Drona in Command, and the Samshaptakas

The question is asked first by another king, in another court. Janamejaya was having the whole history recited to him at his great sacrifice by Vaishampayana, a disciple of Vyasa, and here he stopped the sage. Dhritarashtra had now heard that the man he called father, Devavrata, who had no rival in vigor, in endurance or in strength, had been killed by Shikhandi, the prince of the Panchalas. His son had meant to rule after defeating the sons of Pandu through Bhishma, through Drona and through his other great chariot fighters. What did the old king do, with his eyes full of tears, once the first of those archers was gone? Vaishampayana answered that Dhritarashtra, hearing his father was dead, was filled with anxiety and grief and could find no peace. He sat brooding over it without a break, and into that brooding Sanjaya, the son of Gavalgana, came again, back that night from the camp. The king wanted his sons to win, and his heart had gone dark at the news, and he wept as he questioned him. “My son, after you had all wept for Bhishma, whose strength was a terror, what did the Kauravas do next, driven on by fate? When that undefeated hero was killed and they were sunk in an ocean of grief, what did they do? That army of the Pandavas, swollen and able as it is, would frighten the three worlds themselves. Tell me, Sanjaya, what the kings did after Devavrata fell.”

Sanjaya asked for the king’s whole attention and began with what his sons had done. When Bhishma went down, a man whose strength had never once failed him, the fighters of both armies fell silent, each with his own thoughts. They thought about what the code of the Kshatriya, the man born to arms, required of them, and it filled them with wonder and a kind of joy; and following that same code they all bowed to him. They made him a bed where he lay, with a pillow of straight arrows under his head, and set a guard around it, and for a little while spoke gently to one another. Then they took their leave of Ganga’s son and walked around him in reverence, looked at one another with eyes gone red with anger, and went back out to fight, driven by fate. Trumpets blared and drums beat, and the divisions of both armies marched. The best part of the day was already gone. Bhishma had given them words worth accepting and they set those aside; anger had them, fate had darkened their hearts, and they went out fast, with weapons in their hands. Sanjaya did not soften it for the old man in front of him. Through the king’s own folly, and his son’s, and now through the killing of Shantanu’s son, the Kauravas and every king with them looked like men whom Death himself had sent for.

Without Devavrata the Kurus were a flock of goats and sheep with no herdsman, in a forest thick with beasts of prey. Sanjaya reached for one likeness after another. The army looked like the night sky stripped of its stars, like a sky with the air gone out of it, like the earth after its crops are blasted, like a speech ruined by bad grammar, like the Asura host of old after Bali was struck down, like a beautiful woman who has lost her husband, like a river whose water has dried up, like a doe whose mate is gone and who is ringed by wolves in the woods, like a wide mountain cave whose lion has been killed by a sharabha, the one beast said to be stronger than a lion. The army of the Bharatas had become a frail boat far out on the ocean with a gale coming at it from every side. And the gale was real. The Pandavas, strong and sure of aim, were hitting it hard, and the Kaurava host, its horses and chariot fighters and elephants all in trouble, grew distressed, then helpless, then afraid. The kings were frightened and so were the common soldiers. They stopped relying on one another, and an army in which no man counts on the man beside him seemed to be sinking through the floor of the world into whatever lies lowest beneath it.

A key to reading this (lineage): Bhishma goes by several names in this chapter: Devavrata, Ganga’s son, Shantanu’s son, the grandsire of the Bharatas. He was the son of King Shantanu and the river Ganga. The text calls him Dhritarashtra’s father, and to Duryodhana and the Pandavas alike he is the grandsire, the old man of the family that stands on both sides of this war.

It was then that the Kauravas remembered Karna. In their eyes he was Devavrata’s equal. Every heart in that army turned toward him, who was to them like a guest arriving radiant with learning and austerity; they turned as the heart of a man in trouble turns to the one friend who can get him out of it. The kings began to shout his name. “Karna! Karna! Radha’s son, our friend, the charioteer’s son, the man who is always ready to lay down his life in battle! Famous as he is, he and his followers and his friends have not fought in these ten days. Send for him, quickly!” They thought of him, Sanjaya said, the way people who have to cross a river think of a boat. Fighters, princes and kings called out together that the hour for his strength had come. He had learned his weapons from Rama, the son of Jamadagni, and no one could stand against him, and he could bring them out of great danger as Govinda always brings the gods out of theirs.

A sub-tale: Karna’s ten days of absence had a cause. When the fighters of the army were being ranked aloud, in the presence of all the Kshatriyas, Bhishma had counted him an ardharatha, half a chariot warrior. Sanjaya tells the king what he thinks of that: Karna is worth two maharathas, every hero respects him, and he would go into battle against Yama, Kubera, Varuna and Indra. Karna was furious, and he said to Ganga’s son: “As long as you live, I will never fight. If you kill the sons of Pandu in the great battle, I will go to the forest, with Duryodhana’s leave. And if the Pandavas kill you and you go to heaven, then on a single chariot I will kill every one of the men you count as great chariot warriors.” Duryodhana approved, and Karna stayed out of the fighting for the first ten days, while Bhishma killed a very great number of Yudhishthira’s men.

