Mahabharata · Chapter 25a · Part 3 of 5 · Breaking Drona’s array: from Shrutayudha to the sight of Jayadratha

About 85 minutes

Cart, lotus, and needle: Drona’s array, Jayadratha hidden twelve miles back, and Arjuna’s arrival in the hour of Rudra

Before Sanjaya would describe the fourteenth morning, he made the blind king listen to an accounting of himself. Everything I am about to tell you I saw with my own eyes, he said, so listen calmly, because the fault is great and it is yours. A dam is no use once the water has already run off the field, and that is what your lamentations are now. Do not grieve, bull of Bharata’s race. The decrees of the Destroyer are strange, and they cannot be crossed, and none of this is new. If you had held back Kunti’s son Yudhishthira and your own sons from the dice, this calamity would never have reached you. If, when the hour of war came, you had restrained the two sides while they burned with anger, it would never have reached you. If you had urged the Kurus to put your disobedient Duryodhana to death, it would never have reached you, and the Pandavas, the Panchalas, the Vrishnis and the other kings would never have learned how wrong-headed you are. If you had done a father’s duty and set Duryodhana on the road of righteousness and made him walk it, it would never have reached you. You are the wisest man on earth. How could you abandon the eternal law and follow the counsel of Duryodhana, Karna and Shakuni? So these laments of yours, king, from a man wedded to wealth, sound to me like honey with poison stirred into it. Once Krishna honored you above Yudhishthira and above Drona. From the day he understood that you had fallen away from the duties of a king, he stopped. Your sons said harsh things to the sons of Pritha, and you were indifferent, and the fruit of that indifference has now ripened. The ancestral kingdom is in danger. The kingdom the Kurus enjoy, and the fame with it, were won by Pandu; his righteous sons enlarged both; and all of it turned barren the moment it touched you, because your greed stripped them even of what their father left them. And now, with the battle joined, you list your sons’ faults and curse them, which is hardly fitting. Kshatriyas do not spare their lives when they fight. These bulls among Kshatriyas are fighting inside the array of the Parthas. Who else on earth would dare to fight a force protected by Krishna and Arjuna, by Satyaki and Bhima, except the Kauravas and those who follow them? Everything that brave and dutiful allied kings can do is being done on your side. Now hear all that happened in the terrible battle between the Kurus and the Pandavas.

When the previous fighting had passed, Drona, the first of all wielders of weapons, began to marshal his divisions, and the sound of the marshaling was the sound of an army that wanted one man. Warriors shouted in their anger. Some stretched their bows, some rubbed their bowstrings with their palms and let out deep breaths and demanded, where is that Dhananjaya? Some tossed their naked swords into the air and caught them again, blades the color of the sky, sharp and beautifully hilted. Thousands rehearsed the practiced movements of swordsmen and bowmen. Some whirled maces hung with bells, smeared with sandal paste, set with gold and diamonds, and asked after the sons of Pandu. Some, drunk on their own strength, held up spiked clubs until the sky looked like a forest of the poles raised at Indra’s festival. Others, garlanded with flowers, armed in every fashion, called across the field: where is Arjuna, where is that Govinda, where is proud Bhima, and where are their allies? Drona blew his conch, took the reins himself, and moved swiftly through the ranks, arranging them. When every division that delighted in battle stood in its place, he turned to Jayadratha and gave him his hiding place. You yourself, he said, with Somadatta’s son, with the great chariot-warrior Karna, with Ashvatthama, Shalya, Vrishasena and Kripa, with a hundred thousand horse, sixty thousand chariots, fourteen thousand elephants with rent temples and twenty-one thousand foot soldiers in mail: take your station behind me at twelve miles’ distance. There the very gods with Vasava at their head could not reach you, and what are the Pandavas to that? Take comfort, ruler of the Sindhus. And Jayadratha was comforted, and went to the place Drona had named, with many Gandhara warriors around him, surrounded by great chariot-warriors and by mailed foot soldiers armed with nooses. His horses, trained to be ridden and to draw, were decked with yak-tails and gold; seven thousand of them, and three thousand more of the Sindhu breed.

Then the array itself. Durmarshana, one of the king’s sons, wanting the fight, took the very front of the whole army with fifteen hundred maddened elephants of terrible size, clad in mail, ridden by trained drivers. Two more of the king’s sons, Duhshasana and Vikarna, stood among the forward divisions for Jayadratha’s sake. The formation Bharadvaja’s son built was part cart and part circle, forty-eight miles long, with a rear twenty miles across, and Drona built it with countless brave kings inside it and countless chariots and horses and elephants and infantry. Behind that array stood a second, impenetrable, in the shape of a lotus, and inside the lotus a third, dense one, called the needle. Having built all this, Drona took his post. At the mouth of the needle stood the great bowman Kritavarma; next to him the ruler of the Kambojas and Jalasandha; next to them Duryodhana and Karna; behind them, hundreds and thousands of men who did not know how to turn back, protecting the head of the cart; and behind all of them, wrapped in a vast force, king Jayadratha at one side of the needle. At the entrance of the cart stood Bharadvaja’s son himself, with the chief of the Bhojas behind him as his guard. In white armor, with an excellent headdress, broad-chested and long-armed, Drona stretched his great bow and looked like the Destroyer in his wrath. The Kauravas saw his chariot with its beautiful standard, its red altar and its black deerskin, and were glad. The Siddhas and Charanas saw the array, heaving like the ocean, and wondered at it, and every creature thought it would swallow the earth with her mountains and seas and forests. Duryodhana looked at that cart of chariots and men and horses and elephants, roaring, wonderful in its shape, made to split the hearts of enemies, and rejoiced.

The army was set. The uproar rose, drums and mridangas were beaten, the din of men and instruments became one noise, the conches were blown and a roar went up that made the hair stand, the Bharata heroes spread slowly over the field, and the hour called Rudra arrived. In that hour Savyasachin appeared. Thousands of ravens and crows went sporting ahead of his chariot. Animals with terrible cries and jackals of ill omen yelled and howled on our right as we went to battle, Sanjaya said. Thousands of blazing meteors fell with a great noise. The whole earth shook. Dry winds blew from every direction with thunder in them, driving hard pebbles and gravel, when Kunti’s son came to the beginning of the battle. On the Pandava side Nakula’s son Shatanika and Dhrishtadyumna, both of great wisdom, arranged the divisions. And Durmarshana, with a thousand chariots, a hundred elephants, three thousand heroes and ten thousand foot soldiers, covering a stretch of ground fifteen hundred bow-lengths long, took his place at the head of everything and made his speech. Like the continent resisting the surging sea, he said, I will resist today the wielder of Gandiva, that scorcher of foes who cannot be resisted. Let people see the wrathful Dhananjaya collide with me the way one mass of stone strikes another. Chariot-warriors who want battle, stay and witness it. Alone I will fight all the Pandavas together, for my honor and my fame. And that noble son of yours, that great bowman, stood there surrounded by many great bowmen.

