Mahabharata · The Twelfth Day: the Garuda Array, Bhagadatta and Supratika, and the Vaishnava Weapon

About 95 minutes · in 4 sittings

Drona had given Duryodhana his word that he would bring Yudhishthira back alive. Duryodhana had asked for a living king on purpose. A dead Yudhishthira would leave Arjuna on the field to kill every one of them; a captured Yudhishthira, a man who kept each promise he had ever made, could be sat down at the dice a second time and beaten a second time, and his brothers, who obeyed him in everything, would follow him back into the forest. That was the victory Duryodhana wanted, a lasting one, and on the eleventh evening Drona had come within a bowshot of delivering it. He had killed the prince who guarded the king’s chariot wheels, cut down the men who rode in after him, and was standing in front of the king’s chariot, and the Kaurava soldiers were already telling one another that the war was won, when Arjuna arrived behind a wall of arrows so thick that it brought on the dark before the sun had finished setting. That night the old preceptor, ashamed, told Duryodhana what he had told him before. While Arjuna stands beside Yudhishthira, the gods themselves cannot take the king; let someone challenge Arjuna and draw him off to another part of the field, and Yudhishthira is yours. Susharma, the ruler of the Trigartas, heard it, and he and his brothers and their thousands of chariots lit fires, put on robes of kusha grass, tied their bowstrings around them for girdles, and swore before the flames that the earth would be rid of Arjuna or rid of the Trigartas. They were the Samshaptakas now, the men sworn to conquer or die, and they called Arjuna out toward the southern part of the field. Arjuna had a vow of his own, that he never turned his back on a challenge. Yudhishthira embraced him, blessed him, and let him go, and Arjuna left two things behind him: a Panchala prince named Satyajit to guard the king, and an instruction that if Satyajit were killed, Yudhishthira must leave the field at once, whoever else was standing around him. So the twelfth morning found the chariot of the white horses far to the south and Drona’s whole army drawn up in the shape of a bird of prey. Before that day’s sun went down, a blind king would hear the Pandava host read off to him by the colors of its horses, an old king of the hill country would ride an elephant named Supratika through the Pandava ranks until Arjuna had to come back for him, and a weapon that nothing alive could survive would leave Bhagadatta’s hand for Arjuna’s chest and come to rest, as a victor’s garland, on Krishna’s.

The Garuda array of the twelfth morning: Drona in the beak, Karna in the tail, and a king who asks only that he not be taken alive

The night passed, and in the morning Drona went to Duryodhana and said, “I am yours. I have arranged Arjuna’s meeting with the Samshaptakas.” He had no need to say more. The bargain behind the words had been struck the morning before: Drona would take Yudhishthira alive, and the one thing he had asked for in return was a field with no Arjuna on it. The sworn men had now supplied that. When Arjuna had gone out to kill them, Drona put himself at the head of his troops, already formed for battle, and moved to seize Yudhishthira the just. He had been the teacher of both sides of this war. Arjuna had learned his first weapons from him, and it was that pupil, alone of all the Pandavas, whom the old Brahmin would not undertake to face, which was why the pupil had to be somewhere else. He had drawn the army up in the shape of Garuda, the great eagle who is king of the birds, and Yudhishthira, watching the bird take form across the field, set his own divisions against it in a half circle. Sanjaya had been on that field and had seen everything with his own eyes, and it was he who told it afterward to Dhritarashtra, the blind old king who was Duryodhana’s father. He gave him the creature limb by limb, because the shape was the plan. In its beak stood Drona. Its head was King Duryodhana, with the brothers born of his own mother around him. Kritavarma and Kripa were its two eyes. At the neck stood Bhutasharma, Kshemasharma and the brave Karakaksha, with the Kalingas, the Sinhalas, the men of the east, the Shudras, the Abhiras, the Dasherakas, the Shakas, the Yavanas, the Kambojas, the Hamsapadas, the Shurasenas, the Daradas, the Madras and the Kalikeyas, and with them elephants, horses, chariots and foot soldiers in their hundreds and thousands. Bhurishravas, Shalya, Somadatta and Bahlika held the right wing with a full akshauhini around them, a complete army of elephants, chariots, horse and foot. The left wing was Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti and Sudakshina, king of the Kambojas, with Drona’s son Ashvatthama at their head. Along the bird’s back stood the Kalingas, the Ambashthas, the Magadhas, the Paundras, the Madrakas, the Gandharas, the Shakunas, the easterners, the mountain men and the Vasatis. The tail was Karna, son of Vikartana, with his sons and kinsmen and friends, and around him a great force raised from many realms. And at the bird’s heart, inside a large host of their own, stood Jayadratha, Bhimaratha, Sampati, the Jayas, the Bhojas, Bhuminjaya, Vrisha, Kratha and the powerful ruler of the Nishadhas, all of them seasoned in battle, all of them with Brahma’s heaven before their eyes, the place a warrior earns by dying with his face to the enemy.

The array came on. With its foot soldiers and horses and chariots and elephants all pressing one way, it heaved like an ocean in a gale, and men hungry for a fight kept breaking out from its wings and flanks the way thunderheads loaded with lightning come up from every side of a summer sky. In the middle of it rode the ruler of Pragjyotisha on an elephant fitted out for war, bright as the rising sun. This was old Bhagadatta, a king of the hill country, whom Arjuna would call before the day was out the first of all elephant warriors in the world. He was garlanded with flowers, and a white umbrella was held over his head, so that he looked like the full moon when it stands with the Krittikas. The animal under him was blind with the wine of its own rut, black as a heap of antimony, gleaming like a great mountain that heavy clouds have just rinsed. The warlike kings of the hills rode around him carrying every sort of weapon, as the gods ride around Indra. He was one figure in a very large army that morning. Before the day ended the Pandavas would be looking at nothing else. Yudhishthira looked at that formation, which seemed more than human work and which no enemy could hope to break, and he turned to the commander of his army, Drupada’s son Dhrishtadyumna, the man who drove horses white as pigeons. He had seen the evening before how near Drona’s vow could come, with the guard of his wheels dead and the red horses of the preceptor standing in front of his own, and he knew that the brother who had saved him then was out of reach now. What he asked was the plainest thing a king can ask of a general, and the whole of Duryodhana’s plan for the war turned on the answer. “Do whatever has to be done,” he said, “so that the Brahmin does not make me his prisoner.” Dhrishtadyumna answered him at once. “You will never fall into Drona’s power, however hard he tries. I will hold Drona today, and everyone who follows him. While I am alive you have nothing to fear. There is no way on earth for Drona to beat me in battle.” It was a large promise to make about the man who had taught the princes of both armies to shoot. Then he went, the pigeon-colored horses at a run, scattering arrows, straight at Drona. Dhrishtadyumna had come into the world with a bow in his hand, out of a sacrificial fire lit for the destruction of Drona, and he had claimed Drona’s death as his own allotted share of this war. To Drona the sight of him planted in the road was an evil omen. The preceptor’s spirits sank at once. Durmukha, one of Dhritarashtra’s sons, saw it, and wanting to do Drona a service he threw himself in Dhrishtadyumna’s way. A hard and ugly fight began between the two. Dhrishtadyumna buried Durmukha under a shower of arrows and in the same breath checked Drona with a second thick volley; Durmukha, seeing the preceptor held, came on again and wrapped the Panchala prince in clouds of arrows of every kind. And while those two were locked together, Drona burned through section after section of Yudhishthira’s host. As wind takes a bank of cloud apart and sends the pieces off in every direction, so Drona drove that army across many parts of the field.

Sanjaya had no single fight to follow now, and he told the king what the whole field looked like. For a short while it still looked like a battle of the ordinary kind. Then it became a brawl of men out of their minds, with no regard shown to anyone. Fighters could no longer tell their own side from the enemy, and the killing went on by guesswork and by watchwords called through the press. Sunlight seemed to fall and play on the gems of headdresses, on necklaces and ornaments and coats of mail. Chariots, elephants and horses under their streaming banners looked like masses of cloud with flocks of cranes flying beneath them. Men killed men, high-mettled horses killed horses, chariot fighters killed chariot fighters, elephants killed elephants. Soon the elephants with tall standards on their backs met the great beasts charging them, and that collision was a terrible one. The huge bodies ground against each other, tusk tore at tusk, and from the friction of tusks beyond counting fire came, mixed with smoke. With the standards ripped from their backs and the fire of their tusks about them, the elephants looked like banks of cloud lit from inside by lightning. The earth, strewn with elephants dragging their enemies, roaring, going down, was as beautiful as an autumn sky spread over with cloud, and the bellowing of the animals as they were cut down by showers of arrows and lances was the roll of thunder in the rains. Some of them, hurt by lance and arrow, were seized with panic. Others left the field screaming. Some, gored by the tusks of others, gave cries of pain like the roar of the clouds that end the world at the close of a yuga, when an age goes down in storm. Some were turned back by bigger opponents and then came on again under the sharp hooks of their drivers, breaking the enemy ranks and killing whatever stood in their way. Drivers shot and lanced by other drivers fell from the backs of their beasts, weapons and hooks dropping from their hands. Many elephants with no rider left wandered here and there like clouds torn from a greater mass, and then ran into one another and fell. Some carried dead men on their backs, or men who had lost their weapons, and roamed alone in every direction. In the middle of that slaughter, elephants attacked with lances, swords and battle-axes went down crying out, and the ground, struck by falling bodies as big as hills, shook and gave back the sound. Where the elephants lay dead with their riders, the standards still on their backs, the field looked as though hills had been strewn across it.

Chariot fighters put broad-headed arrows through the chests of the drivers perched on the elephants, and the drivers dropped, lance and hook slipping from their grip. Elephants struck by long shafts screamed like cranes and ran in every direction, trampling friend and enemy to death. Covered with the bodies of elephants, horses and chariot fighters past counting, the ground turned to a mire of flesh and blood. Big chariots, some with their wheels and some without, were crushed on the points of tusks and thrown into the air with the fighters still aboard. Chariots stood empty. Riderless horses and elephants ran wherever their wounds drove them. There a father killed his son and a son his father, because the fighting had grown so savage that nothing could be made out. Men sank to the ankle in the red mud and stood in it like tall trees whose lower trunks a forest fire has swallowed. Robes, mail, umbrellas and standards were all dyed with blood, until everything on the field seemed to be made of it. Dead horses, dead men and wrecked chariots were cut into smaller pieces by the wheels that rolled over them. The army had become an ocean, with elephants for its current, the dead for its floating moss and weed, and chariots for its fierce eddies, and it was grim to look at. Warriors went into it on horses and elephants the way merchants go to sea in great ships, with victory for the wealth they were after, and they did not drown in it; they set about beating the senses out of their enemies. Every man there carried his own device, the mark by which friend knew friend, and when the showers of arrows had covered them all and no device could be read any longer, still nobody lost heart. Through that terrible fight Drona came on, bewildering the enemy as he came, and at last he drove at Yudhishthira.

A key to reading this (the array and the names): A Garuda array gives the divisions of an army to the parts of the great bird: the beak in front, then the head, the eyes, the neck, the two wings, the back and the tail, with the heart in the middle. Sanjaya puts Jayadratha at the heart, and he names the Kalingas and the easterners twice, once at the neck and once along the back. The ruler of Pragjyotisha is Bhagadatta, and the rutting elephant under him is Supratika; both come down on the Pandava army later in the day. Dhrishtadyumna is the son of Drupada, king of the Panchalas, and commands the whole Pandava army. Drona’s promise to Duryodhana was to capture Yudhishthira alive, which is why the king’s fear is of being taken. Drona would not promise it with Arjuna on the field, because Arjuna had been his own pupil and had since been given weapons by Indra and by Rudra; the condition Drona attached, that someone first draw Arjuna away to another part of the field, is the work the Samshaptakas, the men sworn to conquer or die, have taken on themselves.

The gist: With Arjuna drawn off by the Samshaptakas, Drona shapes his army into Garuda and marches to take Yudhishthira alive. The king asks Dhrishtadyumna to keep him out of the Brahmin’s hands; Dhrishtadyumna charges Drona, Durmukha ties him down, and Drona scatters the Pandava host like cloud before wind. The fighting turns into a brawl in which no one can tell friend from enemy: elephants strike fire from each other’s tusks, fathers kill sons, and men stand ankle-deep in blood. Through all of it Drona drives at Yudhishthira.