The gist: With Bhishma on his bed of arrows the Kaurava army lost its nerve. Kings and soldiers began calling for Karna, who had sworn to keep out of the fighting as long as Bhishma lived and had stayed away for all ten days.

Then he called for his gear, piece by piece. “Put my armor on me, the beautiful one, made of gold and bright with jewels and gems, and my headpiece that shines like the sun. Bring my bows, and my arrows that are like fire, or poison, or snakes. Have sixteen quivers tied to the chariot, each in its proper place, and get a number of good bows. Make ready the shafts and the darts and the heavy maces, and my conch with the gold worked into it. Bring my standard too, the fine gold one with the luster of a lotus and the elephant’s girth-rope for its device; wipe it with a soft cloth and dress it with garlands and a net of wires. Bring me quickly, charioteer’s son, some fast horses the color of tawny clouds, well fleshed, bathed in water blessed with mantras, in harness of bright gold. Bring a good chariot hung with garlands of gold and set with gems, bright as the sun or the moon, fitted out with everything it needs and with weapons, and good animals in its traces. Bring bowstrings that can do their work on an enemy, and coats of mail for my body. And bring, quickly, every lucky thing a man should have when he sets out: vessels of brass and of gold filled with curds. Have garlands of flowers brought and put on me where they belong, and let the drums be beaten for victory. Then drive fast, charioteer, to where Arjuna is, the one who wears the diadem, and Bhima, and Dharma’s son Yudhishthira, and the twins. I will meet them and kill them, or they will kill me and I will follow Bhishma. Arjuna, Krishna, Satyaki, the Srinjayas: I think no king can conquer that force. Even so, if Death himself, who destroys everything, stood guard over Arjuna and never once looked away, I would still meet him in battle and kill him, or go to Yama’s house by the road Bhishma took. I say it again: I am going into the middle of those heroes. And the kings who are my allies do not start quarrels in the family, and their attachment to me is firm, and there is nothing unrighteous in them.” The chariot they brought him was costly and strong, with a fine pole and gold on it everywhere, a standard above it and horses as fast as the wind in front of it, and its wheels made a sound like rolling cloud. The best chariot fighters of the Kurus honored him as the gods honor Indra. A fierce archer, bright as fire, with a large force around him, he drove for the place on the field where Bhishma had paid his debt to nature.

The gist: Karna told the Kaurava warriors that he would carry Bhishma’s burden, protect the army, and kill the Pandavas or die on the field. He had himself armed, with sixteen quivers and the standard of the elephant’s rope, and drove out.

The sight he drove toward had already broken the Kauravas. Bhishma, their grandsire, the terror of every Kshatriya who had ever faced him, had been thrown from his chariot by Arjuna’s celestial weapons. He had been the island that men found when they were going under in deep water. Now he lay covered with arrows that had come at him in a stream as unbroken as the river Yamuna, like Mount Mainaka hurled to the earth by Indra, like the sun fallen out of the sky, like Indra himself on the day long ago when Vritra beat him. Karna saw him: the man of great vows, the king’s own father, the grandsire of the Bharatas, flat on the ground on a hero’s bed with Arjuna’s shafts all over him. He got down from his chariot. Grief had nearly taken his senses, and his eyes were swimming, and he went the rest of the way on foot. He joined his palms, greeted the old man with reverence, and said: “I am Karna. Blessings on you. Open your eyes and look at me, and speak to me, some sacred and auspicious word. No one in this world, it seems, gets to enjoy the fruit of his good deeds, since you, old in years and given to virtue, lie here struck down on the ground. I look among the Kurus and I see no one else who can do what you did: fill the treasury, give counsel, draw up an army for battle, use the weapons. You had a righteous mind and you kept the Kurus out of every danger, and now, having killed fighters past counting, you are leaving for the world of the ancestors. From today the Pandavas, in their anger, will kill the Kurus the way tigers kill deer. From today the Kauravas, who know what the twang of Arjuna’s bow Gandiva means, will look at him as the Asuras looked at the god with the thunderbolt, in terror. The noise of the arrows from that bow is the noise of thunder in heaven, and it will frighten the Kurus and every other king. Arjuna’s arrows will burn the sons of Dhritarashtra as a great fire burns a forest. Where fire and wind go through a forest together, they burn every plant and creeper and tree. Arjuna is that fire, and Krishna is the wind. When the Kaurava troops hear Krishna’s conch Panchajanya and the twang of Gandiva together, they will all be afraid. Without you, these kings will never be able to stand the rattle of the chariot with the ape on its banner when it comes at them. Who among the kings, except you, can fight Arjuna, whose feats, as the wise tell them, are all more than human? More than human was the fight he fought with Mahadeva of the three eyes, and from him he won a boon that no impure man can win. He loves battle, and Krishna protects him. Even you could not defeat him, and you once defeated Rama himself, the fierce destroyer of the Kshatriyas, whom gods and Danavas worship. Who then can? I cannot bear that son of Pandu. He is like a snake whose poison kills, and he kills his enemies with a look. With your permission, I am able to kill him by the force of my weapons.”