What came toward him was described by Sanjaya in a single long breath, because no shorter one would hold it. Like the Destroyer in his wrath, or Vasava armed with the thunderbolt, or Death’s irresistible self with his club, urged on by Time, or Mahadeva with the trident whom nothing can ruffle, or Varuna with his noose, or the fire at the end of the age risen to consume creation: the slayer of the Nivatakavachas, inflamed with rage and swelling with might, the ever-victorious Jaya, devoted to truth and set on the great vow, in mail, sword at his side, the golden diadem on his head, garlanded with white flowers and dressed in white, with beautiful armlets on his arms and fine earrings in his ears, mounted on the first of chariots: Nara, with Narayana beside him, shaking Gandiva, shone like the risen sun. Dhananjaya placed his chariot at the very van of his army, where the thickest showers of arrows would fall, and blew his conch, and Krishna, fearless, blew Panchajanya with all his force. At the sound of those two conches every warrior in the Kaurava army trembled and lost heart, and their hair stood on end, the way all creatures cower at thunder. The animals voided urine and dung. The whole host with its beasts was filled with anxiety, the strength went out of the men, some were seized with dread and some lost their senses. The ape on Arjuna’s banner opened its mouth wide and, with the other creatures on the banner, made a hideous noise to terrify the troops. To hearten the Kaurava warriors, conches and horns and cymbals and anakas were sounded again, and that noise mixed with other instruments, with the shouts of the men, the slapping of armpits, and the lion-roars with which the great chariot-warriors summoned and challenged their opponents. In the middle of that tumult, which only deepened the fear of the timid, the son of the slayer of Paka turned to the Dasharha, delighted, and gave his first order of the day. Urge the horses, Hrishikesha, to where Durmarshana stands. I will cut through that elephant division and go into their army.

A key to reading this (the array): The shakata array is shaped like a cart, its mouth forward and its bulk behind; the lotus and the needle are formations nested inside it, with Kritavarma at the needle’s point and Jayadratha at its root. The distances are Ganguli’s rendering of the epic’s yojanas, and the arithmetic matters less than the picture: Jayadratha is set far behind the front, inside ring after ring, with the army’s best men between him and Arjuna. The “hour of Rudra” is a division of the day named for the fierce god. Nara and Narayana are Arjuna and Krishna, whom Vyasa keeps calling the two ancient rishis born again. The “son of the slayer of Paka” is Arjuna, since Indra killed the asura Paka. Jaya, in the catalogue of Arjuna’s names here, is one of his own; in the next scene a different warrior named Jaya fights on the Kaurava side.

The gist: Sanjaya first reads Dhritarashtra the bill for his own choices, then opens the fourteenth morning: Drona’s cart-shaped array, forty-eight miles long, with a lotus inside it and a needle inside the lotus, and at the root of the needle, twelve miles back, Jayadratha guarded by Karna, Ashvatthama, Shalya, Kripa and a hundred thousand horse. At the front Durmarshana promises to stop Arjuna alone. Arjuna arrives in the hour of Rudra with crows before him and meteors behind, the two conches take the strength out of the Kaurava army, and his first order is: the horses, toward Durmarshana.

The elephants of Durmarshana and Duhshasana, a bow to the teacher at the gate of the array, and Krishna’s decision to leave Drona on the right

Keshava drove the horses to where Durmarshana stood, and the battle that began there was one man against a multitude, and it destroyed chariots and elephants and men in quantities Sanjaya could only compare to weather. Partha covered his enemies with arrows the way a cloud covers a mountainside with rain. The chariot-warriors facing him answered with a speed of hand that Sanjaya noted honestly, and buried Krishna and Dhananjaya under clouds of shafts. Opposed like that, the mighty-armed Partha grew angry and began to cut the heads off chariot-warriors, and the field filled with beautiful heads in earrings and turbans, lower lips bitten by the upper teeth, eyes still troubled with anger, lying about like lotuses plucked and crushed. Golden coats of mail dyed with gore lay in thick drifts like clouds charged with lightning. The sound of heads dropping was the sound of ripe palmyra fruit falling. Headless trunks stood up, some with a bow still in hand, some with a naked sword raised in the act of striking. The men who could not bear what Arjuna was doing, and rushed at him to end it, had no clear perception of the moment their own heads left their bodies. The earth was strewn with horses’ heads, elephants’ trunks, the arms and legs of heroes. This is Partha, where is Partha, here is Partha: the warriors of the Kaurava army could hold no other idea. Robbed of their senses by Time, they saw the whole world full of Partha, and many of them killed each other, and some struck themselves. Covered in blood, out of their minds with pain, heroes lay down calling for their friends and their kin. Arms cut from trunks, still gripping short arrows or lances or darts or swords or axes or pointed stakes or scimitars or bows or spears or maces, cased in armor and decked with armlets, looking like great snakes or heavy clubs, jumped and jerked and moved across the ground as if they were angry. Everyone who came at Partha in wrath died with one of his fatal shafts in the body. He danced on his moving chariot with the bow drawn, and no one could find the smallest opening to strike at. The speed with which he took an arrow, set it, and let it go astonished his enemies. He pierced elephants and their riders, horses and their riders, chariot-warriors and their drivers. No enemy of his, standing before him, struggling, or wheeling away, escaped. As the rising sun destroys the thick dark, so he destroyed that elephant force with his kanka-feathered shafts, and the field where the riven elephants had fallen looked like the earth strewn with hills at the dissolution of the world. As no creature can look at the sun at midday, so no enemy could look at Dhananjaya in his anger. The king’s troops broke and fled, pierced and scattered like a cloud driven by a great wind. The cavalry, the chariot men and the infantry, struck by Arjuna’s arrows, fled the field, urging their beasts with spurs, with the horns of their bows, with growls and commands and whips and cuts on the flanks and threats. The elephant riders fled pressing their hooks into their animals’ sides. And many, struck by Partha’s arrows and running, ran straight into Partha himself. The Kaurava warriors lost heart, and their understanding was confused.

