the weapon-lore he had learned would desert him in the hour he needed it most. And the curse of a Brahmin whose cow Karna killed with a stray arrow: his chariot wheel would sink into the earth at the moment of his greatest danger. Karna tells the story of both curses himself in the Karna Parva, and Narada tells it again to Yudhishthira in the Shanti Parva. Karna’s vow to sit out the war while Bhishma lives has already been made once in this chapter (Udyoga 157); the epic has him renew it here, in a far more bitter key. The swayamvara of the king of Kashi’s daughters, which Bhishma throws at Karna as proof of what he once was, is the root of the story of Amba, which begins in the scenes that follow.

The gist: In the middle of the count Bhishma stops at Karna and calls him half a Ratha, and Drona agrees. Karna answers in front of the whole council: Bhishma is the enemy of the world, the very old become children, and he himself will not lift a weapon while Bhishma lives. Bhishma tells him he is alive only because there must be no dissension on the eve of battle, and reminds him of a swayamvara at Kashi. Duryodhana, needing both of them, asks for the count of the other side, because morning is the war.

The count on the other side: the Pandava chariot-warriors, and the one chariot no one can match

I have told you who your Rathas are, Bhishma said, and your Atirathas and your half-Rathas. Now hear the tale of the Rathas and Atirathas among the Pandavas, and let these kings hear it with you, if you are curious. He began at the top. The king himself, son of Pandu and Kunti, is a mighty Ratha; without doubt he will glide across the field like a blazing fire. Bhimasena is reckoned equal to eight Rathas. With the mace, or even with arrows, there is no one equal to him; he has the strength of ten thousand elephants, he is full of pride, and in energy he is more than human. The two sons of Madri, bulls among men, are both Rathas, beautiful as the twin Ashvins and full of energy. Each of them, standing at the head of his division and remembering what they have suffered, will range the field like so many Indras. All of them are high-souled and tall as the trunks of shala trees, taller than other men by half a cubit, brave as lions, immensely strong. All of them have kept the vows of Brahmacharya and practiced other austerities; modest, and fierce as tigers, in speed and in striking and in crushing they are beyond what men can do. On the campaign of universal conquest they defeated great kings, bull of the Bharatas. No other man can wield their weapons, their maces, their shafts; there is no man alive who can even string their bows, or lift their maces, or shoot their arrows in battle. And here the old man reached back into the childhood of every prince in the room. In running, in hitting the mark, in eating, in games in the dust, they used to beat all of you, even when they were children. When they meet this force they will exterminate it. A collision with them is not to be wished for. Each one of them alone can kill all the kings of the earth. What happened at the Rajasuya sacrifice happened before your own eyes, great king. Remembering Draupadi’s sufferings and the harsh words spoken after the dice, they will wander through the battle like so many Rudras.

Then he came to Arjuna, and he did something he had done for no one on his own side. He stopped weighing and started listing, as if the only way to measure the man was to lay out everything that rode on his chariot. As for Gudakesha of the reddish eyes, who has Narayana for his ally, there is no chariot-warrior in either army who can be called his equal. Leave men aside. We have never heard that among gods, Asuras, Uragas, Rakshasas and Yakshas there was ever born before, or ever will be born, a chariot-warrior like him. Great king, the intelligent Partha owns that chariot whose banner carries the device of the ape. The driver of that chariot is Vasudeva. The warrior who fights from it is Dhananjaya himself. His is that celestial bow called Gandiva; his are those horses fleet as the wind; his coat of mail is impenetrable and of celestial make; his two great quivers are inexhaustible; his weapons came to him from the great Indra, from Rudra, from Kubera, from Yama and from Varuna; and on his chariot ride those maces of frightful aspect and many other great weapons, the thunderbolt among them. What chariot-warrior can be counted his equal, when from a single chariot he killed in battle a thousand Danavas who had their home in Hiranyapura? Inflamed with wrath, strong, unstoppable, that mighty-armed warrior will certainly destroy your troops while he protects his own. Between the two armies there are myself and the preceptor, Drona, and no third chariot-warrior who can advance against Dhananjaya when he scatters his showers of arrows. When that son of Kunti steps out to fight with Vasudeva as his second, he pours shafts like the clouds of the rainy season driven by great winds. He is skillful, and he is young. Both of us are old and worn out. Vaishampayana says that when the kings heard these words and remembered the famous valor of the sons of Pandu, seeing it as if it stood before their eyes, their hearts trembled, and their massive arms, ringed with bracelets and smeared with sandal paste, seemed to hang down as if the strength had gone out of them.

Bhishma went on into the allies. All five of Draupadi’s sons are Maharathas. Virata’s son Uttara is, in my judgment, one of the foremost of Rathas. Abhimanyu, the mighty-armed, is a leader of the leaders of chariot divisions; in fact, that killer of foes is the equal in battle of Partha himself, or of Vasudeva. Light of hand with every weapon, acquainted with every mode of warfare, full of energy and steady in his vows, he will put out his prowess remembering what his father suffered. Brave Satyaki of Madhu’s race is a leader of the leaders of chariot divisions, foremost of the heroes of the Vrishnis, full of wrath and entirely without fear. Uttamaujas, too, is an excellent chariot-warrior in my judgment, and so is Yudhamanyu of great prowess. All these chiefs own many thousands of chariots, elephants and horses, and they will fight without regard for their lives out of the wish to please Kunti’s sons. Together with the Pandavas they will sweep through your ranks like fire or like the wind, challenging your warriors. Old Virata and old Drupada, invincible in battle, bulls among men, are both in my judgment Maharathas. Old in years, both are still devoted to the duties of a Kshatriya, and treading the path that heroes tread, both will exert themselves to the limit of their might. Because of their kinship with the Pandavas, and because of their own strength and prowess, those two great bowmen of pure vows have drawn an added strength from their affection. According to the cause, bull of the Kurus, strong-armed men become heroes or cowards. Moved by a single purpose, both these kings will lay down their lives in the great slaughter of your troops; fierce in battle, careless of life, they will do great things at the head of their akshauhinis, justifying their kinship and the trust the Pandavas have placed in them.

Then a name that Duryodhana would have reason to remember. Shikhandi, son of the king of the Panchalas, subjugator of hostile cities, is in my judgment one of the foremost of Yudhishthira’s Rathas. Having put off the sex he was born with, he will fight in this battle and win great fame among your troops. He has a large force to support him, Panchalas and Prabhadrakas, and with those hosts of chariots he will do great things. Dhrishtadyumna, the leader of all Yudhishthira’s army, that great chariot-warrior who is also a disciple of Drona, is in my judgment an Atiratha; afflicting every foe, he will sweep the field alone like the Pinaka-bearing god in his rage at the dissolution of the universe, and great warriors will speak of his chariot divisions, so vast are they, as if they were the ocean or the army of the gods. Kshatradharman, Dhrishtadyumna’s son, is only half a Ratha because of his immature years and his lack of practice in arms. Dhrishtaketu, the heroic son of Shishupala, king of the Chedis and a kinsman of the Pandavas, is a Maharatha, and with his son he will do things that are hard even for a Maharatha. Kshatradeva, subjugator of hostile cities and devoted to Kshatriya duties, is one of the best Rathas on the Pandava side. Among the Panchalas, Jayanta and Amitaujas and the great chariot-warrior Satyajit are all high-souled Maharathas, and will fight like elephants in must. Aja and Bhoja, both of great prowess, are Maharathas; light of hand with weapons, versed in every mode of warfare, skilled and firm, they will fight for the Pandavas. The five Kshatriya brothers who are so hard to defeat, all of whom fly blood-red banners, are among the foremost of Rathas. Kashika, Sukumara, Nila, Suryadatta and Shankha, who is also called Madirashva, are in my judgment foremost of Rathas, fit for battle in every respect, masters of all weapons, high-souled. Vardhakshemi is a Maharatha. King Chitrayudha is among the best of Rathas, an asset in battle and devoted to the diadem-wearing Arjuna. Chekitana and Satyadhriti, tigers among men, are two of the best Rathas of the Pandavas; so, without doubt, are Vyaghradatta and Chandrasena. Senabindu, who is also called Krodhahanta, is considered the equal of Vasudeva and of Bhimasena, and he will fight your warriors with great prowess; that best of kings, forever boasting of his feats in battle, you should regard exactly as you regard me, Drona and Kripa. Kashya, worthy of praise, light of hand with weapons, subjugator of hostile cities, is known to me as the equal of one Ratha. Satyajit, Drupada’s son, young in years and of great prowess, should be reckoned equal to eight Rathas; being Dhrishtadyumna’s equal he is an Atiratha, and he will do great things out of the wish to spread the fame of the Pandavas. King Pandya, that bowman of mighty energy, devoted to the Pandavas and very brave, is another great Ratha of theirs. Dridhadhanva, the mighty bowman, is another of their Maharathas. And Shrenimat, foremost of the Kurus, and king Vasudana are both, in my judgment, Atirathas.

A key to reading this (names and signals): Gudakesha, “conqueror of sleep,” is one of Arjuna’s names. The thousand Danavas of Hiranyapura are the Paulomas and Kalakeyas that Arjuna destroyed for Indra during his years in heaven, after his war with the Nivatakavachas (Vana Parva). When Bhishma says the Pandavas used to beat “all of you” at games in the dust, he is speaking to Duryodhana and his brothers, who grew up beside their cousins in Hastinapura. “The sex he was born with,” said of Shikhandi, is the hinge on which the next scenes turn: Duryodhana will ask what it means, and Bhishma will answer with the whole story of Amba. The five brothers with blood-red banners are the Kekaya princes who joined Yudhishthira. The last king in the list is Vasudana of the Panshu country, who appears beside Shrenimat in the war books’ rosters as well; Ganguli’s English prints the name as “Vasudeva,” but this is a different man from Krishna’s father.

The gist: Bhishma turns to the enemy. Yudhishthira a mighty Ratha, Bhima worth eight, the twins Rathas, and then Arjuna, whose chariot, driver, bow, horses, armor, quivers and weapons Bhishma inventories in a single breath before admitting that only he and Drona can stand in front of that chariot, and both of them are old. The arms of the assembled kings go slack. Then the allies: Draupadi’s sons, Abhimanyu, Satyaki, Virata and Drupada, Shikhandi and Dhrishtadyumna, and the long roll of Panchala, Chedi, Kekaya and southern kings, each with his weight.

Bhishma’s last word: “I will not loose an arrow at Shikhandi,” and the day three princesses were carried off from Kashi

The tally was nearly done. For hours the old commander had stood before the assembled kings and gone down the roll of the enemy, name by name, weighing each man the way a jeweler weighs stones, and now he came to the last of them. Rochamana, he said, was another maharatha of the Pandavas, a man who would meet hostile warriors in battle like a second god. Kuntibhoja, the mighty bowman, the maternal uncle of Bhimasena, was in his judgment an atiratha: a hero skilled and schooled in every mode of fighting, a bull among chariot-warriors, competent beyond most, who would display his prowess like a second Indra against the Danavas, and whose celebrated soldiers were all accomplished in war. Stationed on the Pandava side and devoted to whatever served them, that man would achieve extraordinary things for the sake of his sister’s sons. And there was the prince of the Rakshasas, Ghatotkacha, born of Bhima and Hidimba, endowed with ample powers of illusion; Bhishma called him a leader of the leaders of chariot-divisions. He loved battle. He would fight in earnest, and the heroic Rakshasas who were his counselors and dependents would fight under him.

These, Bhishma said, and many other rulers of provinces, with Vasudeva at their head, had gathered for the son of Pandu. These were the principal rathas and atirathas and half-rathas of the high-souled Pandava, and these would lead Yudhishthira’s terrible army, which was guarded, over and above all of them, by the diadem-decked Arjuna, who was like great Indra himself. It was with these, fired by the desire for success and armed with illusion, that he would contend, expecting victory or death. He would advance against the two foremost chariot-warriors, Vasudeva and Arjuna, bearing the discus and Gandiva, who together looked like the sun and the moon seen in the same evening sky. He would meet the other chariot-warriors of Yudhishthira too, each at the head of his own troops. The rathas and the atirathas, and the half-rathas as well, on both sides, had now been declared in order of precedence. Arjuna, Vasudeva, and whatever lords of the earth might be there: all of them, everyone his eyes fell upon, he would withstand. Then he paused, and made one reservation before the whole hall. He would not strike Shikhandi, the prince of the Panchalas, and he would not slay him, even if he saw him rushing at him in battle with weapons raised. The world knew that from a desire to please his father he had given up a kingdom that had already become his and lived under the vow of brahmacharya; that he had installed Chitrangada in the sovereignty of the Kauravas and made the child Vichitravirya heir; and that, having proclaimed his godlike vow among all the kings of the earth, he had bound himself never to kill a woman, or one who had formerly been a woman. Let the king know that Shikhandi had formerly been a woman. Born a daughter, she had afterward been changed into the male sex. He would not fight him. He would certainly smite every other king he met in battle. But the sons of Kunti, he added, he would not be able to kill.