The old man heard him out. He answered, Sanjaya said, with a glad heart, in words that fit both the hour and the place. “Be to your kinsmen and your friends what the ocean is to the rivers, what the sun is to everything that shines, what the righteous are to truth, what good soil is to seed, what the clouds are to all living things: be their refuge. Let your people depend on you as the gods depend on Indra of the thousand eyes. Humble your enemies and add to the joy of your friends. Be to the Kauravas what Vishnu is to those who live in heaven. You wanted to please Dhritarashtra’s son, Karna, and by the strength of your own arms you went to Rajapura and conquered the Kambojas. You conquered the many kings who were at Girivraja with Nagnajit as their chief, and the Ambashthas, the Videhas and the Gandharvas. The Kiratas, fierce in battle, who live in the fastness of the Himalaya, you brought under Duryodhana’s rule. The Utpalas, the Mekalas, the Paundras, the Kalingas, the Andhras, the Nishadas, the Trigartas and the Bahlikas were all beaten by you in battle. In many other countries, wanting Duryodhana’s good, you defeated many peoples and many powerful kings. So be the refuge of all the Kauravas, child, as Duryodhana is with his kinsmen and relations and friends. I command you in auspicious words: go and fight the enemy. Lead the Kurus in battle and give Duryodhana the victory. You are a grandson to us exactly as Duryodhana is. By the rule of things, all of us are as much yours as we are his. The wise say that the companionship of the good with the good is a closer tie than birth from one womb. So do not make a lie of your kinship with the Kurus. Protect the Kaurava army as Duryodhana does, and think of it as your own.”

Karna had reason to feel the word grandson. He had come to that bed once already, when the kings had gone back to their quarters, and Bhishma had sent the guards away, put one arm around him, and told him what he had heard from Narada and from Vyasa: that he was Kunti’s son, and that Adhiratha was no father of his. Kunti was the mother of Yudhishthira, Bhima and Arjuna. Now Karna bowed to the old man’s feet in reverence, took his leave, and came to the place where all the Kaurava archers were. He looked over that wide camp, which had no equal, and spoke to the broad-chested, well-armed men in it and put heart into them. Duryodhana and all the Kauravas were filled with joy. When they saw him take his place at the head of the whole army, ready for battle, they greeted him with loud shouts, with the slap of palms on arms, with lion roars and the twang of bows and every other kind of noise.

The gist: Karna went on foot to Bhishma’s bed of arrows and asked leave to kill Arjuna. Bhishma blessed him, named the kingdoms he had conquered for Duryodhana, called him a grandson of the house as much as Duryodhana was, and ordered him to lead the Kurus and protect their army as his own.

Duryodhana saw Karna on his chariot and was glad. “With you protecting it,” he said, “this army has, I think, found its proper leader. Still, let us settle now what is right and what lies within our power.” Karna would not answer for him. “Tell us yourself. You are the wisest of kings, and no one sees what ought to be done as clearly as the man whose own affair it is. These kings are all waiting to hear what you have to say, and I am sure you will say nothing improper.”

“Bhishma was our commander,” Duryodhana said. “He had the years for it, and the strength, and the learning, and every fighter we have stood behind him. He won great glory, Karna, and killed a great many of my enemies, and for ten days he protected us by fair fighting. What he did was as hard as anything can be. Now he is about to go up to heaven. Whom do you think fit to command after him? An army cannot stand in battle for even a short while without a leader. You are our best in battle, and you know what a boat is without a helmsman, or a chariot without a driver: it goes wherever it happens to go. That is an army with no one at its head. A merchant who does not know the roads of the country he has come to falls into every kind of trouble, and so does an army without a leader. Look, then, among all the great warriors of our army, and find the right man to follow Shantanu’s son. Whoever you judge fit to lead us in battle, all of us together will make him our leader. Have no doubt of it.”

Karna’s answer showed how well he knew the men around him. “Every one of these is a great man, and every one deserves to lead. There is no need to examine them closely. They all come of noble lines, they all know how and where a blow should land, they all have courage and intelligence; they are attentive, they know the scriptures, they are wise, and none of them retreats from a fight. All of them cannot lead at once. One has to be chosen, a man with merits the others lack. And these men hold themselves to be one another’s equals. Honor one of them and the rest will be offended, and it is plain that they will no longer fight for you with your good at heart. There is one here, though, who taught every one of them his weapons, who is old, and who deserves respect: Drona, the greatest of all who carry arms. While Drona is here, undefeated, first among those who know Brahman, the equal of Shukra or of Brihaspati himself, who else is fit to lead? Among all the kings in your army there is no fighter who will think it beneath him to ride behind Drona when he goes into battle. He is the first of commanders, the first of men at arms, the first of the wise, and he is your teacher too. So make him the leader of your forces, Duryodhana, and do it now, as the gods made Kartikeya their leader when they went to defeat the Asuras.”

A key to reading this (a concept): The senapati is the commander of the whole army, installed by rite, whose word every king in it obeys. The epic’s own summary counts the days: Bhishma fought for ten, Drona protected the Kaurava divisions for five, Karna fought for two, and Shalya for half a day. Drona’s five begin here, on the eleventh day of the war.

The gist: Duryodhana asked Karna to name the man who should command after Bhishma. Karna answered that the kings all held themselves one another’s equals and would resent any one of their number raised over the rest, and he named Drona, the teacher of them all, whom every one of them would follow.