Dhritarashtra wanted to know who, after that, still went toward Arjuna. When the van of my army broke and fled before the diadem-decked one, he asked, which heroes advanced against him? Did any of them actually fight him, or did they all give up their resolve and go into the cart array behind Drona, who stood like a solid wall? Sanjaya’s answer began with the truth that no one could even look at Arjuna as he broke the army with his excellent arrows, and that many died and many lost heart and ran. Then it named the one who did not. Duhshasana, seeing the state of the troops, was filled with anger and charged. In a beautiful coat of golden mail, his head wrapped in a gold-worked turban, that fierce prince had Arjuna surrounded by an elephant force large enough, in Sanjaya’s phrase, to devour the whole earth. The bells of the elephants, the blare of conches, the twang of bowstrings and the grunting of the tuskers filled the earth and the quarters and the sky, and the moment turned fierce and awful. Dhananjaya saw those huge beasts coming at him with trunks extended, maddened, driven by hooks, like winged mountains, and he gave a lion’s roar and began to pierce and kill them. He went into that elephant host the way a makara goes into the deep when the sea is heaving with mountain-high waves in a storm. Everyone on every side saw Partha, the taker of enemy cities, as the scorching sun that rises on the day of the world’s destruction, in defiance of the rules of direction and hour. The hooves, the wheels, the shouts, the bowstrings, the instruments, the blare of Panchajanya and Devadatta and the roar of Gandiva took the senses out of men and elephants alike. His arrows, whose touch was the touch of snakes of virulent poison, tore through them. The elephants were pierced all over with shafts by the thousand from Gandiva, and mangled like that they trumpeted and kept falling like mountains whose wings had been cut. Those struck in the jaw or the frontal globes or the temples cried like cranes. Arjuna cut the heads off the warriors standing on the elephants’ necks with straight arrows, and those heads in their earrings fell so continuously that they looked like a heap of lotuses Partha was gathering as an offering to his gods. Warriors hung from the bodies of the wandering elephants, stripped of armor, wounded, covered in blood, like painted pictures. In places one well-shot feathered arrow from Gandiva went through two or three men and dropped them together. Elephants deeply pierced with long shafts fell vomiting blood, riders still on their backs, like forested hills tumbling in some convulsion of nature. Partha cut the bowstrings, standards, bows, yokes and shafts of the chariot-warriors opposed to him into fragments. No one saw him take an arrow, set it, draw or release; all that could be seen was that he seemed to dance on his chariot with the bow drawn always to a circle. Elephants fell the instant they were struck. Headless trunks stood up in the middle of the carnage. Arms with bows in their grip, or gloved fingers holding swords, or armlets of gold, lay cut off on the ground. The field was covered with chariot fittings and seats, with arrows, crowns, crushed wheels, broken axles, yokes, warriors with shields and bows, flower garlands, ornaments, robes and fallen standards, and the slain elephants and horses and the bodies of Kshatriyas gave the earth an awful look. Duhshasana’s force, slaughtered like that by the diadem-decked one, fled, and its leader was in great pain; badly hurt by those arrows and overcome by fear, Duhshasana went with his division into the cart array, seeking Drona as his deliverer.

Having destroyed Duhshasana’s force, Savyasachin, wanting the ruler of the Sindhus, went toward Drona’s division, and what he did when he reached the man at the gate of the array is the strangest courtesy of the day. At Krishna’s request, Partha joined his hands and spoke to Drona as a disciple. Wish me well, Brahmana, he said, and bless me with the word swasti. By your grace I want to go into this impenetrable array. You are to me as my father, or as king Yudhishthira the just, or as Krishna; I say this truly. Sire, sinless one, as Ashvatthama deserves your protection, so do I, foremost of the twice-born. By your grace, foremost of men, I wish to slay the ruler of the Sindhus in battle. Lord, see that my vow is accomplished. The preceptor smiled at him and answered in one sentence: Vibhatsu, without defeating me you will not be able to defeat Jayadratha. And with the same smile he covered Arjuna and his chariot and horses and standard and driver with showers of sharp arrows. Arjuna baffled that shower with his own and rushed at Drona, shooting mightier and more terrible shafts, and, observing Kshatriya duty, pierced him with nine. Drona cut those shafts with his own and pierced both Krishna and Arjuna with many arrows like poison or fire. While Arjuna was still thinking of cutting Drona’s bow, Drona, fearless and quick, cut the bowstring of the illustrious Phalguna, pierced his horses and standard and driver, and covered the man himself with arrows, smiling as he did it. Partha strung his great bow anew and, getting the better of his preceptor, shot six hundred arrows as if he had taken and shot only one, then seven hundred more, then a thousand that could not be resisted, then ten thousand, and these killed many warriors of Drona’s array. Men and horses and elephants fell dead under those weapons of the mighty and accomplished Partha, master of every mode of warfare. Chariot-warriors fell from their chariots without horses or standards or weapons or life. Elephants fell like hilltops, like masses of cloud, like great houses loosened or scattered or burned by thunder or wind or fire. Horses by the thousand fell like swans on the breast of Himavat struck down by the force of a current. As the sun at the end of the age dries up vast waters with its rays, so Pandu’s son with his showers of arrows dried up chariots and horses and elephants and infantry. And then the Drona-cloud closed over the Pandava-sun, as clouds cover the sun, with its own showers, while that sun’s rays, thick arrows, were scorching the foremost of the Kurus. The preceptor put a long shaft into Dhananjaya’s chest, shot with great force and able to drink the life-blood of any enemy, and Arjuna, his strength gone, shook in every limb like a hill in an earthquake. He recovered his fortitude quickly and pierced Drona with many winged arrows. Drona struck Vasudeva with five, Arjuna with seventy-three, and Arjuna’s standard with three, and then, getting the better of his disciple, in the twinkling of an eye he made Arjuna invisible under his arrows. We saw the shafts of Bharadvaja’s son falling in continuous lines, Sanjaya said, and his bow too seemed drawn incessantly to a circle, and those countless kanka-feathered arrows fell without pause on Dhananjaya and Vasudeva.

It was Krishna who ended the duel, and he ended it by refusing to let it be the point. Watching Drona and the son of Pandu, Vasudeva of great intelligence began to think about the accomplishment of the task, and said: Partha, mighty-armed one, we should not waste time. We must go on, avoiding Drona, because a more important task awaits us. Partha answered, Keshava, as you please. Then, keeping the mighty-armed Drona on their right, Arjuna went forward, and Vibhatsu went with his face turned back, shooting as he went. Drona called after him. Where are you going, son of Pandu? Is it not true that you never stop until you have defeated your enemy? Arjuna’s answer was the answer of a pupil, given while riding away from a fight. You are my preceptor, he said, and not my foe. I am your disciple, and therefore like your son. And there is no man in the whole world who can defeat you in battle. Having said it, the mighty-armed Vibhatsu, set on killing Jayadratha, drove quickly at the Kaurava troops, and as he went into the army, the two high-souled princes of Panchala, Yudhamanyu and Uttamaujas, followed as the protectors of his wheels. Then Jaya, and Kritavarma of the Satvata race, and the ruler of the Kambojas, and Shrutayus began to bar Dhananjaya’s way, with ten thousand chariot-warriors behind them. The Abhishahas, the Shurasenas, the Shibis, the Vasatis, the Mavellakas, the Lalitthyas, the Kaikeyas, the Madrakas, the Narayana cowherds, and the many tribes of the Kambojas that Karna had once conquered, all counted very brave, put Bharadvaja’s son at their head, gave up caring for their lives, and rushed at Arjuna to resist him: that angry hero burning with grief for his son, like all-destroying Death himself, in mail, master of every mode of warfare, ready to throw his life away in the thick of battle, a great bowman of great prowess, a tiger among men, like the maddened leader of an elephant herd, and looking as though he meant to eat the whole hostile army. The battle that began between all of them on one side and Arjuna on the other was exceedingly fierce and made the hair stand on end, and all of them together resisted that bull among men, advancing to kill Jayadratha, the way medicines resist a raging disease.