The heads of Satyajit and Shatanika, a river of arrows that ran toward Yama’s house, and a king who fled twice

Drona was now where he had been the evening before, deep inside the Pandava army with the king’s chariot in front of him, and this time no Arjuna was coming. He saw Yudhishthira close at hand and met him, without a trace of fear, with a thick shower of arrows. A great cry went up from the king’s troops, the noise a herd of elephants makes when a lion has fastened on its leader. Then the man Arjuna had left on guard came forward. Arjuna’s words that morning had been exact: as long as Satyajit lived, the preceptor would never have his wish. Satyajit, the Panchala prince whose courage had never yet been turned aside, drove at the preceptor as the preceptor reached for the king, and the two of them, both men of great strength, fought so that each other’s troops reeled, as Indra, king of the gods, and the Asura Bali fought once. Satyajit called up a powerful weapon and pierced Drona with keen-pointed arrows. He put five more into Drona’s charioteer, each as deadly as snake venom and each with the look of Death about it, and the charioteer slumped senseless. Ten went into Drona’s horses. Ten, in his anger, went into each of the two drivers who guarded the flanks of the chariot. Then he wheeled his own chariot in a circle at the head of his troops and, still furious, cut down Drona’s standard, the mark by which a whole army finds its commander. Drona watched all of it, and in his own mind he settled that this man’s hour had come. He cut Satyajit’s bow in two with the arrow still on the string and put ten arrows into him that could reach the vitals. Satyajit snatched up another bow and hit Drona with thirty arrows fletched with the feathers of the kanka bird, and the Pandavas, seeing Drona held in open fight, shouted for joy and waved their garments in the air. A second warrior joined in. Vrika, strong and very angry, planted sixty arrows in the middle of Drona’s chest, and everyone who saw it thought it a marvel. Under those two showers Drona opened his eyes wide and gathered every bit of his strength. He cut the bows of both Satyajit and Vrika, and with six shafts he killed Vrika, his charioteer and his horses together. The prince was alone again in front of him. Satyajit took up a third bow, a tougher one, and pierced Drona, his horses, his charioteer and his standard. That was more than Drona would bear from the prince of the Panchalas. He shot now to kill, and he covered Satyajit’s horses, his standards, the grip of his bow and both his flank drivers with arrows that never stopped coming. Bow after bow was cut out of the prince’s hands, and still he knew the highest weapons and still he went on fighting the man of the red horses. Drona saw him swelling with strength in that dreadful duel, and he took Satyajit’s head off with an arrow whose blade was shaped like a half moon.

With that great chariot fighter of the Panchalas lying dead, Yudhishthira did what Arjuna had told him to do in that event. He left. Afraid of Drona, he let his fast horses carry him away. Drona had told Duryodhana that the victory lay in seizing this one man alive, and the one man did not mean to be found within reach of the golden chariot. The Panchalas, the Kekayas, the Matsyas, the Chedis, the Karushas and the Kosalas saw Drona coming and threw themselves at him to save their king, and the preceptor, a killer of men in great numbers who wanted Yudhishthira and nothing else, began to burn through those divisions as fire goes through heaped cotton. Shatanika, the younger brother of the king of the Matsyas, charged him while he was at that work. He hit Drona, his driver and his horses with six shafts as bright as sunbeams, polished by the smith who forged them, and he shouted aloud as he did it. It was a cruel thing he was attempting, since the man in front of him was a Brahmin, and a thing very hard to bring off, and he pressed on with it and covered the son of Bharadvaja with showers of arrows. He was still shouting when Drona, with an arrow as sharp as a razor, cut his head from his body, earrings and all. The Matsya warriors all ran. Having broken the Matsyas, Drona broke the Chedis, the Karushas, the Kaikeyas, the Panchalas, the Srinjayas and the Pandus, and broke them again as often as they formed. The Srinjayas shook to see the warrior of the golden chariot, in his rage, eating up their divisions as fire eats a forest. He killed without a pause and with great speed, and each time he drew, the twang of the string was heard in every quarter. Arrows from that light hand crushed elephants and horses, foot soldiers and chariot fighters and the men who rode the elephants. As a great mass of roaring summer cloud, with violent winds behind it, pours down hail, Drona poured down arrows and put fear into the hearts of his enemies. He ranged over every part of the field, a great bowman who lifted the fears of his friends and shook the host of his foes. His gold-decked bow showed in every direction like lightning flashing among clouds. The beautiful altar on his banner, as he drove through the battle, stood up like a peak of the Himalaya. The slaughter he made among the Pandava troops was very great, such as Vishnu himself, whom gods and Asuras alike revere, once made among the host of the Daityas.

And Drona, brave and truthful, wise and strong, a man whose prowess nothing could turn aside, set a river flowing on that field, a fierce river that could strike the timid with terror. Sanjaya gave Dhritarashtra every part of it, piece by piece, as he had given him the bird. Coats of mail were its waves and standards its eddies, and it carried off mortal creatures in great numbers as it ran. Elephants and horses were its great alligators and swords its fish, and there was no easy crossing of it. The bones of brave men were its pebbles, drums and cymbals its tortoises. Shields and armor were its boats, the hair of warriors its floating moss and weed. Arrows were its ripples and bows its current, and the arms of fighting men were its snakes. Running fast over the field of battle, it bore away Kurus and Srinjayas alike. The heads of men were its stones and their thighs its fish. Maces were the rafts on which many tried to get across. Headgear was the froth on its surface, and the entrails of animals were the creeping things in it. Dreadful to look at, it carried heroes to the other world. Blood and flesh were its mud. Elephants were its crocodiles, and standards were the trees along its banks. Kshatriyas sank in it by the thousand. Fierce, choked with corpses, with horsemen and elephant riders for its sharks, it was a river almost past crossing, and it ran toward the house of Yama, the lord of the dead. Rakshasas swarmed in it, and dogs and jackals, and eaters of human flesh haunted it on every side.

Then many Pandava warriors, with Kunti’s son at their head, rushed at Drona, who was devouring their divisions like Death in person, and closed in on him from every side. They made a full ring around the man who was scorching everything near him, as the sun scorches the world with its rays, and the kings and princes of the Kaurava army lifted their weapons and hurried in to support their great bowman. Shikhandi pierced Drona with five straight arrows. Kshatradharma, Dhrishtadyumna’s son, pierced him with twenty, and Vasudeva with five. Uttamaujas put three into him, and Shikhandi’s son Kshatradeva five. Satyaki of the Satvata race, who had learned his bowmanship from Arjuna, pierced him with a hundred, and Yudhamanyu with eight. Yudhishthira himself, who had fled from him once already, gave him twelve, Dhrishtadyumna ten, Chekitana three. Then Drona, whose aim never failed, came on like an elephant with the rut running from its temples, passed over the Pandava chariot division and threw down Dridhasena. He came up to King Kshema, who was fighting without fear, and hit him with nine arrows, and Kshema dropped lifeless from his chariot. Drona went on into the middle of the enemy and ranged in every direction, guarding others and in need of no guard himself. He pierced Shikhandi with twelve arrows and Uttamaujas with twenty. He sent Vasudeva to the house of Yama with one broad-headed arrow. He put eighty arrows into Kshemavarma and twenty-six into Sudakshina. With another broad-headed arrow he knocked Kshatradeva out of his seat in his chariot. And when he had pierced Yudhamanyu with sixty-four and Satyaki with thirty, the warrior of the golden chariot came quickly up to Yudhishthira again, and for the second time that day the king turned his fast horses and fled from his teacher. Satyajit was dead, and Arjuna’s instruction held. A prince of the Panchalas rushed at Drona then. Drona cut his bow, brought down his horses and his charioteer, and killed him with them, and the prince fell from his chariot to the earth like a star shaken loose from the sky. As he fell, a shout went up across the Pandava lines: “Kill Drona! Kill Drona!” The Panchalas, the Matsyas, the Kaikeyas, the Srinjayas and the Pandavas came on mad with rage, and Drona crushed and mangled them all. With the Kurus supporting him he beat Satyaki, and the son of Chekitana, and Senabindu, and Suvarchas, and many other kings besides. The Kaurava warriors had the victory in that great fight, and they killed Pandava soldiers as they ran off in every direction, until the Panchalas, the Kaikeyas and the Matsyas, cut down on all sides like the Danavas, the old enemies of the gods, under Indra, began to shake.

A key to reading this (names): Satyajit is a prince of the Panchalas. Before riding south, Arjuna named him as the man who would protect Yudhishthira that day, and told the king to leave the field if Satyajit were killed, which is why he comes forward first and why the king twice turns his chariot. The Shatanika who dies here is the younger brother of Virata, king of the Matsyas; Nakula has a son of the same name, who fights later in the day. Vrika, Dridhasena, Kshema, Kshemavarma, Senabindu and Suvarchas fight on the Pandava side. Two names in the roll belong to other men as well: the Vasudeva whom Drona kills is a Pandava warrior and has nothing to do with Krishna, and the Sudakshina whom Drona wounds is counted among the Pandava kings, while Sudakshina of the Kambojas stands on the Kaurava left wing. The Panchala prince who falls like a star is given no name. The altar is the device on Drona’s banner.

The gist: Satyajit fights Drona as Bali fought Indra, wounds his charioteer and horses, cuts down his standard, and loses his head to a half-moon arrow; Yudhishthira flees for the first time. Virata’s brother Shatanika comes forward and loses his head too. Drona sets a river flowing across the field, with mail for its waves and heads for its stones, and it runs toward Yama. The Pandava champions ring him and each puts his counted arrows into him; Drona kills Kshema and Vasudeva, throws down Dridhasena, and reaches Yudhishthira again, who flees a second time. Another Panchala prince dies, and that passage of the twelfth day ends with the Kauravas holding the victory.

“Who went up against Drona?”: Duryodhana laughs, Karna warns him, and the Pandava army turns around with a roar

The blind king had just heard Yudhishthira’s army broken, and it was Drona he kept turning over in his mind. Drona commanded his army now, and the king asked his question like a man hoping to hear that nobody had dared. He had said himself, before the telling began, that the ruin of the Kurus was the fruit of his own acts, and still he wanted every stroke of the day’s fighting. “When the son of Bharadvaja shattered the Pandavas in that dreadful fight, and the Panchalas with them,” he asked, “did anyone go up to him to give him battle? There he stood like a tiger yawning, like an elephant with the rut splitting its temples, ready to lay down his life, armed at every point, a master of every way of fighting, a great bowman who swells the fear of his enemies, a grateful man, a man devoted to truth, a man who has never wished Duryodhana anything but good. Was there no one who could look at him standing at the head of his troops and still go to meet him, with the kind of resolve that makes the fame of Kshatriyas, that small men can never form, that belongs only to the greatest? Tell me, Sanjaya, who were the heroes who went toward the son of Bharadvaja when they saw him in front of his army?”

The answer was yes, and Sanjaya did not give it at once. He began with what the Kauravas had seen. The Panchalas, the Pandavas, the Matsyas, the Srinjayas, the Chedis and the Kaikeyas, broken by Drona’s arrows, were being driven from the field under the showers of swift shafts from his bow, like ships set adrift by the waves of a storm-beaten ocean. Seeing it, the Kauravas fell on that army from every side, on its chariots, its elephants and its foot soldiers, with lion roars and the noise of every kind of instrument. Duryodhana stood in the middle of his own forces with his relatives and kinsmen around him and watched the soldiers of the Pandavas run. He had reason to think the plan was working. Arjuna was gone, the king’s guardian was dead, and the king himself had twice been seen in flight. Joy filled him, and he was laughing as he turned to Karna. “Look, son of Radha. Look at the Panchalas, broken by the arrows of that steady bowman like a herd of wild deer frightened by a lion. I do not think these men will come back to fight. Drona has broken them the way a storm breaks great trees. His gold-winged arrows have hurt them so badly that they are running with no two of them together; they look as if they were being dragged around the field in eddies. Hemmed in by the Kauravas and by Drona, they are crowding against one another like elephants caught in a forest fire. Like flowering trees with swarms of bees driven into them, they huddle together, stuck full of his sharp arrows, even as they run. And there is Bhima in his rage, deserted by the Pandavas and the Srinjayas, with my warriors all around him. That sight delights me, Karna. Plainly that wicked man sees the whole world today as full of Drona. He has surely given up hope of his life and of the kingdom.”