Duryodhana turned to Drona, who was standing among the troops, and made the request in front of everyone. “You are born into the highest order and your family is noble. You have learning, years and intelligence; you have courage, skill, and a record without a defeat in it; you know the affairs of the world, you know policy, and you have mastered yourself. You have done your austerities, and you do not forget what is done for you. In every virtue you stand above these kings, and none of them would make the leader that you would. Protect us, then, as Indra protects the gods. With you at our head, we mean to defeat our enemies. What Kapali is among the Rudras, what Pavaka is among the Vasus, Kubera among the Yakshas, Indra among the Maruts, Vasishtha among the Brahmins, the sun among the lights of the sky, Yama among the ancestors, Varuna among the creatures of the water, the moon among the stars and Ushanas among the sons of Diti, that you are among those who lead armies. Be our leader. Let these eleven akshauhinis of troops obey your word of command. Draw them up for battle and kill our enemies as Indra killed the Danavas. Go at the head of us all, as Kartikeya, Pavaka’s son, goes at the head of the armies of the gods, and we will follow you into battle the way a herd follows its lead bull. You are a fierce and great archer. When Arjuna sees you drawing your bow at our front, he will hold his hand. If you become our leader, I will beat Yudhishthira in battle, with all his followers and all his kin. I have no doubt of it.”

The kings shouted victory to Drona, and the lion roar they raised together delighted Duryodhana. The troops were full of joy, and with Duryodhana at their head they began to praise the Brahmin aloud, hungry for the great name such a war could give them. Drona let them finish and then spoke to the king. “I know the Vedas and their six branches. I know the science of human affairs. I know the weapon of Shiva and many other kinds of weapons. You want victory, and you have credited me with all those virtues; I will try to show every one of them in fact, and I will fight the Pandavas. One thing I will be unable to do. I cannot kill the son of Prishata. He was made to be my death. I will fight the Pandavas and I will kill the Somakas. As for the Pandavas, they will not fight me with glad hearts.”

He had named, in front of the army he was about to lead, the man made to kill him: Dhrishtadyumna, the prince of the Panchalas. And of the Pandavas who would take no pleasure in fighting him, one was Arjuna, who had learned his first weapons from him. With that said he gave his consent, and Duryodhana made him commander of his forces with the rites the ordinance lays down. The kings of the Kaurava army, Duryodhana at their head, invested him as the gods under Indra once invested Skanda. When it was done the army’s joy came out as drumbeat and the long blare of conchs. There were cries of the kind heard on a festival day; Brahmins, well pleased, called down blessings and shouted “Jaya!”, the cry of victory; mimes danced. Drona was honored as the rite required, and the Kaurava fighters looked across the field and counted the Pandavas as beaten already.

A key to reading this (numbers in modern terms): The epic fixes the akshauhini by count: 21,870 chariots, the same number of elephants, 65,610 horses and 109,350 men on foot. Eleven of them, the figure Duryodhana gives Drona, come to 240,570 chariots, as many elephants, 721,710 horses and 1,202,850 foot soldiers at full strength. Ten days of killing under Bhishma had already gone through those ranks by the time Drona took them over.

A sub-tale: Drona’s first act in command was to draw up the army in the shakata, the cart array. On his right wing stood Jayadratha, ruler of the Sindhus, the chief of the Kalingas and the king’s son Vikarna, in armor, with Shakuni in support behind them at the head of Gandhara horsemen who fought with bright lances. On the left, Kripa, Kritavarma, Chitrasena and Vivimshati fought under Duhshasana, supported by the Kambojas under Sudakshina and by the Shakas and Yavanas on fast horses. The rear guard was a roll of peoples: the Madras, Trigartas and Ambashthas, the Westerners and Northerners, the Malavas, Shurasenas, Shudras, Maladas, Sauviras and Kaitavas, the Easterners and the Southerners, with Duryodhana and Karna at their head. Karna rode at the front of the archers under a tall, blazing standard that bore the elephant’s rope, and the sight of him made the army forget Bhishma. “Bhishma spared Kunti’s sons in battle,” the soldiers told one another. “Karna will kill them with his sharp arrows.” Yudhishthira set his own army in the krauncha, the crane array, and at its head, under the banner of the ape, stood the chariot of the white horses with Krishna and Arjuna in it. Across the field, Karna and Arjuna looked at each other.

The gist: Drona accepted the command and told Duryodhana plainly that he could not kill Dhrishtadyumna, who was made to be his death, and that the Pandavas would fight him with heavy hearts. He was installed by rite and drew up the army in the cart array, and the Pandavas answered with the crane.