A key to reading this (the pupil’s bow): Arjuna joining his hands to ask Drona’s blessing at the gate, and Drona smiling as he buries him in arrows, are two ends of one law: the disciple asks leave before he fights his teacher, and the teacher, commander of the other side, stops him. Krishna’s order to keep Drona on the right and go on is a reminder of what the vow is: Jayadratha’s death before sunset, and the sun is already climbing. The “Narayana cowherds” are the Narayani army of Krishna’s own people that went to Duryodhana when the sides were chosen in the Udyoga Parva. The fittings and seats and axles in the wreckage are the epic’s upaskaras, adhishthanas and akshas, the parts of a chariot. Jaya here is a warrior on the Kaurava side, a different man from the Jaya that names Arjuna in the previous scene.

The gist: Arjuna cuts through Durmarshana’s elephants and then Duhshasana’s, and Duhshasana runs into the array to hide behind Drona. At the gate Arjuna asks his teacher’s blessing; the teacher tells him he cannot reach Jayadratha without defeating Drona first, and the duel that follows ends with Arjuna invisible under Drona’s arrows. Krishna calls it off: there is no time, leave Drona on the right. Arjuna tells his teacher that he is no enemy, and goes in, where Kritavarma, the Kamboja king, Shrutayus and ten thousand chariots are waiting to hold him.

Kritavarma spared, Varuna’s mace that came back to the man who threw it, and the fall of Sudakshina, prince of the Kambojas

They held him, and Drona came after him from behind, and Partha, held in front and pursued at the back, did what a disease does to a body. He blasted the army with sharp arrows scattered in every direction, and looked, because of it, like the sun scattering its countless rays. Horses were pierced, chariots with their riders were broken and mangled, elephants were overthrown, umbrellas were cut away, vehicles lost their wheels, and the combatants fled on every side, badly hurt by arrows. Nothing could be told apart in that fighting. With straight shafts Arjuna made the hostile army tremble without pause. Then, firm in truth and wanting his vow, the man with the white horses rushed again at the first of chariot-warriors, the man with the red horses, Drona. The preceptor struck his disciple with twenty-five straight shafts that could reach the vitals. Vibhatsu, foremost of all wielders of weapons, rushed at Drona in turn, shooting arrows made to baffle the force of arrows shot at him, and calling up the Brahma weapon, he neutralized with his straight shafts everything Drona had sent so quickly. Drona’s skill, Sanjaya said, was a wonder to see that morning, because Arjuna, young as he was, and struggling with all his strength, could not put a single arrow into him. The Drona-cloud rained on the Partha-mountain like a mass of clouds pouring torrents, and Arjuna took that downpour on the Brahma weapon and cut every arrow of it with arrows of his own. Drona pierced the man with the white horses with twenty-five more and struck Vasudeva with seventy on the chest and arms, and Partha, smiling, went on holding off a preceptor who was shooting without pause. Then the two foremost of chariot-warriors, struck like that, went around the invincible man who stood like the fire at the end of the age. Avoiding the sharp arrows of Drona’s bow, the diadem-decked son of Kunti in his flower garlands began to slaughter the host of the Bhojas, and, leaving Drona standing immovable as the Mainaka mountain, he took up his position between Kritavarma and Sudakshina, ruler of the Kambojas.

The ruler of the Bhojas, a tiger among men, coolly pierced that invincible descendant of Ruru with ten kanka-feathered arrows. Arjuna pierced him with a hundred, and then with three more, stupefying that hero of the Satvata race. The ruler of the Bhojas laughed and pierced Partha and Vasudeva with twenty-five each. Arjuna cut Kritavarma’s bow and pierced him with twenty-one arrows like flames of fire or angry snakes of virulent poison. Kritavarma took another bow and put five arrows into Arjuna’s chest, then five more sharp ones into him, and Partha struck back with nine in the center of his chest. Krishna, of Vrishni’s race, watched Kunti’s son stopped in front of Kritavarma’s chariot and judged that no time should be wasted, and said something he would say to no one else that day: Show Kritavarma no mercy. Forget your relationship with him. Crush him and kill him. Arjuna stupefied Kritavarma with arrows and drove on his swift horses toward the division of the Kambojas, and he did not kill him. Seeing the man with the white horses go into the Kamboja force, Kritavarma filled with anger, took up his bow with arrows fixed, and turned on the two Panchala princes who were coming behind Arjuna to guard his wheels. He held them off with arrows, striking Yudhamanyu with three and Uttamaujas with four; they pierced him with ten each; Yudhamanyu with three more and Uttamaujas with three cut his standard and his bow; Hridika’s son took another bow, mad with rage, stripped both of them of their bows and covered them with arrows; they strung two more and began to pierce him. Meanwhile Vibhatsu went deeper into the enemy army, and the two princes, held by Kritavarma, could not get into the Dhritarashtra host at all, though those bulls among men fought hard for it. Arjuna’s wheels went forward with no one guarding them. He afflicted the divisions in front of him quickly, and the slayer of foes did not kill Kritavarma, though he had had him within reach.

Then the brave king Shrutayudha saw Partha coming through and went at him in anger, shaking his great bow. He pierced Partha with three arrows and Janardana with seventy, and struck Partha’s standard with a razor-headed shaft. Arjuna, angry, pierced him deeply with ninety straight arrows, the way a rider drives a hook into a great elephant. Shrutayudha could not bear that and answered with seventy-seven. Arjuna cut his bow and then his quiver and struck him in the chest with seven straight arrows. Out of his senses with rage, Shrutayudha took another bow and put nine arrows into the arms and chest of Vasava’s son. Arjuna laughed and afflicted him with many thousands of arrows and quickly killed his horses and his driver, and pierced him with seventy more. And the valiant king abandoned his horseless chariot and came at Partha on foot, lifting his mace. Sanjaya stopped the fight there to explain the mace, because the mace is the story. Shrutayudha was the son of Varuna, and his mother was the great cool-watered river Parnasha. For her son’s sake she had begged Varuna: let this boy of mine be unslayable on earth. Varuna, pleased with her, had said: I give him a boon of great benefit, a celestial weapon by which this son of yours will be unslayable on earth by enemies. No man can have immortality; foremost of rivers, everyone who has been born must die. But through the power of this weapon this child will always be invincible in battle. Let the fever of your heart be dispelled. And with mantras he gave the boy a mace, and with that mace Shrutayudha became invincible on earth. But the illustrious lord of the waters had added a condition. This mace must not be hurled at anyone who is not engaged in the fight. Hurled at such a person, it will come back and fall on you. Illustrious child, it will turn and run the opposite way and kill the one who threw it. When his hour came, it seems, Shrutayudha forgot. With that hero-killing mace he struck at Janardana. Krishna, who was holding the reins and not a weapon, took the mace on one of his well-formed, powerful shoulders, and it failed to move Shauri, as the wind fails to move the Vindhya mountain. It returned to Shrutayudha, and struck that brave and wrathful king where he stood on his chariot, like a badly performed spell that injures the sorcerer, and killed him, and fell to the ground. Cries of alas and oh went up among the troops at the sight of the mace turning back and Shrutayudha, that chastiser of foes, slain by his own weapon. Because he had hurled it at Janardana, who was not fighting, it killed the thrower, and Shrutayudha died on the field exactly as Varuna had said he would, before the eyes of all the bowmen. As he fell, Parnasha’s dear son looked like a tall banyan with spreading boughs broken by the wind. And all the troops and all the principal warriors fled at the sight of him dead.