Karna did not laugh with him. He was a charioteer’s son whom Duryodhana had made a king, he had stood beside Duryodhana through every wrong he was about to name, and he did not pay that debt in flattery. He looked where the king was pointing and saw something else. “That man will not leave the battle while there is life in him,” he said, “and he will not put up with these lion roars of ours. Nor do I think the Pandavas will be beaten in this fight. They are brave, they are very strong, they are masters of their weapons, and they are hard to stand against. They remember what we did to them: the poison, the fire, everything that came of the game of dice, and their exile in the forest. With all that in their minds, I do not think they will give up. Bhima has already turned back to fight, and there is no measure to the strength of that son of Kunti. He will certainly kill many of our best chariot fighters. With sword and bow and dart, with his iron mace, with horses and elephants and men and chariots picked up and swung as weapons, he will kill our soldiers in crowds. Other chariot fighters are coming behind him, Satyajit at their head, with the Panchalas, the Kekayas, the Matsyas, and above all the Pandavas themselves. All of them are brave, all of them strong, all of them great fighters, and it is Bhima in his fury who leads them. They have gathered around him on every side, like clouds around the sun, and they are beginning to move on Drona from all directions. They want one thing only. With no one guarding him, Drona will be swarmed, as insects that are about to die swarm a burning lamp. They know their weapons, and they are well able to stop him. The load on the son of Bharadvaja is a heavy one now, I think. So let us go quickly to where he is. Do not let them kill that man of strict vows as wolves kill a great elephant.”

Duryodhana heard Radha’s son out, and then, with his brothers, set off toward Drona’s chariot. The noise around it, Sanjaya said, was deafening. The Pandava warriors had come back into the fight on chariots drawn by fine horses of every color, and each of them wanted the same thing, the death of Drona and of no one else. The blind king had his answer. Someone had gone up against Drona after all.

A key to reading this (Karna’s ledger): Karna counts the old injuries in order: the attempt to poison the Pandavas, the attempt to burn them, the game of dice, and the exile in the forest that followed it. The poisoning of Bhima and the burning of the house of lac are told in the Adi Parva, and the dice game in the Sabha Parva. When he says that Bhima will fight with horses and elephants and men and chariots, he means that Bhima is strong enough to use them as weapons. Karna names Satyajit at the head of the returning chariots, although Satyajit has already fallen to Drona’s half-moon arrow; Ganguli’s translation gives the name so in this speech. The images belong to their speakers. The ships adrift in a storm are Sanjaya’s. The frightened deer, the storm-broken trees, the elephants in a forest fire and the bees are Duryodhana’s. The clouds around the sun, the insects at the lamp and the wolves on the elephant are Karna’s.

The gist: Dhritarashtra asks whether anyone dared go up against Drona. Sanjaya tells him first of the rout: Drona’s arrows break the Pandava host, and Duryodhana laughs and tells Karna that these men will never come back, that Bhima stands deserted and surrounded. Karna answers that Bhima will never leave a battle alive, that the Pandavas have forgotten none of their injuries, and that they are closing on Drona with one purpose, so the preceptor must be reinforced at once. Duryodhana goes with his brothers toward Drona’s chariot, and around it rises the noise of Pandava chariots, behind horses of every color, coming back to the fight.

An army read off by the color of its horses: from antelope-dappled to moonlight, the standards, the bows, and a hundred duels on the road to Drona

Dhritarashtra asked next for something a blind man could hold. “Tell me, Sanjaya,” he said, “the marks by which each chariot could be known, of all those who went against Drona in their anger with Bhimasena at their head.” He could not have the field. He could have colors, the trappings on a horse’s back, the creature worked on a flag. On that field a fighter was known from far off by his team and his standard long before his face could be seen, and a man about to strike called out his own name and his house. So Sanjaya gave him the Pandava host team by team, until the army stood in the room with him. Bhima, the man Karna had just said would never leave a battle alive, came first, behind horses dappled like the hide of the antelope, and Satyaki, the grandson of Shini, seeing him go, went too, on horses of a silvery color. Yudhamanyu, whom nothing could stop, drove at Drona in a rage behind fine horses of mixed colors. Dhrishtadyumna, son of the Panchala king, came on very fast horses the color of pigeons, in trappings of gold. His son Kshatradharma, a man of disciplined vows, who wanted to guard his father and to see him succeed in everything, came on red horses. Kshatradeva, Shikhandi’s son, held the reins himself over well-decked horses the color of lotus leaves, with eyes of pure white. Handsome horses of the Kamboja breed, dressed with the feathers of the green parrot, carried Nakula, one of the twin sons of Madri, at a run toward the Kaurava army. Horses dark as storm clouds carried Uttamaujas in his anger against Drona, who stood unbeaten with his arrows already aimed. Horses as fast as the wind, of mixed colors, carried Sahadeva, his twin, with his weapons raised. Horses the color of ivory, with black manes down their necks, headlong and quick as wind, carried Yudhishthira, the king who had twice been carried off that field and was now coming back onto it, and many warriors followed him on wind-fast horses in trappings of gold. Behind the king rode Drupada, the royal chief of the Panchalas, with a golden umbrella over his head, and around him as his guard went all the soldiers who followed Yudhishthira.

Sautabhi, a great bowman among all those kings, came on beautiful horses trained to stand any noise at all. Virata followed him quickly with all his great chariot fighters, and behind the king of the Matsyas came the Kaikeyas and Shikhandi and Dhrishtaketu, each inside his own troops. Virata’s horses were the pale red of trumpet flowers, and they looked very fine as they carried him. Fast yellow horses in chains of gold carried Virata’s son at great speed. The five Kekaya brothers rode horses of deep red; there was the brightness of gold about the five of them, red standards over them and gold chains on them, and they came in their mail, heroes practiced in battle, pouring arrows like so many clouds. Shikhandi, the Panchala prince, drove fine horses the color of unbaked clay pots, a gift from the Gandharva Tumburu. Twelve thousand great chariot fighters of the Panchala race went into that battle altogether, and six thousand of them rode behind Shikhandi. Playful horses dappled like the antelope carried the son of Shishupala. Dhrishtaketu of the Chedis, a man of great strength and hard to beat, came on Kamboja horses of mixed colors. Sindhu-bred horses, fine-limbed, the color of straw smoke, quickly carried the Kaikeya prince Brihatkshatra. Horses with pure white eyes, lotus-colored, foaled in the country of the Bahlikas and hung with ornaments, carried Shikhandi’s brave son Kshatradeva. Quiet horses in gold trappings, the color of red silk, carried Senabindu to battle. Horses the color of cranes carried the son of the king of the Kashis, a young man and delicate to look at, and a great chariot fighter all the same. White horses with black necks, fast as thought and perfectly obedient to their driver, carried Prince Prativindhya, Yudhishthira’s son by Draupadi. Pale yellow horses carried Sutasoma, a son of Arjuna, whom his father had obtained from Soma himself; he was born in the Kuru city called Udayendu, he had the radiance of a thousand moons, and because he won great fame in an assembly of the Somakas he came to be called Sutasoma. Horses the color of sala flowers, or of the morning sun, carried Nakula’s son Shatanika, a man who deserved every praise. Horses in gold trappings, the color of a peacock’s neck, carried Shrutakarma, Draupadi’s son by Bhima. Horses the color of kingfishers carried Draupadi’s son Shrutakirti, who like Arjuna was an ocean of learning. Tawny horses carried young Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son by Krishna’s sister Subhadra, whom men reckoned half as great again in battle as Krishna or Arjuna. Huge horses carried Yuyutsu, born to the blind king by a Vaishya wife, the only one of Dhritarashtra’s sons who had left his brothers and taken the side of the Pandavas. Plump, well-decked horses the color of dried paddy stalk carried the quick Vardhakshemi into that dreadful fight. Horses with black legs, in breastplates of gold, perfectly obedient to their driver, carried young Sauchitti. Horses with golden armor over their backs and gold chains on them, well broken, the color of red silk, carried Shrenimat. Red horses carried Satyadhriti as he advanced, a man accomplished in the science of arms and in the divine Vedas.

Then came the Panchala who commanded the whole Pandava army and who had taken Drona as the victim allotted to his own share: Dhrishtadyumna, behind the pigeon-colored horses. After him came Satyadhriti, and Sauchitti, whom no one could withstand in battle, and Shrenimat, and Vasudana, and Vibhu, the son of the ruler of the Kashis, all on swift horses of the best Kamboja breed in chains of gold. Each of them looked like Yama, or like Kubera, the lord of wealth, and they went forward putting fear into the soldiers who faced them. The Prabhadrakas of the Kamboja country followed Dhrishtadyumna, six thousand of them, with weapons raised, on gold-decked chariots behind fine horses of many colors, their bows bent, making the enemy shake under their arrows, and resolved to die together, no man leaving a comrade in trouble. Fine horses the color of tawny silk, in handsome gold chains, carried Chekitana cheerfully along. Purujit, Arjuna’s mother’s brother, who is also called Kuntibhoja, came behind fine horses the color of the rainbow. Horses the color of a sky spangled with stars carried King Rochamana. Horses the color of the red deer, streaked with white along their bodies, carried the Panchala prince Simhasena, son of Gopati. Janamejaya, a great fighter among the Panchalas, had fine horses the color of mustard flowers. Swift, huge, dark blue horses in chains of gold, with backs the color of curd and faces the color of the moon, carried the ruler of the Panchalas at great speed. Spirited horses with beautiful heads, white as the stalks of reeds, with a sheen like that of the sky or the lotus, carried Dandadhara. Light brown horses with backs the color of a mouse, their necks proudly arched, carried Vyaghradatta. Dark-spotted horses carried Sudhanva, a prince of Panchala. Beautiful horses the color of indragopaka insects, patched with other colors, as violent in their rush as Indra’s thunderbolt, carried Chitrayudha. Horses in golden chains, with bellies the color of the chakravaka bird, carried Sukshatra, son of the ruler of the Kosalas. Tall, handsome horses of mixed colors, huge in body, very gentle, and decked with chains of gold, carried Satyadhriti, a man accomplished in battle. Shukla came with his standard, his armor, his bow and his horses all of one white. Horses foaled on the seacoast, white as the moon, carried the fierce Chandrasena, son of Samudrasena. Horses the color of the blue lotus, in ornaments of gold and wreaths of flowers, carried Shaiva, who had a beautiful chariot. Fine horses the color of kalaya flowers, streaked white and red, carried Rathasena, a hard man to stand against. White horses carried the king who killed the Patachcharas and who is counted the bravest of men. Fine horses the color of kinshuka flowers carried Chitrayudha, garlanded, with handsome armor and weapons and standard. King Nila came with standard, armor, bow, banner and horses all of one blue. Chitra came with his chariot fence, his standard and his bow all set with gems of many kinds, and with beautiful horses and a beautiful banner. Fine horses the color of the lotus carried Hemavarna, the son of Rochamana. Chargers fit to carry every kind of weapon, proved in battle, with spines the color of reeds, white testicles, and coats the color of a hen’s egg, carried Dandaketu.

After them rode a king with an old war behind him. Sarangadhvaja, king of the Pandyas, advanced on Drona stretching his fine bow, on horses the color of moonbeams in armor set with stones of lapis lazuli. His country had once been invaded and his kinsmen had fled, and Krishna had killed his father in battle. He went then for weapons to Bhishma and to Drona, to Rama and to Kripa, and he came away the equal in arms of Rukmi and Karna and Arjuna and of Krishna himself. What he wanted next was to destroy the city of Dwarka and bring the whole world under him. Wise friends who wished him well talked him out of that road, and he gave up every thought of revenge and went home to rule his own lands. Now he was riding at Drona, one of the four who had armed him, and a hundred and forty thousand chariot fighters of the first rank followed him, all on horses the color of the atrusa flower. Horses of many colors, and forces of many kinds, carried Ghatotkacha, the Rakshasa son of Bhima. Huge horses of the Aratta breed carried red-eyed Brihanta on his golden chariot, the prince who set aside the opinion of all the Bharatas and went over alone to Yudhishthira, out of reverence for him, giving up everything he had hoped for. Fine horses the color of gold followed at the back of Yudhishthira, the righteous king. And a great number of Prabhadrakas, men who looked like gods, came on horses of many fine colors, every one with a standard of gold, ready to fight hard; they went forward with Bhima, and they looked like the people of heaven with Indra at their head. Dhrishtadyumna had a great liking for that assembled host of Prabhadrakas.