Drona turned his eyes, in anger, on the army those men were protecting. No one could beat him in battle, and from where he stood on his chariot he burned through the Pandava host the way a storm tears through banks of cloud. He went at chariots and horses and foot soldiers and elephants on every side, an old man carrying the full weight of his years and driving across the field like a young one. His red horses, fast as the wind and of the best blood, were covered in blood themselves, and looked splendid in it. Yudhishthira’s soldiers saw him cutting men down like Yama in a rage and ran in every direction; some ran, some rallied, some stood and stared and some held their ground, and the noise of all of them together, which delighted brave men and made cowards more afraid, filled the sky and the earth. Drona shouted his own name into the battle and made himself more terrible still, scattering arrows in hundreds. He took off heads, and arms with their ornaments still on them; he emptied the platforms of many chariots; he roared like a lion. At those roars and at the force of his arrows the fighters of the other side shivered like a herd of cows in the cold. Arrows left his bow in thousands, closed off every quarter of the horizon, and came down on elephants, horses, chariots and men. The Panchalas and Pandavas went boldly up to him, a fire whose flames were weapons, and he sent them to Yama’s house with their elephants and foot soldiers and horses and turned the ground to a mire of blood. Among the men, the chariots, the horses and the elephants there was nothing to be seen except his arrows, and the standard of his chariot, moving among the other chariots like flashes of lightning. He hurt the five Kekaya princes and the king of the Panchalas, and then he drove at Yudhishthira’s own division. Bhima, Arjuna, Satyaki the grandson of Shini, the sons of Drupada, Shaibya’s son the ruler of Kashi, and Shibi himself roared and covered him with arrows, and thousands of gold-winged shafts came back from his bow, went through the bodies of their elephants and their young horses, and stood in the earth with their feathers red. Then Sanjaya, who had been describing a single charge, told the king how all of it would end. Drona crushed the divisions of Satyaki and Bhima and Arjuna, of Subhadra’s son and Drupada and the ruler of Kashi; he ground down many other heroes; he scorched the world like the sun that rises at the end of an age; he killed more than two akshauhinis of brave men who would not turn back. And having done all of it, the man with the golden chariot was himself killed, at last, by Dhrishtadyumna. A cry of “Fie!” went up from every creature and every soldier and rang through heaven, earth and the space between. The Pandavas roared so loudly in their victory that the ground shook. The blind king could not take it in. “How did the Pandavas and the Srinjayas kill Drona, who knew weapons as no other armed man knew them? Did his chariot break under him? Did his bow break in his hand while he was shooting? Was he careless at the moment the blow came? His horses were red, big, of the Sindhu breed, covered in nets of gold, fast as the wind, steady through the trumpeting of elephants and the noise of conchs and drums. Did they grow weak and faint? Who fought in front of him, and who stood at his side? Who guarded his right wheel, and who his left, and who rode behind him? Did the Kshatriyas who were set to protect him play him false and leave him, so that he was killed alone? Drona would never have shown his back out of fear, whatever the danger. How, then, was he killed? Fate, I see, is stronger than effort. My heart must be made of adamant, since it hears of Drona’s death and does not break into a hundred pieces. I am losing my senses, Sanjaya. Let this stop for a while. When I have come back to myself I will ask you again.” He had no hope left of his son’s victory. He fell from his seat to the floor.

A key to reading this (lineage): Yudhishthira calls Drona “the pot-born” because of how the old story has him come into the world: the seed of the sage Bharadvaja was kept in a pot, a drona, and the son born of it took the vessel’s name. That is also why he is called Bharadvaja’s son. “The son of Prishata” is Dhrishtadyumna. Prishata was the Panchala king who fathered Drupada, and Drupada’s son rose out of a sacrificial fire lit for the destruction of Drona, which is why Drona tells Duryodhana that this one man was made to be his death.

The gist: Evil omens followed Drona out, and he went through the Pandava army like a wheel of fire while Dhrishtadyumna and the Pandava kings fought to hold him. Then Sanjaya told the king the end before the middle: after killing more than two akshauhinis, Drona was himself killed by Dhrishtadyumna. Dhritarashtra asked how, question after question, and fell senseless from his seat.

The gist: Vrishasena held the broken Kaurava line alone until both armies closed around him. Then Drona drove at Yudhishthira, killed Kumara, Vyaghradatta and Simhasena, threw Yugandhara from his chariot seat, and stood in front of the king’s chariot. Arjuna arrived behind a darkness of arrows, the sun set, and both armies withdrew.

The answer Drona gave pleased every soldier who heard it. “Praise to Kunti’s son, then, since all you want is to have him taken. You are a hard man to defeat, and you ask no boon for his death. Why is that? Why do you not want him dead? You know policy, Duryodhana; no one doubts it. Why, then, do you say nothing of killing Yudhishthira? It is a great wonder that the just king Yudhishthira has no enemy who wants his death. If you want him alive, then either you mean to save your own line from being wiped out, or you mean to defeat the Pandavas in battle and then give them back their kingdom and live with them as brothers. His was an auspicious birth, that wise prince. They call him Ajatashatru, the man without an enemy, and the name is true, since even you have affection for him.”

That speech touched the thing Duryodhana carried in his chest at all hours, and it came out on his face before he could stop it. Sanjaya remarked to the king that even a man like Brihaspati cannot keep his feelings out of his expression. Full of joy, Duryodhana said: “Killing Kunti’s son in battle will not give me victory, teacher. If Yudhishthira were killed, Arjuna would kill every one of us, no doubt of it. And the gods themselves could not kill all of them; whichever one survived would root us out. Yudhishthira, though, keeps his promises. If he is brought here alive and beaten at dice once more, the Pandavas will go to the forest once more, because they all obey him. A victory of that kind will plainly last. That is why I do not want the just king Yudhishthira killed, on any account.”

There it was, said aloud: a capture, another game of dice, and the forest again for the Pandavas. Drona saw the crooked purpose for what it was. He knew the science of advantage to its roots and he had a quick mind, and he thought for a little while before he spoke. When he gave the boon, he put a fence around it.