Duryodhana wanted the reason. Why, chief of the Bharatas, would you not slay Shikhandi even if you saw him coming at you as an enemy with his arms raised? You told me once that you would kill the Panchalas together with the Somakas. Son of Ganga, grandsire, tell me. And Bhishma told him, with all the lords of the earth listening, a history that began a lifetime earlier. My father Shantanu was celebrated over the whole world, he said. That king of virtuous soul paid his debt to nature in due time, and I, keeping my pledge, installed my brother Chitrangada on the throne of the wide kingdom of the Kurus. When Chitrangada died, I followed Satyavati’s counsel and installed Vichitravirya as king according to the ordinance. He was young, but he had been duly consecrated by me, and the virtuous boy looked to me in everything. I wanted him married, and I set my heart on obtaining daughters from a suitable family. It was then that I heard that the three daughters of the ruler of Kashi, unrivaled for beauty, whose names were Amba, Ambika and Ambalika, were to choose husbands for themselves, and that all the kings of the earth had been invited. Amba was the eldest, Ambika the second, and the princess Ambalika the youngest. I went alone, on a single chariot, to the city of the ruler of Kashi, and there I saw the three maidens adorned with ornaments, and all the kings of the earth who had come for the occasion.

What he did next, he described without apology. Challenging to battle every king who was ready for the encounter, he took the maidens up onto his chariot and said to the assembled monarchs, over and over so that no man could claim he had not heard: Bhishma, the son of Shantanu, is carrying away these maidens by force. Kings, do your utmost to rescue them. I take them by force, bulls among men, and I make you the spectators of my act. At those words the rulers of the earth sprang up with weapons unsheathed and shouted to their drivers to make ready the chariots, and they came to the rescue, chariot-warriors on chariots that looked like massed clouds, elephant-riders on their elephants, others on stout and well-fed horses, until they had surrounded him on every side with a multitude of chariots. With a shower of arrows he stopped their rush from every direction and defeated them the way the chief of the celestials defeats the hordes of the Danavas. Laughing, at his ease, he cut down the gold-decked and many-colored standards of the advancing kings with blazing shafts; in that fight he brought down their horses and elephants and charioteers with a single arrow apiece; and when they saw the lightness of his hand they gave up the fight and broke. Having defeated all those rulers of the earth, he came back to Hastinapura, and he made over the maidens, whom he had intended for his brothers, to Satyavati, and told her everything he had done.

A key to reading this (the ranks): This is the close of the Rathatiratha-sankhyana, the “counting of chariot-warriors” that Duryodhana asked Bhishma to perform. An atiratha is a warrior who can fight uncounted enemies alone, a ratha stands below him, an ardharatha or half-ratha below that; it was in this same counting that Bhishma rated Karna a half-ratha and set off the quarrel that ended in Karna’s oath to stay off the field while Bhishma lived. The history Bhishma now begins, explaining why he will not fight Shikhandi, is the Ambopakhyana, the story of Amba, and it runs to the end of the Udyoga Parva.

The gist: Bhishma finishes weighing the enemy and then sets one condition on his own generalship: he will fight everyone, but he will not raise a weapon against Shikhandi, because Shikhandi was born a girl and Bhishma’s vow forbids him to kill a woman or anyone who was once a woman. Duryodhana demands the reason, and the old man goes back to his own youth, to the day he drove alone to Kashi, lifted three sisters onto one chariot, and beat every king who came after him.

Amba’s confession, Shalva’s door, and the first night in the hermitage

He went first to his mother. Satyavati, the daughter of the fisher clan, the mother of heroes, received his salute and heard him say the thing plainly: I have defeated all the kings, and these daughters of the ruler of Kashi, who have nothing for a dowry except their beauty, I have carried off for Vichitravirya. Her eyes filled. She bent and smelled the crown of his head, the way a mother does, and said with joy that it was by good fortune he had triumphed. And so, with her consent, the wedding drew near, and it was in those last days, with the arrangements nearly complete, that the eldest of the three sisters came to Bhishma and spoke to him with great bashfulness. You know the law, she said, and you are versed in all our scriptures; hear me, and then do toward me whatever the law allows. Before any of this, I had chosen the ruler of the Shalvas in my heart as my lord, and he, without my father’s knowledge, had sought me privately. How could you, born in Kuru’s race of all races, transgress the law and keep in your house a woman who longs for another? Knowing this, deliberate, and do what is proper. It is plain that the ruler of the Shalvas is waiting for me. Give me leave to go. Be merciful. You are devoted to truth; the whole earth knows it.

Bhishma did nothing in haste. He laid the matter before his mother Kali, whom some called Gandhavati, and before all the counselors, and before the priests, both the special priests of the house and the ordinary ones, and only then did he give the eldest maiden, Amba, permission to depart. She went with an escort of aged Brahmins and with her own nurse, and she traveled the whole distance from Hastinapura to the city of the Shalvas, and when she came before king Shalva she said: I have come, mighty-armed one, expecting you. He laughed. The laugh is the detail the epic keeps. Fairest of women, he said, I no longer wish to make a wife of one who was to be wedded to another. Go back to Bhishma. I do not want a woman Bhishma ravished by force. When Bhishma had beaten the kings and took you away, you went with him cheerfully; when he had humiliated and defeated every ruler on earth and carried you off, from that moment I ceased to want you for a wife. How can a king like me, who knows every branch of knowledge and lays down laws for the guidance of others, admit into his house a woman who was to have been wedded to someone else? Go wherever you wish, blessed lady, and do not waste your time.

She argued with him. She was pierced, the text says, by the arrows of the god of love, and she did not give up easily. Do not say so, lord of the earth, for it is not so. I was not cheerful when Bhishma took me. He routed the kings and took me by force, and I wept the whole way. I am an innocent girl, and I am attached to you; accept me. The scriptures never praise a man who abandons those attached to him. I begged the son of Ganga, who never retreats from battle, and at last I got his leave, and I have come to you. Bhishma does not want me; I have heard that what he did, he did for his brother’s sake. My two sisters Ambika and Ambalika, who were carried off with me, he has given to his younger brother Vichitravirya. Tiger among men, I swear with my hand on my own head that I have never thought of any husband except you. I do not come to you as a woman who was to be wedded to another. I tell you the truth, swearing by my soul. Take me, large-eyed one, a maiden come to you of her own accord, betrothed to no one, wanting only your grace. He cast her off, the epic says, the way a snake casts off its slough. Whatever she said, and she said it many ways, the lord of the Shalvas showed no inclination to accept her. At the end her grief turned to anger, and with her eyes full of tears and her voice choked she said: Cast off by you, wherever I go, the righteous will protect me, for truth cannot be destroyed. And Shalva, whom the text calls a man without foresight, said only go, go, and gave his reason at last: I am in terror of Bhishma. You are Bhishma’s capture. She went out of his city wailing like a she-osprey.

Outside the walls she took stock of herself, and the inventory is one of the bitterest passages in the poem. There was no young woman in the whole world in a plight as miserable as hers. She had no friends. Shalva had rejected her. She could not go back to the city named after the elephant, because Bhishma had let her leave it in the expectation of Shalva. Whom, then, should she blame? Herself? The invincible Bhishma? Her foolish father, who had arranged the self-choice? Perhaps the fault was her own: why had she not leaped down from Bhishma’s chariot during that fierce battle and run to Shalva? Her present misery, in which she felt as if she had lost her senses, was the fruit of that omission. Cursed be Bhishma, she said. Cursed be my wretched father of foolish understanding, who made prowess my dowry and sent me out as if I were a woman for sale. Cursed be myself, cursed be king Shalva, cursed be my creator, cursed be everyone through whose fault this misery has been mine. Human beings suffer what is destined for them; still, the cause of her present affliction was Bhishma, son of Shantanu, and she saw now that her vengeance must fall on him, by asceticism or by battle, since he was the root of her woe. And yet what king would dare to defeat Bhishma in battle? With that question unanswered she walked to a hermitage of high-souled ascetics of virtuous deeds, and she spent the night there among them, and that lady of sweet smiles told them everything that had happened to her, down to the smallest detail: the abduction, and the rejection by Shalva.

In that hermitage lived an eminent Brahmin of rigid vows named Shaikhavatya, a man of high ascetic merit who taught the scriptures and the Aranyakas. He looked at the afflicted girl sighing in her grief and asked the reasonable question: if it has been so, blessed lady, what can high-souled ascetics who live in the woods and practice penance do about it? Her answer was already formed. Show me mercy, she said. I want a life in the woods; I have renounced the world. I will practice the severest austerities. What I suffer now is surely the fruit of sins I committed in ignorance in a former life. I do not dare to go back to my relatives, rejected and cheerless as I am, knowing that Shalva has humiliated me. You who have washed away your sins, you who are like gods, teach me penance. Show me mercy. The sage comforted her with examples and reasons drawn from the scriptures, and having consoled her, he and the other Brahmins promised to do what she desired.

A key to reading this (names): Satyavati is called both Kali and Gandhavati here; she was raised by the chief of the fishers, hence “daughter of the fisher clan.” The “city named after the elephant” is Hastinapura. Shalva was the lord of Saubha. The osprey, a fish-hawk whose cry the Sanskrit poets took for the sound of a woman’s grief, is a stock image of lament in the epic.

The gist: On the eve of the wedding Amba tells Bhishma that her heart is already given to Shalva, and Bhishma, after consulting everyone, lets her go. Shalva laughs and sends her back as “Bhishma’s capture,” unmoved by her oath on her own head. Turned away from two doors, she asks whom to blame and arrives at one name. The first night in the hermitage, she asks the ascetics to teach her penance.

Her grandfather Hotravahana, the sage Akritavrana, and Parashurama come down from Mahendra

The ascetics went back to their daily work, but the girl stayed on their minds, and over the following days the hermitage argued about her. Some said she should be taken to her father’s house. Some wanted to send a rebuke to Bhishma. Some thought the ruler of the Shalvas should be approached and asked to accept her, and others answered that this could not be done, since he had already rejected her. When some time had passed the ascetics of rigid vows came to her together and made their case. What can men of controlled senses do for you, blessed lady? Do not give yourself to a life in the woods. Go home, and your father the king will do whatever should be done next; you will live there in comfort, surrounded by every ease. You are a woman, and at present you have no protector except your father, for a woman’s protector is her father or her husband: her husband when she is in comfortable circumstances, her father when she is plunged in misery. Life in the forest is painful, especially for someone delicate, and you are a princess by birth and delicate over and above that. Not one of the hardships of a woodland retreat will you have to bear in your father’s house. Others, looking at the helpless girl, added a plainer warning: alone in deep and solitary woods, you will be courted by kings. Do not set your heart on this course. She refused all of it. She could not go back to Kashi, she said; her relatives would despise her. She had lived in her father’s house as a child, and she could not go now to where her father was. Under the ascetics’ protection she wanted to practice austerities, so that in her next life she would not suffer afflictions like these.

While the Brahmins were still deliberating, a royal sage came into that forest, Hotravahana, and they received him with worship, with inquiries after his welfare, with a seat and water. When he had rested, the forest-dwellers began again with the maiden, in his hearing, and as he listened to the story of Amba and the king of Kashi the old man grew anxious and then stricken. He rose with a trembling frame. He drew the girl onto his lap. He asked her to tell him her distress from the beginning, and she told him everything in detail, and when she had finished, the royal sage, full of pity and grief, had already decided what she should do. Do not go back to your father’s house, he said. I am your mother’s father. I will dispel your grief; rely on me, daughter. Your affliction must be great indeed, for you are so wasted. Go, on my advice, to the ascetic Rama, the son of Jamadagni. Rama will dispel this affliction and grief of yours, and if Bhishma does not obey his command, Rama will slay him in battle. Go to that foremost one of Bhrigu’s race, whose energy is like the fire that ends an age; that great ascetic will set you on the right road again. She bowed her head to her grandfather with the tears still running and said she would go at his command, but she had questions. Would she succeed in seeing that reverend sage whom the whole world celebrated? How would he dispel her grief? And how was she to reach him? Hotravahana told her. Rama, devoted to truth and possessed of great might, practiced his austerities in the great forest and dwelt always on the mountain called Mahendra, among Rishis learned in the Vedas and Gandharvas and Apsaras. She was to salute him with bowed head and give him Hotravahana’s words and then tell him everything she sought. If she named her grandfather, Rama would do everything for her, because the heroic son of Jamadagni, the foremost of all bearers of arms, was his friend, was pleased with him, and always wished him well.