For splendor, though, the son of Bharadvaja outdid every warrior on the field. His standard carried a black deerskin waving at its top and a beautiful water pot, and it was a fine thing to see. Bhima’s standard bore a huge lion worked in silver, with eyes of lapis lazuli, and it blazed. Yudhishthira’s bore a golden moon with the planets around it, and two large, handsome kettledrums named Nanda and Upananda were tied to it; a mechanism played them, and the music they made gladdened everyone who heard it. Nakula’s standard, tall and fierce, set on his chariot to terrify the enemy, bore a sharabha with a back of gold. On Sahadeva’s was a beautiful silver swan with bells and a banner, terrible to look at, a thing that deepened the grief of his foes. The standards of Draupadi’s five sons carried fine images of Dharma, of Marut the Wind, of Shakra, and of the twin Ashvins, the gods from whom their five fathers were born. On young Abhimanyu’s chariot stood a standard with a golden peacock, bright as gold fresh from the fire. A vulture shone on Ghatotkacha’s standard, and his horses could go wherever he wished, like Ravana’s in the old days. Sanjaya named the bows as well. In Yudhishthira’s hands was the celestial bow called Mahendra, and in Bhima’s the celestial bow called Vayavya. Brahma once made a bow for the protection of the three worlds, and that celestial and indestructible weapon was the one Arjuna carried, though Arjuna himself was far to the south and had no part in this charge. Nakula held the Vaishnava bow and Sahadeva the bow called Ashvina. Ghatotkacha held the terrible celestial bow called Paulastya. The five jewels among bows carried by the five sons of Draupadi were the Raudra, the Agneya, the Kauberya, the Yamya and the Girisha. And the Raudra, a bow beyond all others, which Rohini’s son Balarama had once obtained, Balarama had given to Subhadra’s son because he was pleased with him. These standards and many others worked with gold were to be seen there, the standards of brave men, and all of them deepened the fear of the enemy. Drona’s host, in which there was not one coward, and over which so many standards rose together that they seemed to shut out the sky, looked like figures painted on a canvas. And as the warriors rushed toward Drona, their names and their lineages were called aloud, as names and lineages are called at a bride’s self-choice when each suitor steps forward. Then the first of them struck. Old King Drupada went at Drona with a great division behind him. It was Drupada who had once had a sacrifice performed to get a son for the destruction of this very man, and the meeting of those two aged men at the heads of their forces was terrible, like the meeting of two herd leaders, elephant against elephant, with the rut running from their temples. Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti took their troops against Virata, king of the Matsyas, at the head of his, as Indra and Agni went against the Asura Bali in the old days; horses, chariot fighters and elephants fought there with no fear at all, Matsyas against Kekayas, like the gods against the Asuras. Bhutakarma, who is also called Sabhapati, held Nakula’s son Shatanika away from Drona as he came on scattering arrows, and Nakula’s heir, with three broad-headed shafts of great sharpness, took off both Bhutakarma’s arms and his head. Vivimshati stood in the way of Sutasoma as he advanced on Drona behind his own showers of arrows, and Sutasoma, angry, pierced his uncle with straight shafts and stood in his mail, ready for more. Bhimaratha, Duryodhana’s brother, with six sharp, swift shafts made wholly of iron, sent Shalva to the house of Yama with his horses and his charioteer. Chitrasena’s son came against Shrutakarma of the peacock-colored horses, and those two grandsons of the blind king, each hard to beat and each wanting the other dead, fought furiously for the things their fathers wanted.

Ashvatthama saw Prativindhya standing at the very front of that dreadful battle and, to guard his father’s honor, held him off with arrows. Prativindhya, enraged, pierced Drona’s son, whose standard bore a lion’s tail and who had taken his stand there for his father’s sake, with many sharp shafts, and then Draupadi’s eldest son scattered arrows over him as a sower scatters seed on the ground at sowing time. Duhshasana’s son blocked Shrutakirti, Arjuna’s son by Draupadi, as he raced toward Drona; Shrutakirti, his father’s equal, cut away his opponent’s bow, his standard and his charioteer with three sharp broad-headed arrows and went on toward Drona. Duryodhana’s son Lakshmana took on the killer of the Patachcharas, the man both armies count the bravest of the brave, and that warrior cut down Lakshmana’s bow and his standard, showered him with arrows, and blazed in his glory. Young Vikarna, a man of great wisdom, stood against Shikhandi, the young son of Yajnasena, as he advanced; Shikhandi covered him with showers of arrows, and Vikarna turned those showers aside and shone on the field. Angada met Uttamaujas with showers of arrows as he rushed toward Drona, and the fight between those two became a frightening one that fired both of them, and the troops who watched, with a great eagerness. Durmukha, a great bowman and a strong one, held off Purujit with his shafts on the road to Drona, and Purujit hit him between the eyebrows with a long shaft, so that Durmukha’s face, with the arrow standing in it, looked as beautiful as a lotus on its stalk. Karna, with showers of arrows, held the five Kekaya brothers of the red standards. Scorched by his arrows, the five covered him with theirs; Karna covered them again and again in return; and at last neither Karna nor the five brothers could be seen under the arrows, nor their horses, their charioteers, their standards or their chariots. Three of Dhritarashtra’s sons, Durjaya, Jaya and Vijaya, stood against Nila, the ruler of the Kashis and Jayatsena, three against three, and the fight between them grew deep and gladdened the hearts of those who watched, like a fight between a lion, a tiger and a wolf on one side and a bear, a buffalo and a bull on the other. The brothers Kshemadhurti and Brihanta tore at Satyaki with keen arrows as he made for Drona, and the fight of those two against the one was a wonder to see, like a lion in the forest against two great elephants in rut. The king of the Chedis, in his anger, shooting at many warriors, kept King Ambashtha, a hero who always delighted in battle, away from Drona; then Ambashtha drove a long arrow into him that could go through to the bone, and the Chedi king, bow and arrow slipping from his grip, fell from his chariot to the ground. Kripa, the noble son of Sharadvat, held off with many small arrows Vardhakshemi of the Vrishni race, who was wrath itself in battle, and those who watched Kripa and Vardhakshemi, two masters of every kind of fighting, go at each other became so lost in the sight that they could attend to nothing else. Somadatta’s son, to add to Drona’s glory, stood against the quick King Manimat as he came to fight. Manimat swiftly cut away the bowstring, the standard, the banner, the charioteer and the umbrella of Somadatta’s son and tumbled them all from his chariot. The son of Somadatta, whose standard bore the sacrificial stake, jumped down with a great sword and cut his opponent to pieces, with his horses, his charioteer, his standard and his chariot; then he climbed back onto his own chariot, took up another bow, drove his horses himself, and began to burn up the Pandava host. Karna’s son Vrishasena, who was equal to the task, held back with showers of arrows the Pandava king as he rushed to battle like Indra going after the Asuras to strike them down. And then came Ghatotkacha, wanting to get at Drona, with maces and spiked clubs, swords and axes and stones, short clubs and mallets, discs and short arrows and battle-axes, with dust and wind, fire and water, ashes and brickbats, straw and trees, hurting, striking, breaking, killing, routing, hurling all of it into the enemy ranks and terrifying them. The Rakshasa Alambusha, in a rage, met him with many weapons and much gear of war, and the fight between those two great Rakshasas was like the one fought long ago between Shambara and the king of the gods. So it went, Sanjaya told the king: hundreds of single combats, chariot fighters and elephants and horses and foot soldiers of both armies, in the middle of that dreadful general battle. No battle like it had ever been seen or heard of, the one side bent on Drona’s death and the other on keeping him alive. All over the field there were encounters to be seen, some terrible, some beautiful, and some of a great ferocity.

A key to reading this (a roll call, and its oddities): Sanjaya says at the end of the roll that the names and lineage of these men were heard as they are heard at a self-choice, the svayamvara at which a princess chooses her husband and each suitor is announced by name and house; a warrior gave his name and lineage in the same way before he struck. The roll says some things twice. Kshatradeva appears twice, Chitrayudha twice and Satyadhriti three times; the Prabhadrakas come once as six thousand men of the Kamboja country behind Dhrishtadyumna and again as a great number beside Bhima; Dhrishtadyumna’s pigeon-colored horses are described twice; Dhrishtaketu of the Chedis, who is Shishupala’s son, is given two teams under his two names; and Drupada rides behind Yudhishthira and then appears again as the ruler of the Panchalas on dark blue horses. Sutasoma is called Arjuna’s son here, though the Adi Parva gives him to Bhima and Draupadi. The name Brihanta belongs to two men, the prince of the Aratta horses who went over to Yudhishthira and the brother of Kshemadhurti who fights Satyaki for the Kauravas. The killer of the Patachcharas is named only by that deed, the king whom Vrishasena holds back is called nothing but the Pandava king, and the Rama from whom Sarangadhvaja had his weapons is given no further mark. The bow that Brahma made for the protection of the three worlds is Arjuna’s Gandiva. Krishna’s killing of the Pandya king’s father is mentioned in this passage and nowhere told in it.

The gist: Dhritarashtra asks for the marks of the chariots coming at Drona, and Sanjaya answers with an entire army read off by the color of its horses, from Bhima’s antelope-dappled team to the moonbeam-colored horses of the Pandya king, taking in Drupada’s golden umbrella, the six thousand Prabhadrakas who have resolved to die together, and the hundred and forty thousand behind Sarangadhvaja. He gives the standards: Bhima’s silver lion, Yudhishthira’s golden moon with its two drums, Nakula’s sharabha, Sahadeva’s swan, Abhimanyu’s golden peacock, Ghatotkacha’s vulture, and brighter than all of them Drona’s black deerskin and water pot. He gives the named bows, Mahendra and Vayavya and the bow Brahma made, and the rest. Then the field breaks into hundreds of single fights: Drupada against Drona, Shatanika taking Bhutakarma’s arms and head, Prativindhya sowing arrows on Ashvatthama, Karna lost from sight with the five Kekayas under their arrows, Somadatta’s son leaping down with a sword, and Alambusha stepping in front of Ghatotkacha.

The king of Anga loses his head, Bhima fights from under Supratika’s belly, and one elephant that looked like many

Dhritarashtra had heard the roll of his enemies, and he came back to the one of them who was missing from it. “When the troops were engaged like this, division against division,” he asked, “how did Arjuna fight, and how did the quick warriors of my own army? What did Arjuna do to the chariots of the Samshaptakas? And what, Sanjaya, did the Samshaptakas do to Arjuna?” Sanjaya would come to Arjuna. He began with the king’s own son, and with the reason Arjuna was needed. While the armies were locked together in those hundreds of duels, Duryodhana himself led his elephant division against Bhima. It was Bhima whom Duryodhana had once tried to poison, and neither man had forgotten it. Bhima, called out by the king in person, went at that division the way an elephant goes to meet an elephant, the way a bull goes to meet a bull. He was skilled in battle, and there was enormous strength in his arms, and he broke the elephant division quickly. The animals were as big as hills, with the fluid of rut running from every part of their bodies, and his arrows tore them and turned them back. As the wind, when it rises, drives off the gathering clouds, the son of the Wind drove off the elephants of the Kauravas. Shooting into them he shone like the risen sun, which reaches everything in the world with its rays, and the elephants, hit again and again and covered in blood, looked like banks of cloud with sunbeams run through them. Duryodhana, furious at the slaughter of his animals, pierced the son of the Wind with sharp arrows. Bhima’s eyes went red. He meant to send the king to the house of Yama, and he put many sharp shafts into him, fast. Duryodhana, torn all over and in a rage of his own, answered with arrows bright as the rays of the sun, and he was smiling as he shot. Then Bhima, with a pair of broad-headed arrows, cut the king’s bow out of his hands and cut down his standard, the one that bore an elephant worked in jewels and set with gems of many kinds.