A sub-tale: Ajatashatru means the one whose enemy has not been born, the man without a foe. It is a name of Yudhishthira’s, and Dhritarashtra himself uses it for him when he asks Sanjaya who could have stood in Yudhishthira’s way. Drona turns the name on Duryodhana: the just king is so much without enemies that the man making war on him will not ask for his death. Duryodhana’s face shows what that affection is worth. He knew, Sanjaya adds, that the teacher was partial to the Pandavas.

The gist: Offered a boon by his new commander, Duryodhana asked for Yudhishthira alive. To kill him would bring Arjuna down on them all; a captured Yudhishthira, who keeps his word, could be beaten at dice again and sent back to the forest with his brothers. Drona understood the purpose and limited the boon.

“If Arjuna, hero that he is, does not protect Yudhishthira in battle,” Drona said, “you may count the eldest Pandava as already in your hands. The gods and the Asuras together, though, with Indra leading them, cannot advance against Arjuna in battle. That is why I dare not do what you ask. Arjuna is my pupil, certainly, and I was his first teacher in arms. He is young, all the same, and great good fortune goes with him, and when he has set himself a purpose he gives himself to it entirely. He has had many weapons, besides, from Indra and from Rudra. And you have provoked him. So I dare not do what you ask. Let Arjuna be taken out of the battle, by whatever means it can be done. Once he is drawn off, you may count King Yudhishthira as beaten. Victory lies in his capture; his death would give you none. And he can be captured, even by a stratagem. While Arjuna is beside him no one will take him in battle, though the gods and the Asuras came for him with Indra at their head. He is a king given to truth and righteousness, and if Kunti’s son Dhananjaya has been drawn away from the field, and if Yudhishthira stands in front of me for even a moment, I will take him and put him in your power this very day. Have no doubt of it.”

So the promise to take the king was given with a fence around it, and the king’s foolish sons heard the promise and nothing else; to them Yudhishthira was as good as taken. Duryodhana knew where Drona’s affections lay. To hold him to his word, he made the private counsel public and had it proclaimed to all his troops that Drona had promised to seize the eldest Pandava. The army answered with lion roars, the whir of arrows and a blast of conchs.

The gist: Drona told Duryodhana that while Arjuna stood by Yudhishthira no one, god or Asura, could take the king, and that he would take him that very day if Arjuna were drawn off the field. Duryodhana, who knew the teacher’s fondness for the Pandavas, had the promise announced to the whole army to bind him to it.

Susharma, the ruler of the Trigartas, was there with his brothers, and he heard it. “We are always being humiliated by the man who carries Gandiva,” he said to Duryodhana. “We have done him no injury, and he has injured us again and again. We remember every one of those humiliations, and we burn with anger and cannot sleep at night. It is our good luck that Arjuna, with his weapons in his hands, will stand in front of us. There is a thing we carry in our hearts and have long worked toward, and we are resolved to do it now: it will please you, and it will bring us fame. We will take him out of the field and kill him. Let the earth today be without Arjuna, or let it be without the Trigartas. We swear this before you, truly. This vow of ours will never be false.”

Five brothers swore it with him, speaking as he had spoken: Satyaratha, Satyavarma, Satyavrata, Satyeshu and Satyakarma, who came before Duryodhana with ten thousand chariots. The Malavas came, and the Tundikeras with a thousand chariots; and Susharma, whose seat was Prasthala, brought the Mavellakas, the Lalithas and the Madrakas, his brothers and ten thousand chariots, and with ten thousand more from other countries, all to take the oath. They sent for fire, and each man got ready to kindle one for himself. They took up ropes of kusha grass and their fine coats of mail. Then, in armor, their bodies bathed in clarified butter, wearing robes of kusha grass, with their bowstrings tied around them for girdles, they stood before the fires. These were men who had given away gifts to Brahmins by the hundred and the thousand, who had performed many sacrifices and been blessed with children, who had earned the good worlds that come after this one and had nothing left to do in it. They were ready to give up their lives in battle, their hearts were fixed on fame and victory, and they wanted to reach soon, by fair fighting, the worlds that are otherwise reached only through sacrifices with rich gifts to Brahmins and through such rites as celibate studentship and the study of the Vedas. Each of them pleased the Brahmins with gifts of gold, of cows and of robes. They spoke lovingly to one another. Then they lit the fires and, with firm resolve, in the presence of the flames, took the vow to kill Arjuna, and said it very loudly, so that every creature could hear: “The worlds that are for those who have never kept a vow; the worlds for the man who drinks wine, for the man who lies with his teacher’s wife, for the man who steals what belongs to a Brahmin; for the man who enjoys a king’s grant and does not meet its condition, for the man who turns away one who asks him for shelter, for the man who kills one who has come to him as a suppliant; the worlds for those who set fire to houses and those who kill cows; for those who injure others, and those who bear malice toward Brahmins; for the man who in his folly does not go to his wife in her season, and for those who go to women on the day they owe the shraddha rite to their ancestors; for those who do injury to themselves, those who take for their own what was left with them in trust, those who destroy learning, those who fight with eunuchs, and those who follow after the base; the worlds that are for atheists, and for those who abandon their sacred fires and their mothers; and whatever worlds there are for the sinful: let those be ours, if we come back from the field without having killed Dhananjaya, or if he grinds us down and we turn back out of fear. And if we do in battle the hardest feats this world knows, then without doubt the worlds most to be desired will be ours.”