He was still speaking when Akritavrana arrived, a dear companion of Rama’s, and the whole hermitage, the Munis by the hundred and the aged Srinjaya king with them, rose to their feet. They did him every rite of hospitality and sat down around him, and the talk ran for a while over pleasant and laudable things, until Hotravahana found his moment and asked where the great son of Jamadagni might be seen. Rama speaks of you constantly, Akritavrana answered; he calls the royal sage of the Srinjayas his dear friend. I believe he will be here tomorrow morning; you will see him here when he comes to see you. And this maiden, royal sage, why has she come to the woods? Whose is she, and what is she to you? So Hotravahana told the story again, and told it in full, which is how the epic makes its readers hear Amba’s case as a stranger would hear it: the favorite daughter of the ruler of Kashi, his own daughter’s child, eldest of three sisters at their swayamvara with every Kshatriya king assembled; Bhishma disregarding them all and abducting the girls; Bhishma beating the kings, reaching Hastinapura, laying everything before Satyavati, and ordering his brother’s wedding; this maiden saying before the ministers that she had chosen the lord of the Shalvas in her heart and that a man who knew the law should not bestow her on a brother when her heart was elsewhere; Bhishma taking counsel and, with Satyavati’s consent, dismissing her; the girl going gladly to Shalva, lord of Saubha, and asking him to see that she did not fall from righteousness; Shalva rejecting her because he suspected the purity of her conduct. Now she had come to these woods, sacred for asceticism, bent on penance. He had recognized her from the account she gave of her parentage. And she counted Bhishma as the root of her sorrow. When he stopped, Amba added the last word herself. It is as this lord of the earth, the author of my mother’s body, has said. I cannot go back to my own city, for shame and fear of disgrace. My resolve now is that whatever the holy Rama points out to me will be my highest duty.

Akritavrana asked her the question that would decide everything. You have two afflictions, blessed lady. For which of them do you want the remedy? If it is your wish that the lord of Saubha be urged to wed you, the high-souled Rama will certainly urge him. If it is your wish to see Ganga’s son Bhishma defeated in battle by Rama, Rama will gratify that wish too. Let us hear what the Srinjaya has to say and what you have to say, and let it be settled today. Amba answered carefully. Bhishma took her in ignorance, she said; he did not know that her heart had been given to Shalva. Let the sage weigh that and resolve on what was just, and take steps to accomplish it, whether toward the tiger of the Kurus alone, or toward the ruler of the Shalvas, or toward both. She had told him truly where the root of her grief lay; let him do what reason required. Akritavrana approved her fairness and then gave his own judgment, which was not fair at all, and was probably correct. If Ganga’s son had never carried you to the city named after the elephant, he said, Shalva would have taken you on his head at Rama’s word. It is because Bhishma bore you away by force that Shalva’s suspicion was awakened. Bhishma is proud of his manliness and crowned with success. Let your vengeance fall on Bhishma and no one else. She had cherished that very wish, she said, that if it were possible Bhishma should be caused by her to die in battle; but let the sage punish whichever man he judged guilty, Bhishma or Shalva, through whose act she had come to this misery.

The day passed in such talk, and the night, with its breeze that was neither cold nor hot, and in the morning Rama was there. He came beaming with energy, his hair in matted locks, dressed in deerskins, surrounded by his disciples, with a bow in his hand and a sword and a battle-axe as well, and he walked into that forest toward his friend the Srinjaya king. The ascetics stood with joined hands, the king stood, the helpless girl stood, and they worshiped the Bhargava with honey and curds and seated him among them. Rama and Hotravahana talked together for a while, and when they had finished, Hotravahana said in a sweet voice, choosing his moment: Rama, this is my daughter’s daughter, the daughter of the king of Kashi. She has something that must be done for her. Listen to it, you who are skilled in every task. Rama turned to the girl and told her to say what she had to say. She went to him as one goes toward a blazing fire, bowed her head to his feet, touched them with her two hands, and stood silent, and then the silence broke and she wept aloud and asked the protection of the man who was the refuge of everyone in distress. Tell me the grief in your heart, Rama said, and I will act according to your words. Raise me, she said, from this unfathomable ocean of sorrow. He looked at her beauty and her youth and the great delicacy of her body and sat a long time in silence, filled with pity, wondering what she would say, and then asked her again, and she told him everything truly. He had settled what he would do before he spoke. I will send word to Bhishma, he said. When he hears my command, that king will certainly obey it; and if the son of Jahnavi does not act according to my words, I will consume him in battle with all his counselors. Or, if you prefer, I will speak to the heroic ruler of the Shalvas. She did not prefer it. Bhishma had dismissed her the moment he learned that her heart was given to Shalva, she said, and she had gone to the lord of Saubha and spoken to him in language that did not become her, and he, doubting her conduct, had refused her. Let Rama weigh all that with his own understanding; but Bhishma of the great vows was the root of her calamity, because he had taken her onto his chariot by force and brought her under his power. Slay Bhishma. He is covetous, mean, and proud of his victory; give him his deserts. While he was carrying me off, she said, this was the wish I held in my heart, that I would cause that hero of great vows to be slain. Gratify it. Slay Bhishma as Purandara slew Vritra.

Rama’s answer surprised her. Daughter of Kashi, he said, I no longer take up arms on any account except for the sake of those who know the Vedas. Tell me what else I can do. Bhishma and Shalva are both entirely obedient to me; do not grieve, I will accomplish your object. But I will not take up weapons except at the command of Brahmins. That has been my rule. She would not be moved: her misery came from Bhishma, and he should kill Bhishma without delay. Say only the word, Rama said, and Bhishma, who deserves your reverence, will at my word take your feet upon his head. Slay in battle that Bhishma who roars like an Asura, she said. If he summons you, kill him, if you want to do what pleases me; and besides, you should make your promise true. It was Akritavrana who broke the deadlock. You cannot desert a girl who has sought your protection, he told Rama. If Bhishma, summoned to battle, comes and says “I am defeated,” or if he obeys your word, then what this maiden seeks will be accomplished and your word will also be true. And remember your own vow, made before the Brahmins after you had conquered all the Kshatriyas: to slay in battle anyone, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Shudra, who was an enemy of the Brahmins; never, as long as you lived, to abandon those who came to you in fright and sought your protection; and to slay the proud warrior who defeated in battle all the assembled Kshatriyas of the earth. Bhishma, perpetuator of Kuru’s race, has achieved exactly that. Go to him, and meet him in battle. Rama said he remembered the vow. He would try conciliation first, since the daughter of Kashi’s task was a grave one. He would take the girl himself to the place where Bhishma was, and if Bhishma, proud of his feats in battle, did not obey his command, he would kill the arrogant man; that was his fixed resolve. The arrows he shot, he reminded them, did not lodge in the bodies of living creatures; they passed straight through, as they had seen in his wars with the Kshatriyas. He rose. The ascetics spent one more night there, performed their homa rites and prayers at dawn, and set out together, all of them, Bhishma said, wanting my life. Rama came to Kurukshetra with the devotees of Brahma around him and the maiden among them, and with the Bhargava at their head the high-souled ascetics reached the bank of the Sarasvati and made their camp there.

A key to reading this (names): Hotravahana is a royal sage of the Srinjaya line and Amba’s maternal grandfather. “Rama” here is Parashurama, the son of Jamadagni, called Bhargava after his ancestor Bhrigu; he lives on Mount Mahendra, and Bhishma is his pupil. Akritavrana is his companion and disciple, the one who argues Rama back into his old vow. Purandara is a name of Indra, who killed the demon Vritra. Conciliation is the first of the four means of statecraft, before gifts, division and force.

The gist: The ascetics try to send Amba home and she refuses. Her grandfather Hotravahana arrives, takes her on his lap, and sends her toward Parashurama; Akritavrana says Rama will be there tomorrow. Rama comes, hears her at his feet, and offers messages and mediation. She wants Bhishma dead. Akritavrana reminds Rama of the vow he swore over the conquered Kshatriyas, and Rama takes the girl and his followers to Kurukshetra and camps on the Sarasvati.

Teacher and pupil at Kurukshetra: Parashurama’s command, Bhishma’s refusal, and the first two days of the duel

On the third day of his stay, Bhishma told Duryodhana, the son of Jamadagni sent word into the city. I have come; do what will please me. Bhishma did not wait to be asked twice. He had learned his weapons from this man as a boy, and he went out to the edge of the kingdom with a glad heart, a cow led at the head of his train, the priests of his house around him, and behind them the Brahmins his family called on for great occasions, men who looked, he said, like gods walking. Rama accepted the worship that was offered him. Then he spoke, and the gladness went out of the morning. You are a man without desire, Bhishma. In what state of mind, then, did you carry off the daughter of the king of Kashi from her own swayamvara, and in what state of mind did you afterward send her away? You have cut this famous woman off from her dharma. Your hands touched her first; who will marry her now? Shalva has rejected her, and he rejected her because you took her. So take her yourself, at my command. Let this princess have the life a woman is owed. It is wrong, king, that this humiliation should be hers.

Bhishma saw that the sage was grieving for the girl, and he answered as gently as he could. I cannot give her to my brother by any means, Brahmin. It was to me that she said, I am Shalva’s; it was I who let her go to Shalva’s city. And for myself, this is my fixed vow: I will not abandon the practice of a Kshatriya out of fear, or pity, or greed for wealth, or desire. Rama’s eyes began to roll. If you do not do as I say, bull among men, I will kill you today, and your counselors with you. He said it again, and again, and each time his eyes were redder. Bhishma pleaded in soft words and the sage did not cool. So Bhishma bowed his head to the ground and asked him, plainly, why he wanted a battle, and reminded him of something. You taught me the four kinds of arms when I was a child, mighty-armed one. I am your disciple. That, said Rama, was exactly the point. You know me for your teacher, and still, to please me, you will not accept this daughter of the ruler of Kashi. I cannot be satisfied unless you do. Take her, and preserve your line. You abducted her, and because of it she has no husband.

What Bhishma said next he said with his head still bowed, and it was a long speech. This cannot be, twice-born sage. Your labor is wasted, son of Jamadagni. I have been trying to please you because I remember that you were once my preceptor, but I refused this girl long ago, and knowing what evils come of it, what man would bring into his house a woman whose heart belongs to another, a woman who for that very reason is like a snake full of poison? I would not forsake my duty from fear of Indra himself. Be gracious to me, or do without delay whatever you have decided is right. And there is a verse, pure-souled one, sung in the Puranas by the high-souled Marutta: the scriptures sanction the renouncing of a teacher who is puffed up with vanity, who does not know right from wrong, and who walks a crooked road. You are my teacher, and out of love I have honored you greatly. But you do not know a teacher’s duty, and for that I will fight you. I would not kill a teacher in battle, least of all a Brahmin, and least of all a Brahmin rich in austerities; that is why I forgive you. And the scriptures also say that a man is not guilty of killing a Brahmin when he kills in battle a Brahmin who has taken up arms like a Kshatriya and fights in anger and does not run. I am a Kshatriya, standing in a Kshatriya’s duty. No one sins by treating a person exactly as that person deserves. When a man who knows time and place, and who understands both profit and virtue, is in doubt, he should without any scruple do the thing that brings the highest good. And since you, Rama, are acting wrongly in a matter of doubtful profit, I will fight you in a great battle. See the strength of my arms, and a prowess that is more than human. I will fight you on the field of Kurukshetra. Equip yourself for single combat as you please, great-souled Rama, and come and stand on that field, where, struck by my arrows and made holy by my weapons, you may go to the worlds your austerities have won you. I will meet you there, lover of battle. Where you once satisfied your fathers with the blood of Kshatriyas, I will kill you and satisfy the Kshatriyas you killed. Come without delay. There I will break that old pride the Brahmins talk about. For years you have boasted that you alone conquered every Kshatriya on earth. Hear what made the boast possible. In those days no Bhishma had been born, and no Kshatriya like Bhishma. The men of real valor were born later. You burned heaps of straw. The man who will easily crush your pride of battle has been born since then, and he is no one but myself, Bhishma, the taker of enemy cities.