Seeing Duryodhana hard pressed, the ruler of the Angas came up on his own elephant to draw Bhima off. The animal advanced with loud roars. Bhima sent one long arrow deep between the two domes of its forehead; the arrow passed through the whole length of the body and sank into the earth behind it, and the elephant went down like a hill split by a thunderbolt. Its rider, a Mleccha king, was falling with it. Before he could reach the ground, Bhima, as quick as he was strong, took off his head with a broad-headed arrow. When the ruler of the Angas fell, his divisions ran, and the horses and elephants and chariots, stampeding in panic, crushed their own foot soldiers under them as they went. It was into that scattering of troops that the ruler of Pragjyotisha came, the old king whom Sanjaya had set that morning in the middle of the bird, garlanded, under his white umbrella. He rode his elephant straight at Bhima. The animal had its two forelegs and its trunk drawn in tight. It was full of rage, its eyes were rolling, and it seemed about to burn the son of Pandu up as a fire would. It pounded his chariot, and the horses yoked to it, into dust. Bhima did not run from it. He ran forward and got in under its body, because he knew the science called anjalikabedha, and beneath that belly he struck upward with his bare arms, again and again, hammering the unbeatable animal that was bent on killing him, until it began to turn around and around like a potter’s wheel. Then Bhima, who had the strength of ten thousand elephants in him, came out from under Supratika, for that was the elephant’s name, and stood facing it. Supratika caught him in its trunk and threw him down with its knees. It had him by the neck, and it meant to kill him. Bhima twisted the trunk, worked himself out of its coil, and went back in under the great body. He waited there, expecting an elephant of his own army to come up against this one. Then he came out from under the beast and ran, very fast. It was behind Bhima that the Pandava army had turned around and come back to the fight, and now a great cry went through all the troops: “Bhima has been killed by the elephant!” And the Pandava host, terrified of that one animal, fled all at once to the place where Bhima was standing.

Yudhishthira believed his brother was dead. He had turned his chariot twice that day in front of Drona. He did not turn it now. With the Panchalas beside him he closed on Bhagadatta from every side, ringed him with a great many chariots, and covered him with keen arrows by the hundred and by the thousand. Bhagadatta, king of the mountain country, beat that shower aside with his iron hook, the goad with which a rider drives an elephant, and set his elephant to burning up Pandavas and Panchalas alike. What that old man did with that one animal, Sanjaya said, was a marvel to watch. The king of the Dasharnas came at him on a swift elephant with the sweat of rut running down its temples, meaning to take Supratika in the flank. Both beasts were of a terrible size, and their fight was like the fight of two winged mountains, forests and all, in the old days. Then Bhagadatta’s elephant wheeled, got at the Dasharna elephant, ripped its flank open and killed it outright, and Bhagadatta himself, with seven lances bright as the rays of the sun, killed the man on its back just as he was slipping from his seat. Yudhishthira put arrows into Bhagadatta and closed a great number of chariots around him again. The old king sat his elephant in the middle of that ring like a fire burning on a mountaintop with dense forest all around it, and he stayed there without fear among the packed chariots of fierce bowmen, every one of whom was shooting at him. Then he pressed the huge animal with his toe and sent it at the chariot of Satyaki. The elephant seized the chariot of Shini’s grandson and hurled it a long way with great force. Satyaki got clear in time by jumping, and the chariot went through the air without him. His charioteer, too, left the big Sindhu horses that were yoked to the chariot, ran after Satyaki, and stood where he stopped. The elephant, meanwhile, came quickly out of the circle of chariots and began throwing down every king who tried to bar its way. Those kings, frightened out of their wits by a single animal moving at that speed, took it for many. Bhagadatta on his elephant struck down the Pandavas as the king of the gods, mounted on his own elephant Airavata, struck down the Danavas long ago.

The Panchalas fled in every direction, and the noise that rose among them, of elephants and horses, was loud and dreadful. With the Pandava troops being destroyed like that, Bhima, in a rage, went at the ruler of Pragjyotisha a second time. The elephant met his advancing horses with water spouted from its trunk and drenched them; they took fright, and they carried Bhima off the field. Twice in one day that single animal had put the strongest man in the Pandava army to flight. Then Ruchiparva, Kriti’s son, drove fast at Bhagadatta on his chariot, scattering showers of arrows, coming on like the Destroyer himself. Bhagadatta, that lord of the hill country, a man fine in every limb, sent him to the house of Yama with a single straight shaft. When brave Ruchiparva fell, Subhadra’s son Abhimanyu, the sons of Draupadi, Chekitana, Dhrishtaketu and Yuyutsu all set upon the elephant. They wanted it dead, and they shouted and poured their arrows on it as clouds pour rain on the earth. Its rider knew his business. Urged on with heel and hook and toe, the animal came forward quickly, its trunk stretched out, its eyes and ears fixed. It trod down Yuyutsu’s horses and killed his charioteer, and Yuyutsu abandoned his chariot and ran. The Pandava warriors, still wanting that prince of elephants dead, raised a shout and quickly covered it with arrows again. At that moment a son of Dhritarashtra, in a rage, drove at the chariot of Subhadra’s son. And Bhagadatta, shooting from his elephant into the enemy, shone like the sun itself spreading its rays over the earth. Abhimanyu pierced him with twelve shafts, Yuyutsu with ten, each of Draupadi’s sons with three, and Dhrishtaketu with three. Those arrows had been aimed with great care, and the elephant, stuck full of them, looked like a great mass of cloud shot through with sunbeams. Hurt by them, and driven by its rider with skill and force, it began flinging enemy warriors off to both its sides. As a cowherd in the forest drives his cattle with a stick, Bhagadatta beat the Pandava host, again and again. A loud, confused noise rose from the Pandava troops as they ran, like the cawing of crows that fly fast from hawks. That prince of elephants, under its rider’s hook, looked like one of the winged mountains of old, and it put into the hearts of the enemy the fear that merchants feel at the sight of the sea in a swell. Elephants and chariot fighters and horses and kings fled, and the din they made as they went filled earth and sky and heaven and every direction, the four quarters and the points between. On that elephant King Bhagadatta went into the enemy army as the Asura Virochana once went into the host of the gods, well guarded though it was. A violent wind got up. A cloud of dust covered the sky and the troops. And men saw that single elephant as many elephants, coursing all over the field.

A key to reading this (names and a science): Bhagadatta is the old king of Pragjyotisha, a ruler of the mountain country, and Supratika is his elephant. The ruler of the Angas who dies here on his elephant is called a Mleccha king; he is another man than Karna, whom Duryodhana made king of Anga long before the war and who stands, alive, in the tail of the array. Anjalikabedha is the science Bhima relies on when he goes in under the elephant’s body; he waits there for an elephant of his own army to come up, and when none comes he runs. The king of the Dasharnas and Ruchiparva, son of Kriti, fight on the Pandava side. Satyaki, whose chariot the elephant throws, is the grandson of Shini. Yuyutsu is Dhritarashtra’s son by a Vaishya wife, who crossed over to the Pandavas before the first day’s fighting began. The son of Dhritarashtra who drives at Abhimanyu’s chariot is given no name.

The gist: Duryodhana’s elephant division breaks against Bhima, and the king of Anga falls headless with his mount. Then old Bhagadatta arrives on Supratika and grinds Bhima’s chariot to dust, and Bhima fights the elephant bare-handed from under its belly until the army believes him dead. Yudhishthira rings Bhagadatta with chariots, and one elephant answers by killing the Dasharna king’s mount, flinging Satyaki’s chariot away and driving the Pandava army like cattle; Ruchiparva dies, Bhima’s horses bolt, Yuyutsu loses his chariot, and in the dust the single animal looks to every man like many.

Arjuna’s heart cut in two: the Brahma weapon on the Samshaptakas, Susharma knocked senseless, and a swoop like Garuda’s at Bhagadatta

Sanjaya turned then to the question the king had asked. “You ask me about Arjuna in this battle,” he said. “Hear what he did.” Far off in the south, where the sworn men had drawn him that morning, Arjuna had been fighting since the armies first met. The Samshaptakas had drawn up their chariots on level ground in the shape of a half moon and had shouted for joy to see him come, and he had remarked to Krishna, with a small smile, that the Trigarta brothers were glad at the very hour when they ought to weep. One blast of his conch Devadatta had stopped that whole chariot host as if it had turned to stone. He had taken the head of Sudhanva, and when the rest broke and ran, their king had shamed them back to their oath, and they had come on again with the Narayana cowherds beside them. He had loosed the weapon called Tvashtra, which filled the field with images of himself and of Krishna, so that the sworn men cut one another down, each believing he had found Arjuna. Their arrows had covered the chariot so thickly that Krishna, drenched in sweat, had called out to ask where Arjuna was and whether he was alive, and Arjuna had answered with the Vayavya, the weapon of the Wind, which carried men and horses and elephants off like dry leaves. Still those who were left kept coming. Now, while Bhagadatta was doing these things, Arjuna saw the dust rising and heard the wail of the troops, and he knew what both of them meant. “Krishna,” he said, “the ruler of Pragjyotisha must have come into the battle on his elephant, and come hard. This din we hear can only be his. He knows the whole art of fighting from an elephant’s back and of crushing an enemy from it. He is Indra’s match in battle, and I think he is the first of all elephant warriors in the world. His elephant, too, is the first of elephants, with no rival to face it. It is quick, it never tires, and no weapon goes through it. It can bear every weapon, even the touch of fire, and by itself it will destroy the Pandava force today. No one can stop that creature except the two of us. So go quickly to where the ruler of Pragjyotisha is. His elephant’s strength has made him proud in battle, and his years have made him arrogant, and this very day I will send him as a guest to Indra, the slayer of Vala.” Krishna turned the horses toward the place where Bhagadatta was breaking the Pandava ranks. They were already on their way when the Samshaptakas came back onto the field behind them and called Arjuna to battle: fourteen thousand great chariot fighters, ten thousand of them the Gopalas, the Narayanas, the cowherd soldiers who had once followed Krishna himself. Krishna had given that army to Duryodhana before the war, on the day Arjuna chose Krishna alone and unarmed, and now it was shouting for Arjuna’s life.

Arjuna’s heart was cut in two. In front of him the Pandava host was breaking under Bhagadatta; behind him the sworn men were calling his name. They had vowed before their fires to kill him or to go to the hells kept for the worst of men, and he had vowed, long before them, never to turn his back on a challenge. “Which is the better thing for me to do today,” he asked himself, “to turn back from here and fight the Samshaptakas, or to go to Yudhishthira?” He turned it over with all the judgment he had, and in the end his mind settled firmly on the killing of the Samshaptakas. Wanting to slaughter thousands of chariot fighters alone, the son of Indra, the man with the great ape on his banner, suddenly wheeled around. This was the very thing, Sanjaya told the king, that Duryodhana and Karna had devised for Arjuna’s destruction; it was for this that they had arranged a battle on two fronts. Arjuna let his heart swing one way and then the other, and then, by resolving to kill the Samshaptakas, he defeated the purpose of his enemies. The Samshaptakas shot thousands of straight arrows at him. Under them neither Arjuna, nor Krishna, nor the horses, nor the chariot could be seen. Krishna lost his senses for a time, and the sweat ran from him, as it had that morning. Then Arjuna loosed the Brahma weapon, and it all but wiped them out. Arms fell by the hundred, cut from their bodies with bows and arrows and bowstrings still in their grip. Standards fell by the hundred, and horses, and charioteers, and chariot fighters. Huge elephants in full gear, like wooded hills or masses of cloud, went down riderless under his arrows, and others went down dead with their riders still on them, the embroidered cloths stripped from their backs and their housings torn. Arms beyond counting, cut off by his broad-headed arrows, lay on the ground: arms that had swords and lances and rapiers for their claws, arms still gripping clubs and battle-axes. Heads as lovely as the morning sun, or the lotus, or the moon, dropped to the earth. While Arjuna in his anger went on killing with those ornamented, deadly shafts, the whole host looked as if it had caught fire. Everything living that watched him crush that army, as an elephant crushes lotus stalks, cried out, “Well done! Well done!” Krishna saw a feat worthy of Indra himself, and he was filled with wonder. He joined his hands and said, “Truly, Partha, I do not think Shakra could have done this, or Yama, or the Lord of Treasures himself. I have watched you bring down hundreds and thousands of great Samshaptaka fighters today, all together.” Having killed the Samshaptakas who had come to fight him there, Arjuna said to Krishna, “Go toward Bhagadatta.”