A key to reading this (a concept): Samshaptaka is the name the epic gives these men from here on: soldiers sworn to conquer or die. The oath is taken before fire, after gifts to Brahmins, in armor and kusha grass, and it leaves two ways off the field, with Arjuna dead or dead themselves; to come back any other way is to take on the fate of every sinner the oath names. Their leader is Susharma, ruler of Prasthala and king of the Trigartas, who tells Duryodhana that Arjuna has humiliated his people again and again.

The gist: That night Drona, ashamed, told Duryodhana again that the king could be taken once someone challenged Arjuna and led him away. Susharma of the Trigartas, his five brothers and their allies, with tens of thousands of chariots, lit fires and swore to kill Arjuna or accept the worlds of the worst sinners.

With the oath sworn they marched out to battle in the morning, toward the southern part of the field, calling for Arjuna as they went. He did not make them wait. He went at once to King Yudhishthira the just. “When I am called out I never turn back. That is a fixed vow of mine. These men, sworn to conquer or die, are calling me to a great battle, king. Susharma is here with his brothers, calling me to fight. Give me leave to kill him, and all his followers with him. I cannot bear this challenge. I tell you truly: count these enemies as already dead in battle.”

Yudhishthira reminded him of what both of them knew. “You have heard in detail, child, what Drona has resolved to do. Act so that his resolve comes to nothing. Drona is very strong. He is a hero, he has mastered his weapons, and he does not tire. And he has vowed to capture me.” Arjuna had thought of it already. “Satyajit here will be your protector in battle today, king. As long as Satyajit is alive, the teacher will never get what he wants. If Satyajit is killed, though, lord, then you must leave the field, even if every fighter we have is standing around you.” Yudhishthira gave him the leave he asked for. He embraced him and looked at him with love and spoke blessing after blessing over him. With the king’s protection arranged in that way, Arjuna went out against the Trigartas like a hungry lion going to feed on a herd of deer. Duryodhana’s troops saw that he was gone from Yudhishthira’s side, and they were filled with joy and wild to take the king. The two armies ran at each other with great force, like the Ganga and the Sarayu meeting in the rains, when both rivers are swollen.

The Samshaptakas were waiting on level ground, full of joy, their chariots drawn up in the shape of a half moon. When they saw the man with the diadem coming they shouted in delight. The noise filled the sky and every quarter of the horizon, and because the plain was open and had nothing on it except men, it returned no echo. Arjuna saw how happy they were, and he said to Krishna with a small smile: “Look at them, son of Devaki. Those Trigarta brothers are about to die in battle, and they are delighted, at the hour when they ought to weep. Or perhaps this truly is their hour of delight, since they are about to win those excellent worlds that no coward ever reaches.” Then he drove at their ordered ranks. He took up Devadatta, his conch, with the gold on it, and blew it with all his strength, and its blare filled every direction. That whole host of chariots stood still in the battle as if it had turned to stone. The animals stood with their eyes wide open, their ears and necks and lips rigid, their legs locked; they passed urine and vomited blood.

Then they came back to themselves, straightened their ranks, and all shot at once. Arjuna was fast, and with fifteen arrows he cut those thousands down before they reached him. Each of them hit him with ten arrows, and he answered with three. Each of them hit him with five, and he, with all his strength, gave each of them two. Angry now, they poured arrows past counting on Arjuna and Krishna together, as clouds pour unbroken rain on a lake, and the shafts settled on Arjuna by the thousand like swarms of bees on a flowering stand of trees in the forest. Thirty of them, hard as adamant and winged with gold, lodged deep in his diadem, and with those gold wings standing in it he shone like the newly risen sun, as if he had been dressed in ornaments. He cut away the leather guard Subahu wore with a broad-headed arrow and covered Sudharma and Sudhanva with shafts; Subahu hit him with ten. Arjuna, under the banner of the ape, hit all of them back with many arrows and with broad-headed ones cut down their golden standards. He cut Sudhanva’s bow, killed his horses, and then took his head, turban and all, off his body. When that hero fell, his followers were terrified. They panicked and ran toward the place where Duryodhana’s forces stood. Arjuna, Indra’s son, in his anger, struck that great host with showers of arrows that never paused, as the sun destroys darkness with rays that never pause, and it broke and melted away on every side. The Trigartas were struck with fear. They stood where they were under his straight arrows, senseless, like a frightened herd of deer. Their king, furious, shouted at his great chariot fighters: “Do not run, heroes! You have no business being afraid. You swore those terrible oaths in the sight of all the troops. If you go back there now, what will you say to the leaders of Duryodhana’s army? Will the world not laugh at us for doing such a thing in battle? Stop, all of you, and fight with whatever strength you have.” They answered with shout after shout and blew their conchs to hearten one another. And the Samshaptakas came back onto the field, and the Narayana cowherds with them, resolved to face Death himself.