Rama laughed. Good fortune, Bhishma, that you want to fight me. I go to Kurukshetra with you now, Kuru, and I will do exactly what you have said. Let your mother Jahnavi see you dead on that plain, pierced by my shafts, food for the vultures and crows. Let that goddess the Siddhas and Charanas worship, the blessed daughter of Bhagiratha, who runs as a river and gave birth to your wicked self, weep today when she sees you killed by me and lying wretched on the ground, however little she deserves the sight. Follow me, proud man, always hungry for a fight. Bring your chariots and all the gear of war. Bhishma bowed his head and said, so be it. Rama went to Kurukshetra. Bhishma went into the city and told Satyavati everything. He had the rites for victory performed, took his mother’s blessing and the benedictions of the Brahmins, and mounted a chariot of silver drawn by white horses, a fine, roomy chariot covered on every side in tiger skin and packed with great weapons, driven by a charioteer of good birth and proven courage, a man who knew horses, who had seen many engagements and kept his head in all of them. Bhishma wore a white coat of mail and carried a white bow. A white umbrella was held over him. He was fanned with white fans. His clothes were white, his turban was white, every ornament he wore was white. Praised by Brahmins who wished him victory, he drove out of the city named for the elephant, and horses fast as thought carried him to the field. When he came in sight of the great ascetic he lifted his conch and blew it. Brahmins and forest hermits had gathered to watch, and the gods with Indra at their head; there were divine garlands in the air and divine music and canopies of cloud, and the ascetics who had come with Rama stood in a ring around the ground. And at that moment Bhishma’s mother appeared before him in her own form. What are you trying to do? I will go to the son of Jamadagni and beg him, again and again: do not fight Bhishma, who is your disciple. Son, you are a Kshatriya; do not set your heart on a battle with a Brahmin. Rama is the equal of Mahadeva himself in prowess. He is the exterminator of the Kshatriya order. You do not know the man you want to fight. Bhishma saluted the goddess and, with folded hands, told her the whole story of the swayamvara, everything he had said to Rama to turn him aside, and the whole history of the eldest daughter of Kashi. The great river went to Rama and begged him for her son’s sake: do not fight Bhishma, who is your disciple. Rama answered her while she was still pleading. Go and make Bhishma stop. He will not do what I want. That is why I have challenged him. Ganga, Vaishampayana said, came back to her son out of love for him, and her son, with his eyes rolling in anger, would not do her bidding either. And then the great ascetic of Bhrigu’s line stood in Bhishma’s sight, and the best of the twice-born called him to the encounter.

Bhishma began with a courtesy. I am on a chariot, he said, smiling, and you are on the ground. I will not fight you like this. Mount a chariot, hero, and put on armor, if you really mean to fight me. Rama smiled back. The earth is my chariot, Bhishma. The Vedas are the horses that carry me. The wind is my driver, and my coat of mail is the mothers of the Vedas, Gayatri, Savitri and Sarasvati. Covered by these, I will fight. And with that he buried Bhishma in arrows from every side, and when Bhishma could see again, the son of Jamadagni was standing on a chariot. It had been made by an act of his will. It was beautiful as a town, drawn by celestial horses, fenced and armored, decked in gold, covered in tough hides, and it bore the device of the sun and the moon. Rama held a bow and wore a quiver, his fingers cased in leather, and Akritavrana, his dear friend, a master of the Vedas, held the reins. Come, Rama kept calling, come, and the calling gladdened Bhishma’s heart. Here, alone, he had for his adversary the invincible destroyer of the Kshatriya race, risen like the sun, and wanting, like himself, to fight alone. Rama poured three showers of arrows on him and stopped his horses, and Bhishma did a thing that surprised the watchers. He climbed down from the chariot, set his bow aside, and walked on foot to the sage, and bowed to him properly, and said: whether you are my equal or my better, Rama, I am going to fight you, my virtuous preceptor. Bless me, lord, and wish me victory. Rama’s answer had two edges. This is how a man who wants prosperity should act, foremost of the Kurus. This is the duty of anyone who fights a warrior greater than himself. I would have cursed you if you had not come to me like this. Go, fight carefully, with all your patience. But I cannot wish you victory, since I am standing here to defeat you. Go and fight fairly. I am pleased with your behavior.

Bhishma went back, mounted, and blew his gold-worked conch again, and the combat began that was to last for many days. Rama struck first: nine hundred and sixty straight arrows fledged with vulture feathers, and under that shower Bhishma’s four horses and his charioteer vanished from sight. Bhishma stood still in his armor and did not answer. He bowed to the gods, and especially to the Brahmins, and then he spoke, smiling, to the man in front of him. You have shown me little regard, and I have fully honored your preceptorship. Hear one more duty that must be discharged if virtue is to be earned. The Vedas that live in your body, the high state of the Brahmin that is in you, the merit you have won by the severest austerities, I do not strike at any of these. I strike at the Kshatriya-hood you have adopted. When a Brahmin takes up weapons, he becomes a Kshatriya. Now see the power of my bow and the strength of my arms. I am going to cut that bow of yours with a single sharp shaft. He loosed a broad-headed arrow and one horn of Rama’s bow dropped to the ground. He put a hundred straight arrows into Rama’s chariot, and the arrows that passed through Rama’s body and flew on, borne by the wind, looked like snakes vomiting blood. Covered in blood, Rama shone, Bhishma said, like Sumeru with streams of molten metal running down its breast, like the ashoka tree when spring loads it with red clusters, like the kinshuka in its flowering dress. Rama took another bow and answered in fury with a storm of gold-winged arrows that came in from every side like snakes, like fire, like poison, and found Bhishma’s vitals and made him shake. Bhishma gathered his coolness and put a hundred blazing shafts into the sage, and Rama seemed to lose his senses. And here Bhishma stopped, of his own will. Pity took him. Shame on battle, he said aloud. Shame on the practices of a Kshatriya. Great is the sin I have committed by keeping to them, for I have wounded with arrows my preceptor, a Brahmin of virtuous soul. He did not strike the son of Jamadagni again that day, and the sun, having heated the earth all day, went down to its chambers in the west, and the fighting stopped.

In the night the charioteer, a skilled man, drew the arrows out of his own body, out of the horses, and out of Bhishma. At sunrise the horses were bathed and let roll on the ground and given water, and the fight resumed. Rama saw Bhishma coming fast in his mail and equipped his own chariot with care; Bhishma saw Rama coming and again set down his bow, climbed down, saluted him, and climbed back up to stand fearless before him. Then the arrows flew both ways, and Rama’s shafts came with blazing mouths like snakes, and Bhishma cut them in the air by the hundred and the thousand before they could reach him. The son of Jamadagni turned to celestial weapons and Bhishma repelled them with his own, and the din filled the sky. Bhishma sent the Vayavya weapon; Rama quenched it with the Guhyaka. Bhishma chanted the mantras and sent the Agneya; Rama put it out with the Varuna. So it went, weapon against counter-weapon, until Rama, in a sudden wrath, wheeled to Bhishma’s right and pierced him in the breast, and Bhishma fainted on his chariot. The charioteer drove him off the field, drooping and senseless, and Rama’s followers, Akritavrana and the rest, and the princess of Kashi with them, shouted for joy at the sight. Bhishma came to himself and gave one order. Go where Rama is. My pain has left me. I am ready. The horses, which seemed to dance as they ran, brought him back, and he buried Rama in arrows in his anger, and Rama shot three for every one and cut every shaft of his in the air, and again the sage’s followers cheered. So Bhishma chose an arrow that he described, long afterward, as beautiful, blazing, with Death himself sitting at its head, and he shot it to kill. It struck and Rama went down senseless on the ground, and a cry went up on every side, and the whole world, Bhishma said, was as confused and frightened as if the sun had fallen out of the sky. The ascetics and the princess of Kashi went quietly to him and embraced him and comforted him with hands cooled in water and with assurances of victory, and Rama rose, and set an arrow to his bow, and said in a shaking voice, stay, Bhishma, you are already slain. The arrow went into Bhishma’s left side and he trembled like a tree in a gale. Rama killed his horses and, fighting now with a terrible calm, covered him in winged arrows with a lightness of hand that Bhishma matched shaft for shaft, until the arrows of the two of them filled the sky and hung there. The sun could not send its rays through them. The wind could not pass. And from the blocked wind, and the heat of the sun, and the grinding of arrow against arrow, a fire was born in the air, and the arrows burned in a fire they had made themselves and fell to the earth as ash. Rama poured down arrows by the hundred and the thousand and the hundred thousand and the hundred million, and Bhishma cut them all and dropped them on the ground like snakes chopped into pieces. And when the shadows of evening came, his preceptor withdrew from the fight.

A key to reading this (who is who, and a verse): “Rama” throughout is Parashurama, the son of Jamadagni, the Bhargava who had once emptied the earth of Kshatriyas and who taught the young Bhishma his weapons; Bhishma’s jibe about heaps of straw points at that old slaughter. “The city named for the elephant” is Hastinapura. The four kinds of arms are the traditional classes of weapon: thrown by hand, shot from a device, held in the hand, and released by mantra. Marutta’s verse, that a vain and erring teacher may lawfully be abandoned, is the same argument Dhrishtadyumna will use against Drona later in the war. The mothers of the Vedas are Gayatri, Savitri and Sarasvati.

The gist: Parashurama orders Bhishma to take Amba. Bhishma bows to the ground and refuses, and the two of them fix a duel at Kurukshetra. Ganga tries to stop each of them and fails with both. Before the first arrow Bhishma walks to his teacher on foot and asks for a blessing, and the teacher tells him he cannot wish him victory. On the first day Bhishma drenches his guru in blood and then stops himself out of pity; on the second the celestial weapons come out, each man is knocked senseless once, and the arrows of the two of them set the sky on fire.

Twenty-three days: the charioteer dies, eight Brahmins hold Bhishma off the ground, Ganga takes the reins, and a weapon comes in a dream

The next day was as frightful as the first, Bhishma told the king, and the days after it were worse, because the lord Rama, who knew every celestial weapon, began to bring them out one after another, a new one each morning. Bhishma met each of them with the weapon that could cancel it, and he did it, he said, without regard for the life that is so hard to give up. When all of them had been baffled, the son of Jamadagni stopped caring for his own life too. He threw a lance. It blazed like a meteor. Its mouth was on fire. It seemed to fill the whole world with its light, and it came at Bhishma like the dart of Death himself, like the sun that rises at the end of an age. Bhishma cut it into three pieces in the air with his arrows, and a fragrant wind began to blow around him. Rama, burning, threw twelve more. Bhishma confessed to Duryodhana that he could not describe them; their speed and their brightness were beyond describing. How, he asked, should he describe them? They came from every side like long tongues of fire, like the twelve suns that rise when the universe is destroyed, and for the first time in the duel he was afraid. There was a net of arrows advancing with them. He broke the net with a downpour of his own, and then he shot twelve shafts, and each shaft consumed one of the twelve darts. Rama answered with a rain of darts with gold-worked handles and golden wings, flaming meteors, and Bhishma took those on his shield and his sword and beat them to the ground, and then covered Rama’s fine horses and his charioteer in clouds of arrows. The slayer of the lord of the Haihayas saw Bhishma’s own gilt-handled darts coming at him like snakes out of their holes, and in his rage went back to the celestial weapons, and the arrows came down on Bhishma like a flight of locusts, on his horses, on his driver, on his chariot, until every part of the chariot was hidden under them, and under the weight of that rain the yoke and the shaft and the wheels and the spokes all broke. When the storm let up Bhishma answered it with a storm of his own, and that mass of Brahma merit, torn by it, bled and went on bleeding. Rama was pierced by Bhishma’s clouds of arrows; Bhishma was pierced as densely by Rama’s. The sun went down behind the western hills, and the day’s fighting ended.