Krishna did as Arjuna wished and urged the white horses, fast as thought and armored in gold, toward Drona’s divisions. Arjuna was on his way to his brothers, whom Drona was hurting badly, when Susharma, the Trigarta king who had first sworn the oath, came up behind him with his brothers, wanting a fight. The choice he had just made was put to him again. “Krishna, here is Susharma with his brothers, challenging me,” he said, “and over there, to the north, our army is being broken. Because of these Samshaptakas my heart keeps going back and forth today. Shall I kill the Samshaptakas now, or shall I protect my own troops, who are already suffering at the enemy’s hands? This is what I am asking myself: which of the two is better for me?” Krishna answered by turning the chariot, and he took the son of Pandu to where the ruler of the Trigartas was. Arjuna pierced Susharma with seven shafts and cut down his bow and his standard with two sharp arrows. With six more he sent the brothers of the Trigarta king quickly to the house of Yama. Susharma took aim at Arjuna and hurled a dart made wholly of iron, a thing like a snake, and he took aim at Krishna and hurled a lance. Arjuna cut the dart with three arrows and the lance with three more, and then poured arrows over him until the man who had first sworn to rid the earth of Arjuna lay senseless on his own chariot. After that he came on fiercely toward the Kaurava divisions, scattering arrows as Indra scatters rain, and no one among those troops dared stand in his way. Like a fire that eats heaps of straw as it travels, he advanced, scorching the great chariot fighters of the Kauravas with his arrows, and the troops could no more endure the force of that clear-headed son of Kunti than a living creature can endure the touch of flame. Overwhelming the host with his arrows, he came down on the king of Pragjyotisha as Garuda swoops on his prey. In his hands was Gandiva, the bow Brahma made, which in battle was a blessing to the blameless Pandavas and death to all their enemies. It was there, Sanjaya said to the blind king, for the destruction of the Kshatriyas, a destruction brought on by the fault of his own son, who had turned to crooked dice to get what he wanted.

Shaken by Arjuna like that, the Kaurava host broke as a boat breaks when it strikes a rock. Ten thousand bowmen, brave and fierce and set on winning, came forward to meet him, and those great chariot fighters, with no fear in their hearts, closed all around him. Arjuna could carry any load in battle, however heavy, and he took up that one. As an angry elephant of sixty years, with the rut splitting its temples, tramples a bed of lotus stalks, he trampled that division. And while it was being crushed, King Bhagadatta, on that same elephant, came rushing at Arjuna. Arjuna had asked Krishna for exactly this meeting. He stayed on his chariot and received him. The meeting of Arjuna’s chariot and Bhagadatta’s elephant was fierce beyond telling. The two heroes ranged over the field, the one on a chariot and the other on an elephant, each fitted out exactly as the science of war lays down. Bhagadatta, like the lord Indra, from an elephant that looked like a mass of cloud, poured showers of arrows down on Arjuna, and the son of Indra cut those showers apart with his own arrows before they could reach him. The king of Pragjyotisha baffled Arjuna’s shower in his turn and struck both Arjuna and Krishna with many shafts. Then, burying the two of them under a thick rain of arrows, he drove his elephant forward to destroy them. Krishna saw the angry animal coming on like Death himself, and he moved the chariot quickly, so as to keep the elephant on his left. That put Arjuna behind the huge beast and its rider, with a clear chance to kill them both. He remembered the rules of fair fight, which do not let a man be shot from behind, and he would not yet take it. The elephant, left alive, fell on other elephants, and chariots, and horses, and sent them all to the house of Yama. Arjuna watched it happen, and rage filled him.

A key to reading this (the Samshaptakas and the Narayanas): The Samshaptakas are the Trigarta warriors who swore with their king Susharma that they would kill Arjuna or die, and whose task is to keep Arjuna at the far end of the field so that Drona can take Yudhishthira alive. The ten thousand Gopalas or Narayanas are the cowherd army of Krishna’s own people, which he gave to Duryodhana before the war when Arjuna chose Krishna alone. The slayer of Vala is Indra, Arjuna is Indra’s son, and Shakra is another of Indra’s names; the Lord of Treasures is Kubera. Sanjaya himself says that Duryodhana and Karna arranged the double battle to bring about Arjuna’s death. Arjuna’s refusal to strike the elephant from behind follows the rules of fair fight, and its cost is counted at once in the elephants, chariots and horses that Supratika goes on to kill.

The gist: Arjuna reads Bhagadatta’s dust from across the field and asks Krishna to drive there, and at that moment fourteen thousand Samshaptakas return and call him out. His heart divides; he turns on the Samshaptakas first and all but destroys them with the Brahma weapon, then deals with Susharma and his brothers, and burns through the Kaurava host like fire through straw until he comes down on Bhagadatta like Garuda. Chariot and elephant range over the field; Krishna keeps the animal on his left, Arjuna declines the shot from behind, and the sight of Supratika killing everything it reaches fills him with rage.

The Vaishnava weapon that became a garland on Krishna’s breast: Naraka’s boon, one arrow between Supratika’s temples, and the fall of Bhagadatta

“And when that rage had filled him,” the blind king asked, “what did Arjuna, the son of Pandu, do to Bhagadatta? What did the king of Pragjyotisha do to Arjuna? Tell me all of it, Sanjaya.” Sanjaya told him that while Arjuna and Krishna were engaged with the ruler of Pragjyotisha, every creature that watched thought the pair of them were standing very near the jaws of Death. Bhagadatta sat on the neck of his elephant, high above the chariot, and from there he poured showers of shafts down on the two Krishnas, as the pair on that one chariot were called. He pierced Devaki’s son with arrow after arrow, each made wholly of black iron, winged with gold, sharpened on stone, and loosed from a bow drawn to its full stretch. Their touch was like the touch of fire. Beautifully feathered, they went clean through Krishna’s body and on into the earth. Arjuna cut Bhagadatta’s bow, killed the warrior who guarded the elephant’s flank, and then began to fight the old king as if it were play. Bhagadatta hurled fourteen lances at him, sharp-pointed and bright as the rays of the sun. Arjuna cut each of the fourteen into three pieces in the air. Then, with a thick shower of arrows, the son of Indra cut open the armor in which the elephant was cased, and the mail came away and dropped to the ground. Stripped of it, and hurt all over by Arjuna’s arrows, the animal looked like a king of mountains that has lost its robe of cloud and stands with streaks of water running down its breast.

The ruler of Pragjyotisha next hurled a dart at Krishna, a thing made wholly of iron and decked with gold. Arjuna cut it in two. He cut down the king’s standard, and then the white umbrella that had been held over the king’s head since morning, and then, smiling the whole time, he quickly put ten arrows into that lord of the mountain realms. They were handsomely winged with kanka feathers and they went deep, and Bhagadatta grew furious with the son of Pandu. He hurled lances at Arjuna’s head and gave a loud shout, and the lances knocked the diadem on Arjuna’s head out of its place. Arjuna set the diadem straight again. Then he spoke to the king of Pragjyotisha. “Look well on this world,” he said. It is the advice one gives a man who is about to leave it, and Bhagadatta, hearing it, filled with rage. He took up a bright bow and showered his arrows on Arjuna and on Krishna together. Arjuna cut that bow too, and the quivers with it, and quickly struck him with seventy-two shafts in his vital limbs. Pierced like that, the old king was in terrible pain. He had no bow now, no standard, no umbrella, and an elephant whose armor lay on the ground. He still had one thing. In his rage he took the hook with which he drove his elephant, turned it by mantras into the Vaishnava weapon, and hurled it at Arjuna’s chest.

That weapon kills whatever it is sent against. Arjuna had cut fourteen lances and an iron dart out of the air that day. This came at him as a thing that no one in all the worlds, as Krishna would tell him a moment later, could have lived through. It left Bhagadatta’s hand, and Krishna, covering Arjuna with his own body, took it on his chest. On Krishna’s chest the weapon turned into a garland, a garland of victory. Arjuna saw it lying there, and there was no gladness in him at all. Krishna had come to this war as his charioteer, with his arms laid down, on his word that he would do no fighting, and he had just put himself in front of a weapon meant for Arjuna as if Arjuna could not look after himself. “You were to guide my horses and nothing more,” Arjuna said to him. “You were never to fight. You said so yourself. Why, then, do you fail to keep your promise? If I were sinking in distress, if I could not turn aside a weapon or stand against an enemy, then you might do such a thing. You should never do it while I stand here as I am. You know that with my bow and my arrows I am able to conquer these worlds, with the gods and the Asuras and men in them.”

“Listen, Partha,” Krishna answered, “to a secret and ancient history, just as it happened. I have four forms, and I am engaged forever in the protection of the worlds. I divide my own self, and so I bring about their good. One form of mine stays on the earth and practices austerities. Another watches the good deeds and the evil deeds that are done in the world. My third form comes into the world of men and acts in it. My fourth lies down in sleep for a thousand years, and when that form of mine awakes at the end of the thousand years, it grants the finest of boons, on waking, to those who deserve them. The Earth knew once that the time had come, and she asked me for a boon for her son Naraka. Hear what it was. ‘Let my son have the Vaishnava weapon,’ she said, ‘and with it let neither the gods nor the Asuras be able to kill him. Grant me that weapon.’ I heard her prayer, and in those old days I gave the supreme and unfailing Vaishnava weapon to the Earth’s son. And I said to her then, ‘Let this weapon never fail in the protection of Naraka. No one will be able to kill him. Guarded by it, your son will be unconquerable in all the worlds, always, and he will crush every army that comes against him.’ ‘So be it,’ said the wise goddess, and she went away with her wish fulfilled. And Naraka became unconquerable, and he scorched his enemies always. It was from Naraka, Partha, that the ruler of Pragjyotisha had this weapon of mine. There is no one in all the world, Indra and Rudra included, whom it cannot kill. So it was for your sake that I turned it aside and broke my promise. The great Asura has now been stripped of that supreme weapon. Kill him now, Partha. Kill Bhagadatta, your unconquerable enemy and the enemy of the gods, as I once killed the Asura Naraka for the good of the worlds.”

Arjuna needed no more than that. All at once he covered Bhagadatta with clouds of sharpened arrows. Then, with no fear in him, he drove a long arrow in between the two domes on the forehead of his enemy’s elephant. It split the animal as a thunderbolt splits a mountain, and it went into the body up to its feathers, like a snake going into an anthill. Bhagadatta urged the elephant on, and urged it again, and it would no more obey him than a poor man’s wife obeys her husband. Its limbs had gone dead under it. It fell, striking the earth with its tusks, and with one cry of distress the great beast that had thrown Satyaki’s chariot and twice driven Bhima off gave up its life. Then the son of Pandu took a straight shaft with a head shaped like a crescent and shot King Bhagadatta through the chest. Pierced through by the wearer of the diadem, the king lost his life, and the bow and the arrows dropped from his hands. The costly cloth that had been his turban came loose from his head and fell, as a petal falls from a lotus when its stalk is struck hard. And the king himself, in his garlands of gold, fell from the great elephant with its golden housings, like a kinshuka tree in red flower snapped from a mountaintop by the wind. So the son of Indra killed in battle a king who was Indra’s equal in prowess, and who was Indra’s friend. He had told Krishna he would send the old king as a guest to Indra, and he had. Then, as a great wind breaks rows of trees, he broke the other warriors of the Kaurava army, who had stood there until that moment full of the hope of victory.