Arjuna watched them return and spoke to Krishna. “Drive the horses toward the Samshaptakas, Hrishikesha. I do not think they will leave this battle alive. Today you will see how terrible the strength of my arms is, and of my bow. Today I will kill all of these as Rudra kills living things when an age ends.” Krishna, whom no one could defeat, smiled, and wished him well, and took the chariot wherever Arjuna wanted it to go. Drawn by those white horses it shone like a chariot of the gods crossing the sky, and it wheeled, went forward, went back, and moved in every other way a chariot can, like Indra’s own in the old war of the gods and Asuras. Then the Narayanas, angry, with weapons of every kind, closed around Arjuna and covered him with arrows until Kunti’s son and Krishna could not be seen at all. Arjuna’s anger doubled his strength. He rubbed Gandiva’s string quickly and took a hard grip on the bow, and with his forehead drawn into the creases that are the sure sign of rage, he blew the great conch Devadatta and shot the weapon called Tvashtra, which kills large numbers of enemies at one time. Thousands of separate figures sprang up, each of them Arjuna, each of them Krishna. The enemy troops, confounded by all those copies, took one another for Arjuna and began to strike. “This is Arjuna!” “This is Govinda!” “There is Pandu’s son, and that one is the Yadava!” Shouting so, out of their senses, they killed one another, and bleeding as they struck they looked as bright as kinshuka trees in flower. The weapon burned up the thousands of arrows they had shot and sent those heroes to Yama’s house. Arjuna laughed, and with his own arrows he crushed the Lalitha, Malava, Mavellaka and Trigarta fighters. Fate drove those Kshatriyas on. Even while he killed them they poured arrows of every kind on him, so many that Arjuna, his chariot and Krishna all disappeared again. They saw their arrows going home and shouted for joy. They believed both men dead, the two Krishnas, as the pair on that chariot were called; they waved their garments in the air, blew conchs, beat drums and cymbals by the thousand, and roared like lions. Inside the storm, Krishna was covered with sweat and badly weakened, and he called out: “Where are you, Partha? I cannot see you. Are you alive?” Arjuna heard him and loosed the Vayavya weapon, fast, and the downpour of arrows was blown away. Then Vayu, the god of the wind, to whom that weapon belongs, took up the Samshaptakas in crowds, with their horses, elephants, chariots and weapons, and carried them off like dry leaves from the trees; and as they went on the wind they looked as fine as flocks of birds rising out of a wood.

Arjuna gave them no rest. He hit hundreds and thousands of them with sharp arrows, fast. With broad-headed shafts he took off heads, and hands that still gripped their weapons, and he dropped thighs like the trunks of elephants onto the ground. Some men were hit in the back, some in the arms, some in the eyes. He cut chariots to pieces, chariots decked and fitted out by the rule and looking like the cloud cities that form in the sky, and with them their riders, their horses and their elephants. In many places crowds of chariots with their standards shot away stood like groves of headless palmyra palms. Elephants went down with their fine weapons and banners, hooks and standards, like wooded mountains split by Indra’s thunder. Horses with tails like the yak’s, in coats of mail, rolled on the ground with their riders, their entrails and eyes dragged out by his shafts. Foot soldiers lay down helpless on the field, the swords that had been their claws gone from their hands, their armor torn, their joints broken and their vitals laid open. With the dead and the dying, the falling and the fallen, the men still standing and the men being spun about, the field became a fearful thing to see. So much blood fell that it laid the dust that had risen and cleared the air, and the ground, strewn with hundreds of headless bodies, could not be crossed. Arjuna’s chariot blazed in that battle like the chariot of Rudra himself at the end of an age, when he is destroying all creatures. And the men he was killing, with their horses and chariots and elephants in agony, did not stop coming at him; they lost their lives one after another and went to be the guests of Indra, and the field, covered with great chariot fighters who had no life in them, looked like Yama’s own country, crowded with the spirits of the dead. All this while, with Arjuna held there in his fury, Drona, at the head of his forces drawn up for battle, was rushing at Yudhishthira, and many fighters who knew their work followed him in good order, all with one wish, to take the king. Between Drona and Yudhishthira stood a prince named Satyajit, and an instruction about what the king must do if he fell.

A key to reading this (a concept): Two celestial weapons decide this fight. The Tvashtra raises thousands of images of Arjuna and Krishna, so that the men around them, each sure he has found the real one, cut one another down. The Vayavya belongs to Vayu, the wind, and it blows away first the arrows and then the men who shot them. The Narayanas who come back onto the field with the Samshaptakas are cowherd soldiers, Krishna’s own troops. Before the war he offered Arjuna and Duryodhana a choice between that army and himself, unarmed and resolved to take no part in the fighting; Arjuna chose Krishna, and Duryodhana took the army.

The gist: Arjuna named Satyajit to guard the king, told Yudhishthira to leave the field if Satyajit fell, and went south to the Samshaptakas. He froze their chariots with a blast of Devadatta and killed Sudhanva, and when they came back with the Narayanas he broke them with the Tvashtra and Vayavya weapons. While he was held there, Drona led his army at Yudhishthira.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Drona Parva, Dronabhisheka and Samshaptaka-vadha sub-parvas, Sections 1 to 19. The Sanskrit e-text, the Gita Press Hindi edition, and Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s complete English translation were used to verify names, sequence, and principal events. Where the recensions differ, this English retelling follows Ganguli, and the Hindi edition follows Gita Press.