The next morning it began again under a bright sun. Rama, foremost of strikers, standing on his fast chariot, poured arrows on Bhishma the way the clouds pour on the breast of a mountain, and Bhishma’s beloved charioteer, hit again and again, swerved from his place on the chariot. Bhishma watched him with grief. A complete unconsciousness came over the man; he fell from the chariot to the ground in a swoon, and there, wounded by Rama’s shafts, he soon gave up his life. Fear entered Bhishma’s heart then, and he admitted it. He was lamenting the man, his heart unhinged, when Rama began to shoot to kill, and while Bhishma was still weeping for his driver, the Bhargava drew his bow with all his strength and put an arrow deep into him. It drank blood. It struck his breast, went through him, and fell to the earth at the same instant that Bhishma fell. Rama thought he was dead. He roared like a thundercloud, again and again, and his followers roared with him, and every Kaurava standing near Bhishma and every spectator who had come to watch was struck with grief at the sight of him down. And lying there, Bhishma saw eight Brahmins with the radiance of the sun or of fire. They stood around him on the battlefield and held him up on their arms. He did not touch the ground. They supported him in the air like friends while he breathed hard, and they sprinkled drops of water on him, and they kept saying, do not fear, prosperity be yours. Comforted by those words, he rose. And then he saw his mother Ganga, the foremost of rivers, standing on his chariot. It was she who had controlled his horses in the fighting after the charioteer fell. Bhishma worshiped the feet of his mother and of the spirits of his ancestors and climbed up. She protected the chariot, the horses, and every implement of war on it. And then he folded his hands and asked her to go. He dismissed his own mother from the field, took the reins of the wind-fast horses himself, and fought the son of Jamadagni until the end of the day.

In the course of that day he shot at Rama a powerful, heart-piercing arrow of great speed, and Rama’s bow loosened in his grasp and he fell to his knees, senseless. When Rama fell, that giver of thousands of gold pieces, masses of cloud covered the sky and poured down blood. Meteors fell by the hundred. Thunder rolled and everything trembled. Rahu suddenly covered the blazing sun, and rough winds began to blow, and the earth itself shook. Vultures and crows and cranes alighted in joy. The horizon seemed to be on fire, jackals yelled and yelled, and drums that no hand had struck began to sound harshly. Every one of these frightful omens was seen while the high-souled Rama lay embracing the earth. And then, all at once, he was up and coming again, deprived of his senses by anger, forgetting everything, his great bow in his hand and a deadly arrow on it. Bhishma resisted him. The great rishis who stood there were filled with pity, and the Bhargava with wrath. Bhishma took up a shaft like the fire that appears at the end of an age, and Rama, of immeasurable soul, baffled it. Dust dimmed the disc of the sun, the sun went to the western mountain, night came with its delicious cool breezes, and both of them desisted. So it went, Bhishma said: every evening the fierce battle stopped, and every sunrise it began again, and it lasted for twenty-three days together.

Then, one night, having bowed to the Brahmins, the rishis, the gods, all the creatures that wander in the dark, and all the kings of the earth, he lay down on his bed and, in the solitude of his room, began to think. For many days this fierce battle of terrible consequence has gone on between me and the son of Jamadagni, and I am unable to vanquish him on the field. If I really am competent to defeat this Brahmin of mighty strength in battle, let the gods kindly show themselves to me tonight. Torn with arrows, he slept on his right side, and toward morning the eight Brahmins who had lifted him when he fell from his chariot, who had held him up and told him not to fear and comforted him, showed themselves to him in a dream. They stood around him and spoke, and Bhishma repeated their words to Duryodhana exactly. Rise, son of Ganga. You have nothing to fear. We will protect you, for you are our own body. Rama, the son of Jamadagni, will never be able to vanquish you in battle; you, bull of the Bharatas, will be the conqueror of Rama. This beloved weapon called Praswapa, which belongs to the lord of all creatures and was forged by the divine artificer, will come to your knowledge, because you knew it in a former life. Neither Rama nor anyone else on earth is acquainted with it. Recollect it, mighty-armed one, and apply it with strength; it will come to you of itself. With it you can check anyone, however great his energy. Rama will not be killed outright by it, so you incur no sin in using it. Struck by the force of this weapon, the son of Jamadagni will fall asleep. Having conquered him so, you will wake him again in battle with the other dear weapon, the one called Samvodhana. Do what we have told you, Kauravya, in the morning, standing on your chariot. Asleep or dead, we reckon it the same, and Rama surely will not die. So apply this Praswapa weapon, so happily thought of. And having said this, the eight Brahmins, all alike in form, all with effulgent bodies, vanished from his sight.

A key to reading this (the eight and the two weapons): The eight radiant Brahmins who keep the fallen Bhishma off the ground and then tell him in a dream that he is “our own body” are the eight Vasus; Bhishma is himself a Vasu born on earth, as the Adi Parva told, and Parashurama’s own ancestors will say so to his face in the next scene. “Slayer of the lord of the Haihayas” is Parashurama’s title from his killing of Kartavirya Arjuna. Praswapa (the sleep-bringer) and Samvodhana (the waker) are a paired set; the epic calls Praswapa the weapon of the lord of creatures, forged by the divine artificer, Vishvakarma.

The gist: The duel escalates day by day: Parashurama’s twelve apocalyptic darts, Bhishma’s shattered chariot, and then the morning Bhishma’s charioteer is killed and Bhishma himself takes an arrow through the chest and falls, and eight unseen Brahmins will not let him touch the earth while Ganga herself holds the reins. Parashurama falls too, and the sky rains blood. Twenty-three days pass. Then one night Bhishma asks the gods for a sign, and the same eight come to him in a dream with the name of a weapon that does not kill; it puts a man to sleep.

The sky says no, Parashurama lays down his bow, and the girl who became half a river

Bhishma woke with the dream still in him and was filled with joy. Then the fighting began, and he told Duryodhana that of all the days it was this one that made the hair of every creature stand on end. The Bhargava poured arrows; Bhishma poured them back. And Rama, enraged by what he had seen the day before and by what he was seeing now, threw a dart as hard as Indra’s thunderbolt and as bright as the mace of Yama. It came like a flame and seemed to drink up every quarter of the field, and it fell on Bhishma’s shoulder like lightning ranging the sky, and his blood ran, he said, the way streams of red earth run off a mountain after rain. In his fury he sent the son of Jamadagni a shaft as deadly as snake venom, and it took the hero in the forehead, and with the arrow standing in his brow that best of Brahmins looked as beautiful as a crested hill. Rama shifted his stance, drew the string with all his strength, and aimed at Bhishma an arrow like all-destroying Death, an arrow made for grinding enemies to nothing. It hissed like a snake and struck his breast, and Bhishma went down, covered in blood. When he came back to himself he hurled a dart like the thunderbolt, and it landed on Rama’s chest, and Rama lost his senses and began to tremble in every limb. Akritavrana, his friend, the great ascetic, embraced him and soothed him with many words, and Rama, reassured, rose in wrath and vindictiveness and invoked the great Brahma weapon. Bhishma invoked the same weapon to baffle it. The two met in the middle of the air without reaching either man, and where they met they blazed as the world will blaze at the end of an age. The sky seemed to catch fire. Every creature was in distress. The rishis, the Gandharvas and the gods were in pain from the energy of the weapons. The earth trembled with its mountains and seas and trees, the ten directions filled with smoke, and the creatures of the air could not stay in their element. And when the whole world, gods and Asuras and Rakshasas together, began to cry out in woe, Bhishma thought: this is the time. He would shoot the Praswapa weapon now, as the utterers of Brahma had commanded him in his dream. And the mantras for it, which he had never learned in this life, came suddenly into his mind.

The moment he formed the resolve, a din of voices rose in the sky. Son of Kuru’s race, do not let off the Praswapa weapon. He aimed it at the descendant of Bhrigu anyway. And as he aimed, Narada spoke to him. Look, Kauravya, the gods are standing in the sky. Even they forbid you today. Do not aim the Praswapa weapon. Rama is an ascetic possessed of Brahma merit, and he is your preceptor besides. Never humiliate him. While Narada was still speaking, Bhishma saw the eight utterers of Brahma standing in the sky, and they said to him, smiling and slowly, do what Narada says, chief of the Bharatas. That is what is best for the world. So Bhishma withdrew the great weapon and invoked the Brahma weapon instead, according to the ordinance. And Rama, seeing the Praswapa drawn back, was thrown into a passion and cried out, wretch that I am, I am vanquished, Bhishma. In that instant the son of Jamadagni saw, standing before him, his venerable father and his father’s fathers. They surrounded him and spoke to console him, and what they said settled the matter. Never show such rashness again, son; never again fight Bhishma, or any Kshatriya. Fighting is a Kshatriya’s duty. The highest wealth of a Brahmin is study and the practice of vows. For a certain reason, once, we ordered you to take up weapons, and you then did that terrible and unbecoming thing. Let this battle with Bhishma be your last; you have had enough. Leave the fight, mighty-armed one. Be blessed, and let this be the last time you take up the bow. Throw the bow aside, invincible one, and practice austerities, son of Bhrigu. See, Bhishma the son of Shantanu is being forbidden by all the gods. They are trying to pacify him, saying over and over, desist from this battle, do not fight Rama who is your preceptor, it is not proper for you to defeat him, son of Ganga, show this Brahmin every honor on the field. As for you, we are your elders and we forbid you. Bhishma is one of the foremost of the Vasus. It is fortunate, son, that you are still alive. Shantanu’s son by Ganga, a celebrated Vasu, how could he be defeated by you? Desist, Bhargava. Arjuna, the foremost of the Pandavas, the mighty son of Indra, has been ordained by the Self-create to be the slayer of Bhishma.

Rama would not give in even to them. I cannot give up the combat, he said. That is the solemn vow I have made; I have never before left a field with the battle undone. If you please, grandsires, make the son of Ganga desist. I cannot. So the ascetics, with Richika at their head and Narada among them, came to Bhishma instead and said, sire, desist from battle, honor this foremost of Brahmins. And Bhishma, for the sake of Kshatriya morality, gave them the same answer he had given everyone. This is my vow in this world: I will never turn my back on a battle, and I will never let my back be wounded by arrows. I cannot abandon my eternal duty from temptation or distress or fear or for wealth. This is my fixed resolution. Then all the ascetics with Narada at their head, and Bhagirathi his mother, walked out and stood on the field in front of him. He stayed as he was, bow and arrows in hand, resolved to fight. And they turned to Rama once more. The hearts of Brahmins are made of butter, they said. Be pacified, son of Bhrigu’s race. Rama, Rama, desist from this battle, best of Brahmins. Bhishma cannot be slain by you, and you, Bhargava, cannot be slain by him. Standing so, blocking the field, the Pitris made the descendant of Bhrigu put his weapons aside. And Bhishma saw the eight utterers of Brahma again, blazing like bright stars risen in the sky, and they said to him with great affection, mighty-armed one, go to Rama, who is your preceptor; do what is beneficial to all the worlds. Rama had stopped at the word of those who wished him well. Bhishma, for the good of the worlds, accepted the word of those who wished him well. Mangled as he was, he went to Rama and worshiped him, and the great ascetic said to him, smiling and with great affection, there is no Kshatriya equal to you on the earth. Go now, Bhishma. In this combat you have pleased me highly. Then he called the maiden into Bhishma’s presence, and in the midst of all those high-souled people, with sorrow, he spoke to her.

In the sight of all these persons, girl, I have fought to the best of my power and shown my prowess. Using the very best of weapons I have not been able to gain any advantage over Bhishma, the foremost of all wielders of arms. I have exerted myself to the limit of my power and might. Go wherever you wish, beautiful one. What other business of yours can I accomplish? Seek the protection of Bhishma himself. You have no other refuge now. Shooting mighty weapons, Bhishma has vanquished me. And the high-souled Rama sighed, and was silent. Amba’s answer was measured. Holy one, it is exactly as you say. This Bhishma of great intelligence cannot be vanquished in battle even by the gods. You have done my business to the limit of your exertion and power. You have shown in this battle an energy that cannot be baffled and weapons of every kind, and still you could not gain any advantage over him. As for me, I will not go a second time to Bhishma. But I will go, perpetuator of Bhrigu’s race, rich in austerities, to the place where I may obtain the means to kill Bhishma myself. She went away with her eyes disturbed by wrath, and, thinking of nothing but his death, she resolved on asceticism. Rama, with his ascetics, bade Bhishma farewell and went back to the mountains he had come from. Bhishma mounted his chariot, went home praised by the Brahmins, and told Satyavati everything, and she blessed him. Then he did a thing he told Duryodhana without embarrassment: he appointed intelligent men to find out what the girl was doing. His spies, who wished him well, brought him with great application her words and her actions day by day. And when she went into the woods to practice austerities, he became melancholy. He was afflicted with pain. He lost, in his own phrase, the tenor of his heart. In all his life the one man who had bested him in battle by prowess was a knower of Brahma, a keeper of vows praiseworthy for their austerities; and now this. He humbly laid everything the maiden was doing before Narada and Vyasa, and both of them told him the same thing. Do not give way to sorrow on account of the daughter of Kashi, Bhishma. Who is there who could baffle destiny by his own exertion?