The next man was a prince. Sudakshina, son of the ruler of the Kambojas, rushed on his swift horses at Phalguna, slayer of foes. Partha sent seven shafts at him, and they passed through the hero’s body and entered the earth. Deeply pierced by those arrows from Gandiva, Sudakshina answered with ten kanka-feathered shafts, put three into Vasudeva, and five more into Partha. Partha cut his bow and lopped off his standard and pierced him with two very sharp broad-headed arrows, and Sudakshina pierced Partha with three and gave a lion’s roar. Then the brave Kamboja, full of anger, hurled at the wielder of Gandiva a terrible dart made entirely of iron and hung with bells. It came blazing like a great meteor, throwing sparks, went through that mighty chariot-warrior, and fell to the ground. Struck deeply by that dart, Arjuna swooned, and soon enough recovered. Then that hero of mighty energy, that son of Pandu of inconceivable deeds, licking the corners of his mouth, pierced his enemy, with his horses and standard and bow and driver, with fourteen kanka-feathered arrows, and with countless more cut Sudakshina’s chariot to pieces, and then put one sharp arrow into the chest of the prince of the Kambojas, whose purpose and prowess had both been baffled. His armor cut away, his limbs weakened, his diadem and armlets slipping, the brave prince fell head downward like the pole of Indra dropped from its engine. Like a beautiful karnikara tree in spring, growing gracefully with lovely branches on a mountain summit and lying on the earth when the wind has uprooted it, the prince of the Kambojas lay on the bare ground without life, a man who deserved the costliest bed and was decked with costly ornaments. Handsome, with eyes of a coppery hue, a garland of gold on his head, with the radiance of fire, the mighty-armed Sudakshina, son of the Kamboja king, thrown down by Partha’s arrows and lying lifeless, looked like a beautiful mountain with a level top. And seeing Shrutayudha and Sudakshina, the prince of the Kambojas, both slain, the whole army of the king’s son fled.

A key to reading this (the mace’s rule): Varuna’s condition turns a rule of war into a mechanism: no blow at a man who is not fighting. Krishna is a charioteer in this war and holds no weapon, so he is exactly such a man, and the mace obeys its own law and goes home. “Descendant of Ruru” is Ganguli’s title for Arjuna, from an ancestor of the Kuru line; “Vasava’s son” is Arjuna, “Hridika’s son” is Kritavarma, and Shauri is Krishna. The mercy Arjuna shows Kritavarma, against Krishna’s explicit order, is a family matter: Kritavarma is a Vrishni-Bhoja, kin to Krishna, fighting for Duryodhana. The pole of Indra is the tall festival post raised for Indra and then lowered.

The gist: Drona chases from behind; Arjuna holds his arrows off with the Brahma weapon, goes around him, and lands between Kritavarma and the Kambojas. Krishna says show Kritavarma no mercy, and Arjuna, with the man in reach, does not kill him, while Kritavarma pins down Yudhamanyu and Uttamaujas so that Arjuna’s wheels go forward unguarded. Then Shrutayudha, Varuna’s son, made unslayable by a mace with one condition, throws that mace at Krishna, who is not fighting, and dies by it. And Sudakshina, prince of the Kambojas, whose iron dart drops Arjuna into a moment’s swoon, takes fourteen arrows and then one in the chest and falls like a karnikara tree.

Two lances from left and right, a wall of Mlecchas and elephants, and the river of blood that ran toward Yama’s kingdom

Two kings had fallen in front of Arjuna within the hour, and the Kaurava host answered the way a wounded animal answers, by closing its jaws. Sanjaya told the blind king what came next. The moment Sudakshina and the heroic Shrutayudha went down, your warriors rushed at Partha in fury: the Abhishahas, the Shurasenas, the Shibis, the Vasatis, all of them emptying their quivers at Dhananjaya at once. The son of Pandu burned six hundred of them where they stood, with arrows, in a single passage of the bow. The rest fled from him the way small animals scatter from a tiger, then rallied, then surrounded him again while he went on killing and winning through them. Heads and arms fell under the shafts from Gandiva, and there was soon no span of ground on that part of the field without a severed head lying on it, and the crows and vultures and ravens that came to hover over it were thick enough to form a canopy, like cloud. Watching their men exterminated, Shrutayus and Achyutayus gave way to rage, and the two of them fought Dhananjaya with everything they had. They were strong, proud, heroic, of noble blood, heavy in the arm, and they wanted two things that pull a bowman the same way: great fame, and, for your son’s sake, the death of Arjuna. They took him from both sides, one on the right and one on the left, and covered him with a thousand straight arrows the way two masses of cloud fill a lake. Then Shrutayus, the finest chariot fighter of the two, struck Dhananjaya with a well-tempered lance, and Arjuna, deeply pierced by that strong enemy, fainted on the chariot floor, and the sight of it stupefied Keshava too. Achyutayus chose that instant to drive a keen-pointed spear into the son of Pandu with all his strength, and to the high-souled Pandava it was like acid poured into the first wound. Pierced twice and deep, Partha kept himself upright only by seizing the flagstaff.