A key to reading this (names and the weapon): Pragjyotisha is the kingdom of Bhagadatta, whom Sanjaya describes as an old man, a ruler of the mountain realms and a friend of Indra. Supratika is his elephant, the same animal that fought Bhima earlier in the day. The two Krishnas are Krishna and Arjuna on one chariot, and Devaki’s son is Krishna. Naraka, son of the Earth, is the Asura whom Krishna says he killed for the good of the worlds; the Vaishnava weapon passed from Naraka to Bhagadatta. Krishna’s promise to lay down his arms and take no part in the fighting was given in the Udyoga Parva, when Arjuna chose him over an army; here he sets it aside, in his own words, to save Arjuna, and he tells of the fourth of his forms, which granted the boon that made the breach necessary. The hook Bhagadatta throws is the iron goad with which he drives his elephant. Kanka is a bird whose feathers were used to wing arrows.

The gist: Bhagadatta rains arrows and lances from his elephant’s neck while Arjuna strips him piece by piece: bow, standard, umbrella, and the armor off the elephant itself. In his pain and rage the king speaks mantras over his elephant hook, turns it into the Vaishnava weapon, and throws it at Arjuna’s chest. Krishna covers Arjuna and takes it on his own breast, where it becomes a garland. Answering Arjuna’s reproach, he tells the secret of his four forms and of the boon he once granted the Earth for her son Naraka, and says the enemy now stands disarmed. One long arrow between Supratika’s temples, one crescent shaft through Bhagadatta’s chest, a turban falling like a lotus petal, and Indra’s friend comes down off his elephant.

Two uncles with a single arrow: the end of Vrishaka and Achala, Shakuni’s hundred illusions, and the gamble in which Drona was the stake and Nila was the loss

Bhagadatta had been a powerful man, and always Indra’s favorite and Indra’s friend. Having killed him, Arjuna drove around the fallen king in the circuit of respect. He was hardly done when two sons of the king of Gandhara came at him, the brothers Vrishaka and Achala. They were sons of Subala and brothers of Shakuni, which made them the brothers of the blind king’s own queen, and Sanjaya was about to tell a husband how his wife’s brothers died. The two bowmen worked together, one from the front and one from behind, and their sharpened arrows came fast and went deep. Arjuna answered Vrishaka first. With sharp shafts he cut Vrishaka’s horses, his driver, his bow, his umbrella, his standard and his chariot into splinters. Then with clouds of arrows and with other weapons of many kinds he turned on the Gandhara troops that Subala’s son was leading, and hurt them badly once more. Five hundred Gandhara warriors came on with their weapons raised, and Arjuna, in his anger, sent all five hundred to the house of Yama. Vrishaka jumped quickly from the chariot whose horses had been killed, climbed onto his brother’s, and took up another bow. Now the two brothers stood on one chariot, and from it they poured showers of arrows into Arjuna without a pause. Those two princes, Dhritarashtra’s kinsmen by marriage, hit him very hard, as the demons Vritra or Vala once hit Indra. Their aim never failed, they themselves had not been touched, and they went on striking the son of Pandu as the two months of summer strike the world with rays that draw out its sweat. Then Arjuna killed them. They were standing side by side on that one chariot, and he killed both with a single arrow. Red-eyed, with the look of lions, born of one mother and alike in their features, they fell from the chariot together. Their bodies, dear to their friends, lay on the earth, and a holy fame spread out from them on every side.

Dhritarashtra’s sons saw their mother’s brothers dead, brave men who had never turned back from a fight, and they rained weapons on Arjuna. Shakuni saw his brothers dead too. He was the man who had thrown the dice against Yudhishthira in the gaming hall. He knew a hundred different kinds of illusion, and he began to make them now, to confound the two Krishnas. From every side weapons fell on Arjuna: clubs, iron balls, rocks, shataghnis, darts, maces, spiked bludgeons, scimitars, lances, mallets, axes, kampanas, swords, nails, short clubs, battle-axes, razors, arrows with sharp broad heads, nalikas, shafts with heads like a calf’s tooth, arrows with heads of bone, discs, snake-headed shafts, spears, and many other kinds besides. After the weapons came living things: asses, camels, buffaloes, tigers, lions, deer, leopards, bears, wolves, vultures, monkeys, reptiles of many kinds, cannibals of many kinds, and swarms of crows, all of them hungry, all of them wild with rage, all of them running at Arjuna. He knew the celestial weapons, and he shot clouds of arrows into the whole apparition, and the things in it, struck by those fine strong shafts, screamed and fell dead. Then a thick darkness came and covered his chariot, and out of the gloom harsh voices rebuked him. He drove that dreadful darkness off with the weapons called Jyotishka. When it was gone, terrible waves of water rose in its place. To dry them up Arjuna used the weapon called Aditya, and under it the waters all but vanished. Illusion after illusion the son of Subala raised, and Arjuna destroyed each one quickly by the force of his weapons, laughing as he did it. With every illusion gone, hurt by Arjuna’s arrows and unmanned by fear, Shakuni fled behind his fast horses like any common coward.

Then Arjuna, who knew every weapon there was, showed the enemy how light his hands were. He poured clouds of arrows on the Kaurava host, and the host, cut down by him, parted into two streams, as the current of the Ganga parts when a mountain stands in its way. One stream went toward Drona. The other, crying aloud, went toward Duryodhana. A thick dust rose and covered all the troops, and Sanjaya told the king that he and those with him could no longer see Arjuna at all. They could only hear Gandiva. The twang of that bow came to them from the field, above the blare of conches and the beat of drums and the noise of every other instrument. A fierce battle went on in the southern part of the field between Arjuna on one side and many great warriors on the other, and Sanjaya did not see it. He was one witness with one pair of eyes, and he followed Drona. Yudhishthira’s divisions were striking the enemy on every part of the field. Arjuna was striking the divisions of Duryodhana as the wind in summer destroys masses of cloud in the sky. He came on scattering arrows as Indra pours down thick rain, and there was no one in that army who could stand against so fierce and great a bowman. The Kaurava warriors he hit were in great pain. They ran, and as they ran they killed many of their own side. His arrows, winged with kanka feathers and able to go through any body, fell covering every side like flights of locusts. They went through horses and chariot fighters and elephants and foot soldiers as snakes go through anthills, and on into the earth. He never spent a second arrow on any elephant, horse or man. One was enough; each of them fell, badly hurt, and died. With dead men and elephants and arrow-struck horses lying everywhere, and the howls of dogs and jackals echoing over it, the field was a strange and dreadful sight. Tormented by those arrows, a father left his son, a friend left his friend, a son left his father. Every man looked to his own safety, and many, struck by Arjuna’s shafts, abandoned the very animals that carried them.

“When those divisions of mine were broken and routed, Sanjaya,” Dhritarashtra asked, “and all of you were hurrying off the field, what was the state of your minds? To rally ranks that are broken and running, with no spot in sight where a man might make a stand, is always a very hard thing. Tell me all about it.” Sanjaya answered that the troops were broken indeed, and yet many of the greatest heroes in the world, wanting to serve the king’s son and to keep their own good name, followed Drona. In that dreadful confusion they followed their commander without fear, with their weapons raised, doing fine things against the Pandava troops, and with Yudhishthira within their reach. Bhima, Satyaki and Dhrishtadyumna made a mistake, and the Kuru leaders took advantage of it and fell on the Pandava army. The Panchalas urged their troops on with a cry of “Drona! Drona!” Dhritarashtra’s sons urged all the Kurus on with “Do not let Drona be killed! Do not let Drona be killed!” One side shouting for Drona’s death and the other for his life, the Kurus and the Pandavas seemed to be gambling, with Drona as the stake. Whichever Panchala chariot fighters Drona tried to crush, Dhrishtadyumna went to their side, and so no rule was kept any longer about who might choose whom to fight. The struggle became dreadful. Heroes met heroes with loud shouts. Their enemies could not make the Pandavas shake, while the Pandavas, remembering all their wrongs, shook the ranks of their enemies. They were modest men, and rage and the wish for revenge had roused them now; driven by their own energy and strength, they went into that dreadful battle careless of their lives, to kill Drona. That meeting of heroes, playing a fierce game with life itself for the stake, was like iron striking adamant. The oldest men could not remember seeing or hearing of a battle as fierce as that one. The earth, marked with great slaughter and loaded with the weight of that vast host, began to tremble. The terrible noise of the Kuru army as the enemy shook and tossed it seemed to stun the sky, and it carried into the middle of the Pandava host. Then Drona came on the Pandava divisions by the thousand, ranging over the field, and broke them with his sharpened shafts. While they were being crushed by Drona and his astonishing feats, Dhrishtadyumna, the commander of the Pandava army, checked him in person, full of rage. The fight between Drona and the prince of the Panchalas was a marvel to see, and Sanjaya told the king it was his firm belief that it had no equal.

Then Nila came on like a fire, with his arrows for its sparks and his bow for its flame, and began to burn up the Kuru ranks as a blaze burns heaps of dry grass. Drona’s son Ashvatthama had wanted to meet him for a long time, for there was an old rivalry between the two. He smiled as Nila came burning through the troops, and he spoke to him courteously. “Nila, what do you gain by burning up so many common soldiers with those flames of arrows? Fight me, and me alone. Get angry, and strike me.” Nila’s face was as bright as a lotus in full bloom. Ashvatthama’s body was like a cluster of lotuses, and his eyes were like lotus petals, and Nila pierced him with his shafts. Deeply and suddenly pierced, Drona’s son cut away his opponent’s bow, his standard and his umbrella with three broad-headed arrows. Nila jumped quickly from his chariot with a shield and a fine sword, meaning to take Ashvatthama’s head from his body as a bird carries off its prey. Drona’s son, with one bearded arrow, took Nila’s head from his body first: a head with a handsome nose and fine earrings, set on high shoulders. He was a tall man, lotus-colored, with a face as bright as the full moon and eyes like lotus petals, and he fell dead to the earth. When the preceptor’s son killed Nila, who had come through the Kuru ranks like a fire, great grief filled the Pandava host, and it began to shake. And all the great chariot fighters of the Pandavas had the same thought: “How is the son of Indra to save us from the enemy, when he is busy in the southern part of the field, killing what is left of the Samshaptakas and the Narayana force?”

A key to reading this (who is who): Vrishaka and Achala are sons of Subala, king of Gandhara, and brothers of Shakuni; Sanjaya calls them Dhritarashtra’s relatives by marriage and the maternal uncles of his sons. The son of Subala who raises the illusions is Shakuni. Jyotishka and Aditya are the weapons Arjuna uses against the illusions of darkness and of water. Nila fights on the Pandava side; a King Nila rides in the roll of horses with standard, armor, bow, banner and horses all of one blue, and Ganguli notes that a rivalry had existed for some time between Nila and Ashvatthama. The Narayana force is the army of Krishna’s own cowherds, which went to Duryodhana before the war and which keeps Arjuna occupied in the south alongside the Samshaptakas. The image of the two armies gambling with Drona as the stake is Sanjaya’s.

The gist: Arjuna honors the dead Bhagadatta with a circuit of his chariot, then kills Shakuni’s two brothers, Vrishaka and Achala, with one arrow as they stand together on a single chariot. Shakuni answers with illusions, weapons and beasts and darkness and rising water, and Arjuna laughs his way through all of them until Shakuni runs. The Kaurava host splits into two streams, one toward Drona and one toward Duryodhana, and the dust closes over Arjuna until only the twang of Gandiva can be heard. Asked how a broken army was ever rallied, Sanjaya describes the men who followed Drona, and the fight turning into a gamble with the preceptor as the stake. In that press Ashvatthama calls Nila out and cuts off his head with a bearded arrow, and the Pandavas ask themselves how Arjuna is to save them while he is still in the south.