Meanwhile the maiden, entering a cluster of retreats, practiced austerities beyond human endurance. Without food, emaciated and dry, her hair matted and her body grimed with filth, she lived for six months on air alone, standing unmoved like a post in the street. She passed a whole year after that standing in the waters of the Yamuna, foregoing all food. Full of wrath, she passed the next whole year standing on the tips of her toes and eating a single fallen leaf. For twelve years she heated the heavens with her austerities, and though her relatives tried to dissuade her, she could not be turned. She went to Vatsabhumi, where the Siddhas and Charanas resort and where high-souled ascetics of pious deeds have their retreat, and bathed there in the sacred waters and roamed as she pleased. She went on, one after another, to the asylum of Narada and the auspicious asylum of Uluka, to the asylum of Chyavana, to the spot sacred to Brahma, to Prayaga the sacrificial platform of the gods, to the forest sacred to the gods, to Bhogavati, to the asylum of Kushika’s son Vishvamitra, to the asylums of Mandavya and Dilipa, to Ramahrada, and to the asylum of Garga, and she bathed in the sacred waters of all of them while keeping the most difficult of vows. And one day, Bhishma said, his mother spoke to her out of the water. Blessed lady, for what do you afflict yourself so? Tell me the truth. The faultless girl answered with folded hands. Rama has been vanquished in battle by Bhishma, lady of the beautiful eyes. What other king, then, would venture to defeat him when he stands with his weapons? I am practicing the severest penances for the destruction of Bhishma. I wander the earth, goddess, so that I may kill that king. In everything I do, this is the great end of my vows. The river that goes to the sea answered her. You are acting crookedly, girl. Weak one, faultless one, you will not be able to achieve this wish. Princess of Kashi, if you keep these vows for the destruction of Bhishma, and if you leave your body while keeping them, you will become in your next birth a river, crooked in her course, with water only in the rains. Every bathing place along you will be hard to reach. Full only in the rains, you will be dry for eight months of the year. You will be full of terrible alligators and creatures of frightful appearance, and you will frighten every living thing. And with something like a smile his highly blessed mother dismissed the princess of Kashi. The girl went back to her vows. She gave up food and even water, sometimes for eight months, sometimes for ten. Wandering from tirtha to tirtha in her passion for them, she came again to Vatsabhumi. And it is there, Bhishma said, that she is known to have become a river, filled only in the rainy season, abounding in crocodiles, crooked in her course, her water hard to reach. And by the merit of her austerities only half of her body became that river in Vatsabhumi. With the other half she remained a maiden, exactly as before.

A key to reading this (names and places): Richika is Parashurama’s grandfather (Richika’s son was Jamadagni, and Jamadagni’s son is Rama), which is why he leads the “Pitris” who intervene. “The Self-create” is Brahma; the ancestors’ statement that Arjuna is ordained to be Bhishma’s slayer looks ahead to the Bhishma Parva, where Arjuna, with Shikhandi placed in front of him, brings Bhishma down. Vatsabhumi is the Vatsa country on the Yamuna. The asylums of Uluka, Chyavana, Mandavya, Dilipa and Garga belong to the list of tirthas exactly as the source gives it; Bhogavati is the serpent city of the underworld, named here among the holy places.

The gist: Two Brahma weapons collide in the air and the world begins to burn; Bhishma aims the Praswapa, and the sky, Narada, and the eight Vasus all tell him to stop. Parashurama cries out that he is beaten, and his own ancestors tell him why: Bhishma is a Vasu, and his death belongs to Arjuna. Neither man will yield, but Brahmin hearts are made of butter, and Parashurama sets down his bow. He tells Amba to take refuge with Bhishma. She tells him she will go where she can kill Bhishma herself. After twelve years of impossible austerities Ganga curses her, and she becomes half a crooked river, and remains, with the other half, a maiden with a vow.

A pyre on the Yamuna and a daughter in Drupada’s house: Shiva’s promise, given twice

The ascetics of Vatsabhumi had watched her for a long time before any of them spoke. Half of her was already a river by then, a crooked seasonal stream that ran full only in the rains, and the half that was still a woman stood among their retreats with the same look she had carried out of Parashurama’s camp. Bhishma, telling it to Duryodhana on the eve of the war, did not pretend the sight had been anything other than what his spies described to him: a princess of Kashi, wasted to bone, immovable. So the old ascetics tried to turn her. They came to her and asked, gently, what her business was, as one asks a guest who has stayed too long in the wrong house. She answered them the way she had answered everyone since the swayamvara. Bhishma had cast her out. Bhishma had cut her off from the dharma that comes to a woman through a husband. This vow of hers was for his destruction, she said, and for nothing else, and she wanted none of the heavenly regions the ascetics might have thought she was earning. Peace would come to her when Bhishma was dead. He was the reason for her unbroken grief, the reason she had lost the world a wife inherits, the reason she was now neither woman nor man. Without killing the son of Ganga in battle she would not stop. As a woman she had no desires left. What she meant to obtain was manhood, because she intended to be revenged on Bhishma, and they should not waste their breath dissuading her. She said it to them again and again, in the same words, until the words themselves became a kind of austerity.

What answered her was the god who answers that kind of persistence. The lord of Uma, bearing the trident, showed himself in his own form to the woman ascetic, in the midst of the great rishis, and told her to name her boon. She asked for Bhishma’s defeat. You shall slay him, the god said. Bhishma repeats those words to Duryodhana without softening them; he had known them for years. Amba, who had been promised things before, wanted to know how. She was a woman, she said, and as a woman her heart was entirely still; how could she win a battle? He had promised Bhishma’s defeat, he who rode the bull, and she wanted the promise made true in a form she could use, so that meeting Shantanu’s son in battle she could kill him. The god of gods did not take offense at being pressed. His words could not be false, he said. She would slay Bhishma, and she would obtain manhood as well. She would remember every incident of this life even in a new body. Born in the line of Drupada she would become a maharatha, quick with weapons, a fierce warrior, skilled in battle, and she would become a man some time after that birth. All of it, he said, would be true. Then Kapardin, whose emblem is the bull, vanished where he stood, in full sight of the Brahmins. The princess did not wait for a further sign. She gathered wood from the forest with her own hands, in the sight of the rishis, built a large pyre on the bank of the Yamuna, lit it herself, and walked into the blaze with her heart burning hotter than the fire, saying as she went that she did this for the destruction of Bhishma.

Duryodhana had one question left, and it was the practical one. How, grandsire, did Shikhandi, born a daughter, afterward become a man? Bhishma took him back to a childless queen. The eldest and best loved wife of king Drupada had borne nothing for years, and in those years Drupada had gone to Shankara for a child, with the severest austerities and a private resolve that his son would be the death of Bhishma. His prayer was specific: let a son be born to me, no daughter; I want a son to avenge myself on Bhishma. The answer was as specific and far stranger. You shall have a child who will be female and male, the god of gods told him. Desist, king; it will not be otherwise. Drupada carried that sentence home and gave it to his wife. He had exerted himself greatly, he told her; he had worshiped Shiva with austerities, and Shambhu had told him that his child would be a daughter first and afterward a male person, and though he had asked again and again, Shiva had only said that this was Destiny’s decree and what was destined must take place. The queen, when her season came, observed every regulation of purity and went to her husband. In due time, Bhishma said, the wife of Prishata’s descendant conceived, in accordance with that decree; Narada had told him so. Drupada attended to every comfort of the wife he loved. And the child that came, in due time, was a daughter of great beauty.

What happened next was the queen’s decision before it was the king’s. She gave out that the child she had brought forth was a son. Drupada, believing the god whose energy does not fade, went along with it and concealed the real sex of the infant, and every rite prescribed for a male child was performed over that misrepresented daughter as if she were truly a boy. The queen kept her counsel with great care. In the whole city only Drupada knew what the child was. The infant rites were done by the son’s ordinance, and the name bestowed was Shikhandi. Bhishma, meanwhile, knew the truth from the first, through his spies and from Narada’s own mouth, because he had been told the god’s words and had followed Amba’s austerities year by year. Drupada spared nothing on the child’s education: writing, painting, every art, and in arrows and weapons the child became Drona’s pupil. Then the mother, who had kept the secret longest, asked her husband to find the child a wife, as one would for a son. Drupada looked at a daughter come into full youth, was certain of her sex, and consulted his queen. This daughter of his, he said, who so enhanced his woe, had reached her youth, and he had concealed her until now on the word of the trident bearer. The queen did not waver. That word could never be untrue; why would the lord of the three worlds say what would not occur? If it pleased him, she would speak, and having listened he could follow his own inclination. Let the wedding of this child with a wife be performed with care. The god’s words would be true; that was her certain belief. So the royal couple inquired into the purity of descent of all the rulers of the earth and chose the daughter of the king of the Dasharnakas, a powerful monarch named Hiranyavarman, hard to defeat and impossible to withstand, master of a large army, and Hiranyavarman gave his daughter to Shikhandi.

For a while the arrangement held, the way such arrangements hold: at a distance. Then both girls grew up. Shikhandi came back to Kampilya after the marriage, and the daughter of Hiranyavarman soon came to know that the person she had married was a woman like herself. She was ashamed, and she did what a young bride does with shame; she told her nurses and companions everything about the so-called son of the king of the Panchalas. The Dasharnaka nurses, in great grief, sent word to their king. The emissaries laid the whole imposture before Hiranyavarman, and the ruler of the Dasharnakas, hearing it after a few days, was seized with a wrath that did not cool. He sent one messenger to Drupada’s palace, and that messenger came alone into the king’s presence, drew him aside, and delivered the message in private, which is the most dangerous way a message can be delivered. The king of the Dasharnakas, deceived and enraged at the insult offered him, had said this: you have humiliated me; without doubt it was unwisely done; in your folly you solicited my daughter for your daughter; wicked one, reap now the consequence of that deception. I will slay you with all your relatives and advisers. Wait a little.

A key to reading this (names): Kapardin is Shiva, named for his matted hair; the lord of Uma, the god who rides the bull, and Shambhu are all the same deity. Drupada is the son of Prishata, which is why the epic calls him Prishata’s descendant and sometimes simply Prishata. Dasharna was a kingdom of the middle country, and Kampilya was Drupada’s capital. The whole account is Bhishma’s own, spoken to Duryodhana the night before the armies march, which is why “my destruction” in Amba’s mouth and in Drupada’s prayer means the destruction of the man telling the story.

The gist: Amba wins from Shiva the two things she asked for, Bhishma’s death and a man’s body in her next birth, and walks into a pyre she built herself on the Yamuna. Drupada wins from the same god a child who will be female and male. The daughter who is born is announced as a son, given a son’s rites and Drona’s training, and married to the princess of Dasharna, and when the bride discovers the truth, Hiranyavarman’s messenger whispers a sentence of death into Drupada’s ear.

Drupada like a thief caught in the act: the queen’s confession, and Shikhandini walks into the Yaksha’s forest

A king who has been told, in private, that he will be killed with his relatives and advisers has two choices, and Drupada, standing before the Dasharnaka messenger, found he could make neither. Bhishma’s phrase for him is exact: like a thief caught in the act, he could not speak. What he did afterward was what frightened men do; he exerted himself greatly in the wrong direction. He sent emissaries of sweet speech, each carrying the same instruction, to say that it was not so and to pacify the man he still called his brother. Hiranyavarman did the one thing that made the emissaries useless. He verified. Once he had ascertained for a second time that the child of the Panchala king was truly a daughter, he left his city without losing a day, sent word to every powerful friend he had about the deception practiced on his daughter, mustered a large army, and resolved to march on Drupada. Before he marched he held a council, and the council of those high-souled kings settled on something worse than war. If Shikhandi was really a daughter, they would bind the ruler of the Panchalas and drag him out of his own city, install another king over the Panchalas, and kill Drupada together with Shikhandi. With that resolution behind him Hiranyavarman sent a second envoy to Prishata’s descendant, and the message this time was shorter than the first. I will slay you. Be calm.