A lion’s roar went up from the whole Kaurava army, monarch, because they believed Dhananjaya was dead, and Krishna, seeing Partha senseless beside him, was scorched with grief and began to speak to him in soothing words. The two kings of true aim did not wait for him to hear them. They poured arrows from every side until Dhananjaya and Vasudeva of the Vrishnis vanished inside the storm, chariot and wheels and yoke pole, horses, flagstaff and banner, all of it hidden, a thing the watchers could hardly believe. And then Vibhatsu came slowly back to himself, like a man returning from the very house of the king of the dead. He saw his chariot buried in arrows with Keshava in it, and he saw the two enemies standing before him like two lit fires, and the great chariot fighter called into being the weapon named after Shakra. Thousands of straight shafts flowed out of it and struck Shrutayus and Achyutayus, and the arrows those two mighty bowmen were shooting were cut apart by Partha’s and went wandering off across the sky. The son of Pandu made their volleys useless by the sheer weight of his own, and drove on through the field, meeting the best chariot warriors of the enemy as they came, while Shrutayus and Achyutayus, under his arrows, lost their arms and then their heads and fell to the earth like two tall trees snapped by the wind. Men watching felt about the death of Shrutayus and the killing of Achyutayus what they would have felt on seeing the ocean run dry. Partha killed fifty chariot warriors among their followers and went on into the Bharata host, killing the foremost men in it, and their sons, Niyatayus and Dirghayus, foremost of men, sick with the calamity that had come upon their fathers, charged the son of Kunti raining arrows of every kind, and Arjuna, in his anger, sent them both to Yama’s house in a moment with straight shafts. The bulls of the Kshatriya order in the Kuru army could not hold him. He churned the Dhartarashtra ranks the way an elephant churns a lake full of lotuses.

Then the elephants came. Thousands of trained elephant riders from Anga, in a rage, surrounded the son of Pandu with their beasts, and at Duryodhana’s urging many kings of the west and the south and many others under the ruler of the Kalingas closed the ring with elephants the size of hills. Partha cut off the heads and the ornamented arms of the men who came at him, with shafts from Gandiva, so quickly that the field, strewn with heads and arms still wearing their armlets, looked like golden stones with snakes wound around them, and the arms as they fell looked like birds dropping out of trees. Elephants pierced by thousands of arrows, bleeding from every wound, looked like hills in the rainy season with red chalk running down their flanks in streams. Others, killed outright by his sharp shafts, lay flat on the field. On their backs, and now on the ground beside them, were Mlecchas of many ugly shapes, in many kinds of dress, carrying many kinds of weapons, bathed in their own blood, and there was a terrible splendor in how they lay, dead of arrows of every description. Thousands of elephants with their riders and the men on foot who drove them, struck by Partha’s shafts, vomited blood, or screamed in agony, or collapsed, or ran wild in every direction, and many, mad with fear, trampled their own soldiers, and many that had been held in reserve, savage as poisonous snakes, did the same. And more came: terrible Yavanas and Paradas and Shakas and Bahlikas, and the fierce-eyed Mlecchas born of Vasishtha’s cow, skilled at killing, who looked like the messengers of Death and knew the deceptive arts of the Asuras, and Darvabhisaras and Daradas and Pundras in bands of thousands, a force past counting, and all of them began to shoot their sharp shafts at the son of Pandu. They were accomplished in many modes of war, and they covered Arjuna with arrows. Dhananjaya answered at once, and the arrows shot from Gandiva looked like flights of locusts as they crossed the sky. He laid a shade over their troops like the shade of clouds, and under it, by the strength of his weapons, he killed all the Mlecchas, the shaven-headed and the half-shaven and the ones in matted locks, impure in their habits and crooked in the face, and the hill men and the dwellers in mountain caves who survived the arrows fled in terror. Ravens and kankas and wolves came down with glee to drink the blood of the elephants and horses and their Mleccha riders that Partha had thrown down.

What Arjuna made there, Sanjaya said, was a river, and its current was blood. Its banks were dead foot soldiers and horses and chariots and elephants. The showers of arrows were its rafts. The hair of the fighting men was its moss and weed. The fingers cut from warriors’ arms were its little fish. It was as dreadful as Death at the end of the Yuga, and it flowed toward the region of Yama, and the bodies of slain elephants floating on it dammed its current. The whole earth was covered with the blood of Kshatriyas and elephants and horses and their riders, one red expanse, like the land when Indra sends a downpour that drowns high ground and low alike. In that fighting the bull among Kshatriyas sent six thousand horsemen and then a thousand of the foremost Kshatriyas into the jaws of death, and thousands of well-equipped elephants, pierced with arrows, lay on the field like hills struck by thunder. He drove over the ground killing horses and chariot warriors and elephants like an elephant with rent temples crushing a forest of reeds. The way a fire driven by the wind consumes a dense forest, trees and creepers and plants and dry wood and grass, so that fire that was Pandu’s son Dhananjaya, with arrows for its flames, driven by the Krishna-wind, consumed the forest of your warriors. He emptied the platforms of the chariots and strewed the earth with human bodies, and in the middle of those vast masses of men, bow in hand, he seemed to be dancing. Drenching the earth with blood by shafts that had the force of the thunderbolt, Dhananjaya in his wrath went into the Bharata host, and as he went, Shrutayus, ruler of the Ambashthas, stood in his way. Arjuna quickly felled that struggling king’s horses with keen shafts fledged with kanka feathers, cut his bow with others, and drove on. The Ambashtha king, his eyes troubled with rage, took up a mace and came at the great chariot fighter Partha and at Keshava on foot. With the mace raised he stopped the chariot with its blows and struck Keshava with it too, and Arjuna, seeing Keshava struck, filled with wrath and covered the mace-bearing king, that foremost of chariot warriors, with gold-winged arrows the way clouds cover the risen sun. With other shafts he cut the high-souled man’s mace into fragments, almost to dust, which seemed a great wonder to those who saw it. The Ambashtha king took up a second huge mace and struck Arjuna and Keshava with it again and again. Then Arjuna, with two sharp broad-headed arrows, cut off the raised arms that held it, arms that looked like a pair of Indra’s standards, and with another winged arrow he took the head. Shrutayus fell filling the earth with a loud noise, the way a tall standard of Indra falls when the ropes that tie it to its engine are cut. And then chariots came in rounds around him, and elephants and chariots by the hundreds upon hundreds, and Partha disappeared inside them like the sun behind clouds.

A key to reading this (names and weapons): There are two different kings called Shrutayus in this passage: the one who fights as a pair with Achyutayus, whose sons are Niyatayus and Dirghayus, and the ruler of the Ambashthas who comes at the end with a mace. Sanjaya gives them the same name and Vyasa does not separate them. The “weapon named after Shakra” is the Aindra weapon, which multiplies into thousands of arrows. The “Mlecchas born of Vasishtha’s cow” point back to the Adi Parva story in which Vishvamitra tried to seize the sage’s cow Nandini and armies of Pahlavas, Shakas, Yavanas and others came out of her body to defend her. The kanka is a heron whose feathers fledged arrows.

The gist: After Sudakshina and Shrutayudha, two more kings, Shrutayus and Achyutayus, hit Arjuna from both sides with a lance and a spear and knock him senseless, and the Kaurava army roars because it thinks he is dead. He comes back, burns them both and their sons with the Aindra weapon, cuts through the Anga elephants and thousands of Mlecchas until a river of blood runs off toward Yama, and takes the mace, the arms and the head of the Ambashtha king before the chariots and elephants close over him again like clouds over the sun.