Bhima’s rage, the press in which a father killed his son, three of Karna’s brothers dead at the hands of Arjuna come back from the south, and the twelfth day’s sun going down behind the western hills

Nila’s head lay on the ground, Arjuna was a long way off, and Bhima could not stand by and watch his army slaughtered. He struck Bahlika, one of the leaders of the right wing, with sixty arrows and Karna with ten. Drona wanted him dead, and quickly drove many straight, keen, sharpened shafts into his very vitals; then, to give him no time at all, he hit him again with twenty-six more, arrows whose touch was like fire and that were like snakes of deadly venom. Karna pierced him with twelve shafts, Ashvatthama with seven, and King Duryodhana with six. Bhima pierced every one of them in return. He hit Drona with fifty shafts and Karna with ten; he put twelve into Duryodhana and eight more into Drona; and he fought on, roaring. In that struggle, where men fought with no care for their lives and death was easy to come by, Yudhishthira saw his brother alone among the greatest fighters the Kauravas had, and he sent many warriors forward and urged them to rescue Bhima. Nakula and Sahadeva, the two sons of Madri and Pandu, and others with Satyaki at their head, went quickly to Bhima’s side. Full of rage, and joined together, they advanced to break Drona’s army, which many of the best bowmen alive were guarding. Bhima and those great chariot fighters fell on Drona’s host in fury, and Drona received every one of those strong and battle-tried men without the least anxiety.

What followed belonged to no one man. The warriors of the Kaurava army put their kingdoms out of their minds, threw off all fear of death, and went against the Pandavas. Horsemen met horsemen and chariot fighters met chariot fighters. The battle went on dart against dart, sword against sword, axe against axe. There was a fierce fight with swords that made a terrible slaughter, and when elephant crashed into elephant the battle grew furious. Men fell head first from the backs of elephants and from the backs of horses. Others fell from chariots with arrows through them. In that savage press, when a man went down who had lost his armor, an elephant might be seen going at his chest and crushing his head. Elsewhere elephants were crushing numbers of men who lay fallen on the field. Many elephants, driving their tusks into the earth as they went down, tore through great bodies of men with them. Many others, with arrows sticking in their trunks, roamed the field tearing and crushing men by the hundred. Some pressed fallen warriors, and horses, and elephants in armor of black iron down into the ground as if they were so many thick reeds. Many kings, modest men whose hour had come, lay down for their last sleep on painful beds spread with the feathers of vultures. A father, driving to battle on his chariot, killed his son; a son, out of his mind and past all respect, came against his father. Chariot wheels broke. Banners were torn. Umbrellas dropped to the ground. Horses ran off dragging broken yokes. Arms fell with swords still in their grip, and heads fell with their earrings on. Great elephants dragged chariots along, threw them down, and left them in splinters. Horses and their riders went down, badly hurt by elephants. So that fierce battle went on, and no one in it showed regard for anyone.

“Father!” “Son!” “Friend, where are you?” “Wait!” “Where are you going?” “Strike!” “Bring it!” “Kill this one!” Cries like these, and many others, were shouted and heard there, with loud laughter and yells and roars. The blood of men and horses and elephants ran together. The dust of the earth was laid. The hearts of all the timid sank. Here a hero whose chariot wheel had locked with the wheel of another, too close now for any other weapon, smashed the other’s head with his mace. Brave men who wanted safety in a place where there was none dragged each other by the hair and fought savagely with fists and teeth and nails. Here a hero’s raised arm was cut off with the sword still in its hand; there another’s was lopped away with the bow, or the arrow, or the hook still held. Here one man shouted for another. There a man turned his back on the field. Here one got another within reach and took his head from his body. There one rushed at an enemy with loud shouts. Here a man was filled with fear at another’s roar. There a man killed with sharp arrows someone who was a friend, or an enemy. Here an elephant as big as a hill, killed with a long shaft, fell and lay on the field like a flat island in a river in the summer season. There an elephant with sweat running down its body, like a mountain with streams running down its breast, stood over the chariot fighter it had crushed under its feet, horses and charioteer and all. Watching brave men, skilled in arms and covered in blood, strike at one another, the timid and the weak of heart lost their senses. Everyone, in truth, grew sick at heart. Nothing could be told from anything else any longer. And under the dust the troops had raised, the battle became furious.

Dhrishtadyumna had promised his king that morning that Drona would be held, and he had spent the day at it. Now the commander of the Pandava forces said, “This is the time,” and quickly led the Pandavas forward, men who were never slow to act. Obeying him, they struck at the Kaurava army as they went and made for Drona’s chariot as swans make for a lake. “Seize him!” “Do not run!” “Do not be afraid!” “Cut them to pieces!” Those were the cries, loud and confused, that were heard around Drona’s chariot. Drona and Kripa, Karna and Drona’s son, King Jayadratha, Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti, and Shalya received them: the beak of the morning’s bird, one of its eyes, its tail, men from both its wings and from its heart, all standing now in one place. The Panchalas and the Pandavas, though, were hard to check and hard to beat, and a high purpose drove them, and hurt as they were by arrows they did not turn away from Drona. Then Drona, in a great rage, shot shafts by the hundred and made a great slaughter among the Chedis, the Panchalas and the Pandavas. The twang of his bowstring and the slap of his palms were heard on every side. They were like the roar of thunder, and they put fear into every heart.

Meanwhile Arjuna, having beaten a great number of the Samshaptakas, came quickly to the place where Drona was grinding down the Pandava troops. He had been gone since the morning, and his coming was the answer to the question the Pandava fighters had asked over Nila’s body. It was also the end of Drona’s chance for that day. Drona had said himself that with Arjuna beside Yudhishthira the gods could not take the king. Arjuna had crossed many wide lakes on the way whose water was blood and whose fierce waves and eddies were arrows, and now, with the Samshaptakas dead behind him, he showed himself. Sanjaya and those with him saw his emblem, the banner with the ape on it, blazing with a splendor like the sun’s. He had dried up the Samshaptaka ocean with weapons that were his rays, and now, like the sun that rises at the end of a yuga, he blasted the Kurus too. He scorched them all with the heat of his weapons, as the fire that appears at the end of the yuga burns down every creature. Hit by his thousands of shafts, elephant riders and horsemen and chariot fighters fell to the earth with their hair loose. Some, in great pain under those showers of arrows, cried out in distress. Others set up loud shouts. Some, struck by his shafts, fell and died. Arjuna remembered how good warriors behave, and he did not strike any of the enemy who had fallen, or who was retreating, or who did not want to fight. Almost all the Kauravas, their chariots gone and themselves amazed, turned from the field crying “Oh!” and “Alas!” and calling on Karna to protect them. Karna, Adhiratha’s son, whom the morning’s array had set in the tail of the bird, heard that clamor of men begging for protection. He called out loudly to the troops, “Do not be afraid!” and went to face Arjuna. Then Karna, a great chariot fighter of the Bharatas, a man in whom all the Bharatas delighted, and a master of weapons, called the Agneya, the weapon of Fire, into being. Arjuna, with showers of his own arrows, baffled the flights of arrows shot by Radha’s son, the warrior of the blazing bow and the bright shafts; and Adhiratha’s son, in the same way, baffled the shafts of Arjuna. Meeting Arjuna’s weapons with his own, Karna gave loud shouts and shot many shafts at him.

Then Dhrishtadyumna and Bhima and the great chariot fighter Satyaki all came up to Karna, and each of them pierced him with three straight shafts. Karna, holding off Arjuna’s weapons with showers of his own arrows, cut the bows of those three warriors with three sharp shafts. With their bows cut they looked like snakes without venom. They hurled darts at him from their chariots and roared like lions. Those fierce darts, bright and very fast, like snakes themselves, flew from their strong arms toward Karna’s chariot. Karna cut each dart with three straight arrows, sped many arrows at Arjuna at the same moment, and gave a loud shout. Then Arjuna pierced Karna with seven shafts, and with his sharp arrows he killed Karna’s younger brother. Having killed Shatrunjaya with six arrows, he struck off Vipatha’s head with a broad-headed shaft as Vipatha stood on his chariot. So, before the eyes of Dhritarashtra’s sons and of the Suta’s son himself, three brothers of Karna, born of his own mother, were killed by Arjuna with no one helping him. Karna had come out to protect a frightened army, and he could not protect his own brothers. Then Bhima jumped down from his chariot like a second Garuda and, with his fine sword, killed fifteen of the fighters who were supporting Karna. He climbed onto his chariot again, took up another bow, and pierced Karna with ten shafts and his charioteer and horses with five. Dhrishtadyumna, too, took up a sword and a bright shield, and killed Charmavarma and also Brihatkshatra, the ruler of the Naishadhas. Then the Panchala prince mounted his own chariot, took up another bow, pierced Karna with seventy-three shafts, and roared. Satyaki, Shini’s grandson, as splendid as Indra himself, also took up another bow, pierced the Suta’s son with sixty-four shafts, and roared like a lion. He cut Karna’s bow with a pair of well-shot shafts and pierced him again, on the arms and the chest, with three arrows. Karna was about to go under in the ocean that was Satyaki when King Duryodhana, Drona and Jayadratha pulled him out of it. Foot soldiers and horses and chariots and elephants of the Kaurava army, hundreds of them, all skilled fighters, rushed to the spot where Karna was frightening his attackers. And Dhrishtadyumna, Bhima, Subhadra’s son, Arjuna himself, Nakula and Sahadeva set about protecting Satyaki in that battle. So the fierce fight went on, to the destruction of the bowmen of both armies, and every man fought with no care for his own life. Infantry and chariots and horses and elephants fought with chariots and infantry. Chariot fighters fought with elephants and foot soldiers and horses, and chariots and foot soldiers with chariots and elephants. Horses were seen fighting horses, elephants fighting elephants, and foot soldiers fighting foot soldiers. In that great confusion the battle went on between men who faced each other without fear, to the delight of the eaters of human flesh and of the creatures that live on meat, and it greatly swelled the population of Yama’s kingdom. Great numbers of elephants and chariots and foot soldiers and horses were destroyed by men, chariots, horses and elephants. Elephants were killed by elephants, chariot fighters with weapons raised by chariot fighters, horses by horses, and great bodies of foot soldiers by foot soldiers. Elephants were killed by chariots, big horses by big elephants, men by horses, and horses by the leading chariot fighters. With their tongues hanging out, with their teeth and eyes knocked from their places, with their mail and their ornaments crushed to dust, the slaughtered fell on the field. Others, terrible to look at, were struck and thrown to the earth by men with many fine weapons, and were pressed into the ground by the tread of horses and elephants, and were torn and mangled by heavy chariots and chariot wheels. And while that slaughter went on, a delight to beasts of prey and carrion birds and eaters of human flesh, great fighters full of rage ranged over the field killing one another with all the strength they had. Then, when both hosts were broken and mangled, the warriors, bathed in blood, looked at one another. The sun, meanwhile, went to his chambers in the western hills, and both armies slowly withdrew to their tents.

A key to reading this (names): Karna is called Adhiratha’s son, Radha’s son and the Suta’s son; all three names are his. Bahlika is one of the four leaders of the right wing of the Kaurava array. Shatrunjaya and Vipatha are brothers of Karna; Sanjaya says that three of Karna’s brothers, born of the same mother, died at Arjuna’s hands that evening, and he gives the names of two. The Brihatkshatra whom Dhrishtadyumna kills here is the ruler of the Naishadhas, another man than the Kaikeya prince Brihatkshatra of the smoke-colored Sindhu horses, who rides with the Pandavas earlier in the day. The Agneya is the celestial weapon of fire. The eight who receive the Pandava charge at Drona’s chariot are Drona himself, Kripa, Karna, Ashvatthama, Jayadratha, Vinda, Anuvinda and Shalya.

The gist: Nila’s death sends Bhima at Bahlika, Karna, Drona, Ashvatthama and Duryodhana all at once, and Yudhishthira sends the twins and Satyaki to rescue him. What follows is the press in which nobody recognizes anybody, a father kills his son, men fight with teeth and fists when their wheels lock together, and the dust takes the field. Dhrishtadyumna judges the moment and throws everyone at Drona’s chariot, where eight great warriors receive them. Then Arjuna comes back from the south, having dried up the Samshaptaka ocean, and the Kauravas call on Karna for protection. Karna’s Agneya weapon and Arjuna’s arrows cancel each other; Arjuna kills three of Karna’s brothers in front of him, Bhima kills fifteen of his supporters, and Satyaki nearly drowns him before Duryodhana, Drona and Jayadratha pull him clear. Then the sun goes down behind the western hills and the twelfth day is over.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Drona Parva. This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, Sections 20 to 30; the Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters differently. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. About the sources.