Drupada, Bhishma says plainly, was not by nature a brave man, and the knowledge of his own offense made the fear worse. He sent his envoys off to the Dasharnakas once more and then went, grief-stricken, to the one person who had been inside the secret from the beginning. What he said to Shikhandi’s mother he said in front of others, and he said it as a man who wanted to be overheard. His powerful brother Hiranyavarman had gathered a great force and was coming toward him in anger. Fools that they both were, what were they to do about this daughter of theirs? Her son Shikhandi was suspected of being a daughter, and on that suspicion Hiranyavarman with his allies and his army wished to kill him, believing himself cheated. Tell us now, he said to her, what is true and what is false in this. Hearing it from her first, he would settle how to act. He was in great danger, and so was the child, and so, he told her, was she. For the relief of all of them, let her tell him the truth. Though she had deceived him about the duties he owed a son, he would treat them both kindly; she should not be afraid, and neither should her daughter. He had, he admitted, deceived the king of the Dasharnakas. How should he act toward that king so that all might yet turn out well? Bhishma adds the sentence that makes the speech readable: the king knew everything, and addressed his wife this way in the presence of others in order to proclaim his own innocence before them.

The queen gave him what he had asked for, the truth, and gave it without excuse. She had been childless, she said, and afraid of her co-wives, and when her daughter Shikhandini was born she had told him it was a son. Out of love for her he had corroborated it, and had performed for this daughter every rite prescribed for a son, and then he had married her to the daughter of the king of the Dasharnakas. She had approved of that too, remembering the words of the great god; she had not prevented it, remembering that Shiva had said the child born a daughter would become a son. With the truth spoken aloud, Drupada, whom the epic also calls Yajnasena, told his counselors all of it and took counsel with them for the protection of his subjects from the invader who was coming. He had deceived the Dasharnaka king; he now gave out that the alliance he had made was proper, and set his plans with undivided attention, as men do when the time for honesty has passed and the time for defense has arrived. Drupada’s city was naturally well protected, and at the approach of danger they fortified it further with defensive works. But the king and his queen were wretched, turning over how a war with his brother might still be avoided, and in that wretchedness Drupada began to worship the gods.

It was the queen who told him how to worship usefully. Homage to the gods was productive of benefit, she said, and the righteous approved of it; what then of those sunk in an ocean of distress? So let him pay homage to his superiors, let all the gods be worshiped with large gifts to the Brahmins, let oblations be poured on the fire for the pacifying of the ruler of the Dasharnakas. Let him think of the means by which, without a war, he might pacify his brother; by the grace of the gods all this would happen. For the preservation of the city he had taken counsel with his ministers; let him do everything those counsels indicated, because reliance on the gods, when supported by human exertion, always led to success, and when the two did not go hand in hand success became unattainable. Make the proper arrangements in the city with all your advisers, she told him, and pay homage to the gods as you please. Bhishma reports that speech in full, and it is worth noticing why: it is the sanest thing anyone says in the whole Dasharnaka affair, and it is said by the woman who started it.

While husband and wife talked in that way, both filled with grief, the person they were talking about stood somewhere within earshot and understood, with the particular clarity of the young, that she was the cause. Shikhandini was filled with shame. It is for me that these two are plunged into grief, she thought, and having thought it she resolved to put an end to her own life. She left the house under a heavy sorrow and went into a dense and solitary forest that was the haunt of a very formidable Yaksha called Sthunakarna. Men never entered that forest, out of fear of him. Inside it stood a mansion with high walls and a gateway, plastered over with powdered earth, its air thick with smoke that carried the fragrance of fried paddy. Shikhandini went in and began to starve herself, foregoing all food for many days, and the starving is what brought the Yaksha out. Sthuna was a kind being. He showed himself to her and asked what object this effort of hers had; he would accomplish it, he said, and she should tell him without delay. She told him, again and again, that he was unable to accomplish it. The Guhyaka did not take the refusal. Accomplish it he would. He was a follower of the Lord of Treasures; he could grant boons; he would grant her even what could not be given; let her say what she had to say. So Shikhandini told the chief of the Yakshas everything, in detail, and ended with the request that had brought her into the forest to die. Her father would soon be destroyed. The ruler of the Dasharnakas was marching against him in rage, a king in golden mail, of great might and great courage. Save me, she said, and my mother, and my father. You have already pledged yourself to relieve my distress. By your grace, Yaksha, I would become a perfect man, and for as long as that king has not departed from my city, great Yaksha, Guhyaka, show me grace.

A key to reading this (names): Drupada calls Hiranyavarman his brother because the marriage of their children has made them kin by alliance; it is a form of address, and there is no blood between them. Yajnasena is another name of Drupada. The Guhyakas are a class of Yakshas, and the Lord of Treasures they follow is Kubera. Sthuna and Sthunakarna are one Yaksha under two names. Shikhandini is the daughter’s name; Shikhandi is the son’s name the king gave her, and the queen, confessing, uses the daughter’s.

The gist: Hiranyavarman verifies, musters, and holds a council that decides to drag Drupada out of his city and kill him with his child. Drupada, who knows everything, asks his queen for the truth in front of witnesses so as to look innocent; she confesses the fear of co-wives and the word of Shiva, and then tells him how to pray and fortify at the same time. The daughter at the center of it walks into a forest no one enters, meaning to die there, and the Yaksha who owns the forest asks her, instead, what she wants.

Sthunakarna’s loan, Kubera’s curse, and the vow Bhishma will not break: no weapon on Shikhandi

The Yaksha thought before he answered, and what he thought was about himself. Indeed it was ordained to be so, he said, and it was ordained for my grief. Then he made the offer, with a condition attached the way a careful lender attaches one. He would give her his manhood for a certain period. She must come back to him in due time, and she must pledge herself to do so. He was a being of immense power, a ranger of the skies who wandered at his pleasure and could accomplish whatever he intended; by his grace she could save her city and her kinsmen wholly; he would bear her womanhood for her. Pledge your truth to me, he said, and I will do what is agreeable to you. Shikhandini gave the pledge without hesitation. She would give him back his manhood, she told the wanderer of the night; let him bear her womanhood for a short while; after the ruler of the Dasharnakas, the one in golden mail, had departed from her city, she would once more become a maiden and he would become a man. They made the covenant, and each gave the other’s body its sex. The Yaksha Sthuna became a female. Shikhandini took on the blazing form of a Yaksha and, a man now, went home to Kampilya in great joy and told Drupada everything. Drupada was overjoyed. He and his wife remembered the words of Maheshvara, and he sent a messenger to the Dasharnaka king at once: this child of mine is a male; let it be believed by you.

Hiranyavarman, meanwhile, had come to Kampilya himself, full of sorrow and grief, and the two messages crossed. After the proper honors were exchanged the Dasharnaka king dispatched an envoy of his own, one of the foremost of those versed in the Vedas, with a message that had been composed before any reassurance could reach him. Say to that worst of kings, the ruler of the Panchalas, these words: wicked-minded one, having selected my daughter as a wife for one who is your daughter, you shall today without doubt behold the fruit of that act of deception. The Brahmin came into Drupada’s presence, and the king of the Panchalas, with Shikhandi standing beside him, offered the envoy a cow and honey. The envoy refused the worship and delivered the censure as it had been given him: vile in your behavior, I have been deceived by you through your daughter; I will exterminate you with your counselors and sons and kinsmen. Drupada, who had a man beside him now and could afford mildness, answered in the tone of friendship. The reply to these words of his brother would be carried to that monarch by his own envoy. He sent a Brahmin learned in the Vedas to Hiranyavarman with a message that was, for the first time in the whole affair, true. This child of mine is really a male. Let it be made clear by means of witnesses. Somebody has spoken falsely to you, and that should not be believed. Hiranyavarman, hearing it, was filled with sorrow, and he did the sensible thing. He sent a number of young women of great beauty to ascertain whether Shikhandi was male or female. The women ascertained it, and came back joyful, and told the king of the Dasharnakas that Shikhandi was a powerful person of the masculine sex. On that testimony Hiranyavarman’s anger went out like a lamp. He went to his brother Drupada and passed a few days with him in joy, gave Shikhandi much wealth and many elephants and horses and cattle, and departed after rebuking his daughter, who had told the truth and would never be thanked for it. Shikhandi, with the king gone and the anger quelled, rejoiced exceedingly.

The loan was never repaid, and the reason was a visit. Some time after the exchange, Kubera, whom human beings carry on their shoulders, came in the course of a journey through the earth to the abode of Sthuna. He stopped in the sky above the mansion, and what the protector of treasures saw below him was a house prepared for a festival: garlands of flowers, the perfume of fragrant grass roots and many sweet scents, canopies, scented incense, standards and banners, food and drink of every kind, garlands of jewels and gems, the ground well watered and well swept. This mansion of Sthuna is well adorned, he said to the Yakshas who followed him. Why then does that wicked-minded fellow not come to me? He knows I am here and does not approach; some severe punishment should be inflicted on him, and that is my intention. The Yakshas told him what everyone in the forest already knew. The royal Drupada had a daughter named Shikhandini; for some reason Sthuna had given her his own manhood and taken her womanhood on himself, and he stayed inside his house having become a woman; bearing a feminine form, he did not come out, from shame. Hearing all this, they said, do what may be proper. What Kubera did was stop the chariot and have Sthuna brought, saying repeatedly that he would punish him. Sthuna came in his feminine form and stood before the lord of the Yakshas in shame, and the giver of wealth cursed him in anger. Let the femininity of this wretch remain as it is, he said to the Guhyakas. And to Sthuna: since, humiliating all the Yakshas, you have given your own sex to Shikhandini and taken her femininity from her, since you have done what nobody has ever done, from this day you shall remain a woman and she shall remain a man.

The Yakshas pleaded for a limit to the curse, and Kubera, who is not without mercy, set one. After Shikhandi’s death this one will regain his own form, he said; let the high-souled Yaksha Sthuna be freed from his anxiety. Then the divine king of the Yakshas received his due worship and departed with his followers, who could cross a great distance in the shortest space of time, and Sthuna stayed where he was, with his curse. And when the time came, Shikhandi kept his word. Without losing a moment he came to the wanderer of the night and said, I have come to you, holy one. Sthuna said, again and again, I am pleased with you. Seeing the prince return without guile, he told him everything that had happened. For you I have been cursed by Vaishravana, the Yaksha said. Go now and live happily among men as you choose. Your coming here and the arrival of Pulastya’s descendant were, I think, both ordained beforehand; none of it could have been prevented. Shikhandi went back to his city in great joy. He worshiped with scents and garlands and costly presents the Brahmins, the deities, the great trees, and the crossroads, and Drupada, with his kinsmen and with a son whose wishes had been crowned with success, was exceedingly glad. The king gave Shikhandi, who had been a woman, as a pupil to Drona, and the prince obtained the whole science of arms with its four divisions alongside you, Bhishma told Duryodhana, and so did his brother Dhrishtadyumna. All of this Bhishma had from the spies he kept in Drupada’s house, men disguised as idiots and as the blind.

So the story arrived at the place Bhishma had been steering it toward since Duryodhana first asked about Shikhandi’s rank. That best of rathas, Shikhandi son of Drupada, had been born a female and had afterward become a person of the other sex, and the eldest daughter of the ruler of Kashi, celebrated by the name of Amba, was the one who had been born in Drupada’s line as Shikhandi. If he came at Bhishma bow in hand and wanting a fight, Bhishma would not look at him for a moment and would not strike him. His vow was known over the whole world: he would not shoot weapons at a woman, or at one who had been a woman before, or at one bearing a feminine name, or at one whose form resembled a woman’s. For that reason he would not slay Shikhandi. This was the story of Shikhandi’s birth as Bhishma had ascertained it, and he would not kill him in battle even if he came weapon in hand, because if Bhishma slew a woman the righteous would all speak ill of him. He would not slay Shikhandi even seeing him waiting for battle. Duryodhana, who had wanted a commander without exceptions, reflected for a moment, and then, Sanjaya says, thought that even this conduct was proper for Bhishma. It was the night before the march. He did not yet know what the exception would cost him.