“You are a razor dipped in honey”: Duryodhana’s charge against Drona, the armor that killed Vritra, and a king sent after Arjuna bound in mantras

Duryodhana had watched the impossible happen in his own sight. Arjuna had gone through Drona’s division and the division of the Bhojas, both of them supposed to be walls, and was now somewhere deep inside the Kaurava host on his way to Jayadratha, and the ranks he had passed through were flying in every direction. Sudakshina was dead, Shrutayudha was dead, and the king, seeing his army breaking, drove straight to the preceptor. He did not begin with courtesy. That tiger among men has crushed this vast host and passed through it, he said. Think now, with that judgment of yours, what is to be done next to kill Arjuna in the middle of this carnage. Be blessed; find the means by which that tiger among men will not succeed in killing Jayadratha. You are our only refuge. Like a raging fire eating heaps of dry grass and straw, the Dhananjaya-fire, fanned by the wind of his anger, is eating my troops. The men guarding Jayadratha saw the son of Kunti go through this host and they no longer believe they can hold him. Foremost of those who know Brahma, every king here was certain that Dhananjaya would never, while alive, get past Drona. And then he passed through your division while you watched. So I think my army is very weak. I think, in fact, that I have no army at all. And then the accusation he had been holding since the first day came out of him whole. I know you are devoted to the welfare of the Pandavas, he said. My reason leaves me when I try to think what to do. I do everything in my power to please you, and you keep none of it in mind. We are devoted to you and you never seek our good. You are always pleased with the Pandavas and always working evil against us. You take your livelihood from us and you work against us. I did not know that you were a razor dipped in honey. If you had not given me the boon of humbling and checking the Pandavas, I would never have stopped the ruler of the Sindhus from going home. Fool that I am, I promised him protection because I expected it from you, and out of my own folly I offered him to Death as a victim. A man can walk into the jaws of Death and come out again; there is no coming out for Jayadratha once he is within reach of Dhananjaya’s arms. Owner of red horses, do whatever will still save the ruler of the Sindhus. Do not be angry at the ravings of a man in pain. Protect the ruler of the Sindhus.

Drona’s answer began gently and ended by handing the war back to the man who was insulting him. I find no fault with your words, he said. You are as dear to me as Ashvatthama himself; I tell you that truly. But now do as I say, king. Of all drivers of chariots, Krishna is the first, and his horses are the first of their kind. Give Dhananjaya the smallest gap and he is through it before you can move. Do you not see that the arrows from the diadem-wearer’s bow, past counting, are landing a full two miles behind his chariot as he goes forward? I am burdened with years; I cannot move at that speed. And the whole army of the Parthas is now on top of our van. Yudhishthira is mine to seize, mighty-armed one; that is the vow I made in front of every bowman, in the middle of all the Kshatriyas, and he is standing now at the head of his troops, abandoned by Dhananjaya. I will not leave the gate of our array to fight Phalguna. It is fitting that you yourself, properly supported, should fight that enemy of yours, who is alone and who is your equal in lineage and in deeds. Do not be afraid. Go and fight him. You are the ruler of the world, you are a king, you are a hero, you have fame and you know how to conquer. Brave subduer of hostile cities, go yourself to where Pritha’s son Dhananjaya is. Duryodhana heard the sentence under the compliments and refused it. Preceptor, he said, how am I to resist Dhananjaya, who has gone past you, the foremost of all who bear arms? The chief of the gods with the thunderbolt in his hand can be beaten in battle; Arjuna, the subduer of hostile cities, cannot. He beat Hridika’s son, the ruler of the Bhojas, by the power of his weapons, and he beat you, who are the equal of a god. He killed Shrutayudha and Sudakshina and king Shrutayus, and Shrutayus and Achyutayus together, and Mlecchas by the ten thousand. How do I fight that invincible son of Pandu, that finished master of weapons, who is like a fire that eats everything? How can you think me fit to fight him today? I depend on you like a slave. Protect my fame. And Drona, who had just refused to leave his post, found the one thing he could give without leaving it. You speak truly, he said, son of Kuru’s line: Dhananjaya is irresistible. But I will do what will let you bear him. Let every bowman in the world see today the wonder of the son of Kunti held in check by you, in Vasudeva’s own sight. This golden armor of yours, king, I will tie on your body in such a way that no weapon used by man will be able to touch you in battle. If the three worlds fought you today, Asuras and gods, Yakshas, Uragas and Rakshasas, and all of humanity with them, you would have nothing to fear. Neither Krishna nor the son of Kunti nor any other wielder of weapons will pierce this armor with arrows. Put it on and go now against Arjuna in his anger. He will not be able to bear you.

What followed was a rite, performed on a battlefield, in the middle of the afternoon of the fourteenth day. Drona, foremost of those who know Brahma, touched water, uttered certain mantras in due order, and tied that wonderful bright armor on Duryodhana’s body for your son’s victory, quickly, while everyone who saw it stood amazed. As he tied it he blessed the king, and the blessing is worth hearing whole, because it calls the entire world to stand around one frightened man. Let the Vedas and Brahma and the Brahmanas bless you. Let all the higher orders of serpents be a source of blessing to you, Bharata. Let Yayati and Nahusha and Dhundhumara and Bhagiratha and the other royal sages do what is good for you. Let blessings come to you from creatures with one leg and from creatures with many legs, and in this great battle from creatures with no legs at all. Let Svaha and Svadha and Shachi do what is good for you. Sinless one, let Lakshmi and Arundhati do what is good for you. Let Asita and Devala and Vishvamitra and Angiras and Vasishtha and Kashyapa, king, do what is good for you. Let Dhatri and the lord of the worlds and the points of the compass and the regents of those points and the six-faced Karttikeya give you what is good. Let the divine Vivasvat benefit you completely. Let the four elephants of the four quarters, the earth, the sky, the planets, and he who lies beneath the earth and holds her on his head, Shesha, the first of snakes, give you what is for your good. And then Drona told him where the armor came from. Son of Gandhari, in former times the Asura Vritra, showing his prowess in battle, defeated the best of the gods. Thousands upon thousands of them, their bodies mangled, with Indra at their head, drained of energy and strength, went to Brahma and asked his protection, afraid of the great Asura. Best of gods, they said, be the refuge of the gods crushed by Vritra; rescue us from this great fear. Brahma spoke to Vishnu standing beside him and to the cheerless gods led by Shakra, and what he said was true: the gods with Indra at their head and the Brahmanas are mine to protect, always. But the energy of Tvashtri from which Vritra was made is invincible. In former days Tvashtri did austerities for a million years and then, with Maheshvara’s permission, created Vritra, and your mighty enemy has been able to strike you down through the grace of that god of gods. Without going to where Shankara stays you cannot see the divine Hara; having seen him, you will be able to conquer Vritra. So go without delay to the mountains of Mandara. There lives the origin of austerity, the destroyer of Daksha’s sacrifice, the bearer of the Pinaka, the lord of all creatures, the slayer of the Asura called Bhaganetra. The gods went to Mandara with Brahma in their company and saw there that heap of energy, that supreme god with the splendor of a million suns. Maheshvara welcomed them and asked what he could do for them; the sight of his person, he said, is never fruitless, so let the fulfilment of your desires proceed from it. We have been drained of our energy by Vritra, the dwellers of heaven answered. Be our refuge. Look, lord, at our bodies, beaten and bruised by his blows. We seek your protection. Be our refuge, Maheshvara. And the god of gods called Sharva said: you gods know well how this thing came about, this action full of great strength, terrible, irresistible to anyone without ascetic merit, sprung from the energy of Tvashtri. As for me, it is certainly my duty to help the dwellers of heaven. Shakra, take this effulgent armor from my body, and put it on, chief of the gods, silently repeating these mantras.