A key to reading this (names): Kubera arrives under several of his names at once: the Lord of Treasures and the giver of wealth, Vaishravana (son of Vishrava), the king of the Yakshas, and Pulastya’s descendant, since Vishrava was Pulastya’s son. The epic’s remark that human beings carry him on their shoulders is literal; his vehicle is a man, which is why he is called Naravahana. The four divisions of the science of arms are the four branches of the traditional Dhanurveda. Read Bhishma’s vow as a list of four: a woman, a former woman, a feminine name, a feminine form. Shikhandi falls under the second, and that clause will become Arjuna’s road to Bhishma in the Bhishma Parva.

The gist: A Yaksha lends his manhood on the condition that it be returned; Shikhandi goes home a man, Hiranyavarman’s young women confirm it, and the Dasharnaka king leaves with gifts and a rebuke for his own daughter. Before the loan falls due, Kubera visits, finds his follower hiding in a woman’s body, and freezes the exchange for as long as Shikhandi lives. Bhishma ends the tale on his vow, and Duryodhana, after a moment’s thought, accepts it.

How many days? A month, two months, ten nights, five days; and both armies come down to Kurukshetra

The question Duryodhana asked the next morning was the question every commander in chief dreads, because it has a number for an answer. The night had passed and the troops were assembled, and Dhritarashtra’s sons put it to their grandsire in front of all of them. That army of Pandu’s son, ready for battle, thick with men and elephants and horses, crowded with maharathas, guarded by Bhima and Arjuna and the others under Dhrishtadyumna, every one of them like a regent of the world; that army, invincible and impossible to withstand, boundless as the sea, which the gods themselves could not shake in battle: in how many days, son of Ganga, could he annihilate it? And in what time could their preceptor Drona, and the mighty Kripa, and Karna who took pleasure in battle, and Drona’s son, that best of Brahmins, each do the same? Everyone in this army knew the celestial weapons; the curiosity in his heart was great; let the mighty-armed one tell him. Bhishma took the question as a compliment, which in a sense it was. It was worthy of a king to inquire into the strength and weakness of the foe. He would state the utmost limit of his power in battle, the energy of his weapons, the might of his arms. First a principle: against ordinary combatants one fights artlessly, and against those who possess powers of deception one fights aided by the ways of deception; that is what the duties of warriors lay down. Then the arithmetic. He could annihilate the Pandava army taking every morning ten thousand ordinary warriors and one thousand chariot-warriors as his share for the day; clad in mail and always exerting himself, he could finish that large force according to that arrangement of number and time. If, however, he stood in battle and loosed his great weapons, the ones that slay hundreds and thousands at once, he could complete the slaughter in a month.

Duryodhana turned to Drona, and Drona answered smiling. He was old; his energy and his activity had both grown weak. With the fire of his weapons he thought he could consume the Pandava army, like Shantanu’s son, in about a month, and that was the limit of his power and of his strength. Kripa, Sharadvat’s son, said two months. Ashvatthama, Drona’s son, pledged himself to ten nights. Karna, who knew weapons of high efficacy, pledged five days. At that the son of the ocean-going river laughed aloud, and the laugh carried across the whole assembly. As long as you have not met Partha in battle, son of Radha, he said, with his arrows and his conch and his bows, rushing to the fight on his chariot with Vasudeva beside him, so long you may think so. Why, you are capable of saying anything at all, whatever you please. The morning’s numbers were on the other side of the field before noon. Yudhishthira’s spies inside Dhritarashtra’s army brought them to him, and he summoned his brothers and repeated them in private, exactly. Duryodhana had asked Ganga’s son of great vows in what time he could annihilate the troops of Pandu’s sons, and the answer to that wicked man had been a month. Drona had said about the same. Gautama Kripa had named twice that period, so they had heard. Drona’s son, who knew the great weapons, had said ten nights, and Karna, asked in the midst of the Kurus, had said he could finish the slaughter in five days. Therefore, Arjuna, said the king, I want to hear your words too. In what time, Phalguna, can you exterminate the foe?

Arjuna, curly-haired, looked at Vasudeva before he answered, and the look is part of the answer. All of those men, he said, Bhishma and the rest, were high-souled warriors, accomplished in arms and acquainted with every mode of warfare, and without doubt they could exterminate the Pandava forces just as they had said. But let the king’s heart be free of its anguish. He would tell him truly: with Vasudeva as his ally, on a single chariot, he could exterminate the three worlds with the immortals in them, every moving creature that had been, that was, and that would be, in the twinkling of an eye. That was what he thought. The terrible and mighty weapon that the Lord of all creatures had given him at their hand-to-hand fight, when Mahadeva came at him in the guise of a hunter, was still with him; the weapon the Lord of all creatures uses at the end of a yuga to destroy created things was in his keeping. Ganga’s son did not know that weapon, nor Drona, nor Gautama Kripa, nor Drona’s son, and how then could the Suta’s son know it? It was not proper, however, to slay ordinary men in battle by means of celestial weapons. They would vanquish their foes in a fair fight. And then he gave Yudhishthira the roll of the men standing around him, all of them versed in the celestial weapons, all of them eager for battle, all of them bathed at the close of sacrifices after their initiation in the Vedas, all of them unvanquished, all of them competent to slay the army of the gods: Shikhandi, and Yuyudhana, and Dhrishtadyumna of Prishata’s line; Bhimasena and the twins; Yudhamanyu and Uttamaujas; Virata and Drupada, equal in battle to Bhishma and Drona; the mighty-armed Shankha; Hidimba’s son of great might and that son’s son Anjanaparvan, strong and valorous; Shini’s descendant of mighty arms, well versed in battle; the mighty Abhimanyu and the five sons of Draupadi. And Yudhishthira himself was competent to exterminate the three worlds. Arjuna knew it, he said, for it was manifest: the man on whom the king cast his eyes in anger was sure to be annihilated.

The next morning the sky was cloudless, and all the kings, urged by Duryodhana, set out against the Pandavas. They had purified themselves with baths; they wore garlands and white robes; they had poured libations on the fire and had Brahmins utter benedictions over them, and then they took up their weapons and raised their standards. Vaishampayana lingers on what they were: men versed in the Vedas, brave, practiced in excellent vows, grantors of other people’s wishes, skilled in battle, reposing confidence in one another, of a single purpose, which was to win in battle the highest regions. They went in three bodies. First Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti, and the Kekayas, and the Vahlikas, with Bharadvaja’s son at their head. Then Ashvatthama, and Shantanu’s son Bhishma, and Jayadratha of the Sindhu country, and the kings of the southern and western countries and of the hills, and Shakuni ruler of the Gandharas, and all the chiefs of the east and the north, and the Shakas, the Kiratas, the Yavanas, the Shivis, and the Vasatis, each with his maharathas at the head of his own division; these great chariot-warriors marched in the second body. Then Kritavarma at the head of his troops, and the mighty chariot-warrior who ruled the Trigartas, and king Duryodhana surrounded by his brothers, and Shala, and Bhurishravas, and Shalya, and Brihadratha ruler of the Kosalas, all of them in the rear with Dhritarashtra’s sons at their head. The Dhartarashtras took up their position at the far end of Kurukshetra, all clad in mail, and Duryodhana had his encampment adorned until it looked like a second Hastinapura; even the clever among the citizens of Hastinapura, Vaishampayana says, could not have told their city from that camp. The Kuru king had inaccessible pavilions like his own raised by the hundreds and thousands for the other kings. The tents for the troops were planted across a full five yojanas of the field, and the rulers of the earth went into those tents, stocked with provisions, each according to his courage and the strength he commanded. Duryodhana ordered excellent provisions for all of them, for their infantry and elephants and horses and every follower, and he made due provision as well for everyone who lived by mechanical arts, for the bards and singers and panegyrists devoted to his cause, for the vendors and traders, for the prostitutes, for the spies, and for the people who had come simply to watch.

Yudhishthira answered the march with a march. Like Duryodhana, the son of Kunti and Dharma ordered out his warriors under Dhrishtadyumna: Dhrishtaketu, the steady commander of the Chedis, the Kashis, and the Karushas; Virata and Drupada; Yuyudhana and Shikhandi; and the two great bowmen of Panchala, Yudhamanyu and Uttamaujas. In handsome mail and golden earrings they blazed like altar fires fed with clarified butter; they shone like planets. The king honored every combatant and ordered the march, and ordered food for the high-souled kings and their troops and followers and for all who lived by the mechanical arts. First he sent Abhimanyu, and Brihanta, and the five sons of Draupadi, with Dhrishtadyumna at their head; then, in the second division, Bhima and Dhananjaya; and the din of men running to harness horses and elephants and load the chariots with the implements of battle, and the shouting of the cheerful fighters, seemed to touch the sky. Last of all the king marched himself, with Virata and Drupada and the other monarchs of his side, and that army of fierce bowmen under Dhrishtadyumna, held in one place until now and drawn out into columns for the march, looked like the current of the Ganga. Then Yudhishthira, relying on his own wisdom, rearranged his divisions into a different order to confound the sons of Dhritarashtra. The first, irresistible division he placed under Bhimasena: the five sons of Draupadi and Abhimanyu, Nakula and Sahadeva, all the Prabhadrakas, ten thousand horse, two thousand elephants, ten thousand foot, and five hundred chariots. In the middle division he put Virata and Jayatsena and the two high-souled princes of Panchala, Yudhamanyu and Uttamaujas, armed with mace and bow, and in that middle division marched Vasudeva and Dhananjaya, among fighters accomplished in arms and burning with anger, with horses ridden by brave men and five thousand elephants and crowds of chariots all around, and thousands of foot soldiers armed with bow and sword and mace marching behind them as thousands marched before.

Where Yudhishthira himself was, in that sea of troops, the lords of the earth were stationed, with elephants by the thousand and horses by the ten thousand and chariots and foot by the thousand. There marched Chekitana with his own large force, and king Dhrishtaketu, leader of the Chedis, and Satyaki, the foremost chariot-warrior of the Vrishnis, surrounded by hundreds and thousands of chariots and leading them to battle. Kshatrahan and Kshatradeva, bulls among men, rode at the back on their chariots, protecting the rear, and behind them came the wagons, the stalls, the uniforms, the vehicles and the draft animals, and more elephants by the thousand and horses by the ten thousand. Taking all the invalids and the women, all who were emaciated and weak, all the animals that carried his treasure, and all his granaries, with the aid of his elephant divisions, Yudhishthira marched slowly. After him came Sauchitti, who adhered steadily to truth and was invincible in battle, and Shrenimat, and Vasudana, and Vibhu the son of the ruler of Kashi, with twenty thousand chariots, with high-mettled horses beyond counting, each with scores of bells on its limbs, and with twenty thousand fighting elephants of good breed, their temples split with must and their tusks as long as plowshares, moving like masses of cloud; these usually walked behind the monarchs. Beyond these, the elephants Yudhishthira had in his seven akshauhinis, seventy thousand of them with the must trickling down their trunks and from their mouths so that they looked like showering clouds, followed the king like moving hills. That was the terrible force of Kunti’s intelligent son, and relying on it he fought Suyodhana, son of Dhritarashtra. Besides those named, men by the hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands, in divisions numbered by thousands, followed the Pandava army roaring, and warriors by the thousands and ten thousands, filled with joy, beat drums by the thousand and blew conches by the ten thousand. On that noise the Udyoga Parva ends.

A key to reading this (the weapon and the numbers): The weapon Arjuna describes is the Pashupata he won from Shiva in the Vana Parva, when the god fought him as a Kirata hunter; the epic here names only what it does, the destruction at the end of a yuga. The horses that follow Vasudana are given in the text as a hundred million, one of the epic’s own hyperboles, and we have written “beyond counting.” The seventy thousand elephants of seven akshauhinis is the epic’s figure as it stands; the unit arithmetic given earlier in this chapter (21,870 elephants to an akshauhini) would yield far more, and we have kept what the poet says. Hidimba’s son is Ghatotkacha; Shini’s descendant is Satyaki, whom the epic also calls Yuyudhana, and Arjuna counts both names. The next chapter opens with the Bhishma Parva.

The gist: Duryodhana asks each of his generals how long the Pandava army would take to destroy and gets a month, a month, two months, ten nights, five days, and Bhishma’s laughter. Yudhishthira has the numbers by morning; Arjuna, glancing at Krishna, answers with the three worlds in the blink of an eye and then refuses to use that weapon on ordinary men. Then both armies march: the Kaurava camp becomes a second Hastinapura at one end of Kurukshetra, and Yudhishthira’s seven akshauhinis come down to the other end like the current of the Ganga.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Udyoga Parva. This part follows K. M. Ganguli, sections CLXVI-CXCIX (166-199); 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.