So the boon-giving Shiva gave the armor, Drona went on, with the mantras that the wearer was to repeat, and protected by it Shakra went against Vritra’s host, and though weapons of every kind were hurled at him in that dreadful battle, the joints of the armor could not be cut open. The lord of the gods killed Vritra, and afterward gave the armor, whose joints were made of mantras, to Angiras, and Angiras taught the mantras to his son Brihaspati, who knew all mantras, and Brihaspati taught them to Agnivesha of great intelligence, and Agnivesha taught them to me. It is with those mantras, best of kings, that I tie this armor on your body to protect it. Then the bull among preceptors said one thing more to your son of great splendor. King, I put this armor on your body, joining its pieces with the strings of Brahma. In former days Brahma himself put it on Vishnu in battle in this same way. As Brahma himself put this celestial armor on Shakra in the war caused by the abduction of Taraka, so I put it on you. Having armored Duryodhana with mantras in due form, the twice-born Drona sent the king to battle. And the mighty-armed king, cased in armor by the high-souled preceptor, skilled at striking, went toward Arjuna’s chariot with a thousand infuriated elephants of great prowess, a hundred thousand horses, and many other mighty chariot warriors, to the sound of instruments of every kind, the way Virochana’s son Bali went against his enemy in the old days. And a loud uproar rose among your troops, Bharata, as they watched the Kuru king move off like an ocean without a bottom.

A key to reading this (the lineage of the armor): The chain Drona recites is a chain of mantras, since the armor itself is Duryodhana’s own golden coat; what passes down is the binding. Shiva to Indra, Indra to Angiras, Angiras to Brihaspati, Brihaspati to Agnivesha, Agnivesha to Drona: Agnivesha is the same sage from whom Drona received the Agneya weapon in the Adi Parva. Tvashtri is the artificer of the gods and the maker of Vritra. “Bhaganetra” refers to the god Bhaga, whose eyes Shiva put out at Daksha’s sacrifice. “A razor dipped in honey” is Vyasa’s own phrase, and the accusation behind it, that Drona loves the Pandavas and lets them live, is one Duryodhana makes repeatedly through this book; Drona will answer it later with a vow of his own.

The gist: With his army breaking, Duryodhana accuses Drona to his face of being the Pandavas’ man and says he sacrificed Jayadratha on the strength of Drona’s boon. Drona answers that he is old, that no one can match Krishna’s horses, and that his vow is to seize Yudhishthira, so the king must stop Arjuna himself. When Duryodhana asks how he can stop a man who went through Drona, the preceptor binds Duryodhana’s golden armor to his body with the mantras Shiva gave Indra for the killing of Vritra, tells him that story as he ties it, and sends him after Arjuna with a thousand elephants and a hundred thousand horses.

Drona and Dhrishtadyumna at the gate of the array: a Kuru host cut in three, a Panchala prince with a sword on Drona’s own chariot, and the preceptor’s bow cut sixteen times by Satyaki

When Duryodhana went off after Partha and the Vrishni hero, both of whom had gone into the Kaurava army, the Pandavas and the Somakas rushed at Drona with a shout, and the battle at the gate of the array began. It was fierce, Sanjaya said, and awful, and it made the hair stand up; the sun was at the meridian; and we had never seen or heard of its like. The Parthas under Dhrishtadyumna, every one of them a master of striking and properly arrayed, covered Drona’s troops with arrows, and we, with Drona, first of all wielders of weapons, at our head, covered the Parthas that Prishata’s son had gathered with ours. The two hosts with their chariots looked like two masses of cloud in a summer sky driven toward each other by opposite winds, and when they met their impetuosity grew like the Ganga and the Yamuna swollen in the rains. The Kuru host was a storm cloud: weapons of every kind for the winds that ran before it, elephants and horses in its body, lightning in the maces the men swung, driven by the Drona-tempest and pouring arrows for rain, trying to put out the Pandava fire. Like a summer hurricane on the ocean, that best of Brahmanas churned the Pandava army. And the Pandavas threw themselves at Drona alone, to break through his host the way a torrent goes at a strong embankment to sweep it away, and Drona held the enraged Pandavas and Panchalas and Kekayas the way an unmoving hill holds the fiercest current. Many other kings of great strength and courage came at them from every side and held them too.

Then Prishata’s son, that tiger among men, with the Pandavas beside him, began to strike Drona again and again to pierce the host. As Drona showered arrows on him, he showered arrows on Drona. He was a cloud of his own: scimitars and swords for the winds that blew before it, darts and lances and sabers in its body, the bowstring for lightning and the bow for its roar, and it poured weapons on every side like showers of stones. Killing the foremost chariot warriors and horses beyond counting, Prishata’s son seemed to drown the enemy divisions in his downpour, and every track through the Pandava chariot ranks that Drona tried to force, striking the men in it, Dhrishtadyumna turned him back from with arrows. Drona struggled with all his strength, and still his host, meeting Dhrishtadyumna, split into three columns: one fell back toward Kritavarma, chief of the Bhojas, one toward Jalasandha, and one, fiercely slaughtered by the Pandavas as it went, toward Drona himself. Drona, first of chariot warriors, gathered his troops together again and again; the mighty Dhrishtadyumna as often struck and split them. The Dhartarashtra force in its three pieces was slaughtered by the Pandavas and Srinjayas like a herd of cattle in the woods with no herdsman, torn by many beasts of prey, and men thought that Death himself was swallowing the warriors Dhrishtadyumna had first stupefied. As the kingdom of a bad king is destroyed by famine and plague and robbers, so your host was afflicted by the Pandavas. The sun on the weapons and the men, and the dust the soldiers raised, made everyone’s eyes ache. And when the Kaurava host had been cut in three in that dreadful carnage, Drona, filled with wrath, began to consume the Panchalas with his arrows, and as he crushed those divisions and exterminated them his form became like the blazing fire of the end of the age. He pierced chariots, elephants, horses and foot soldiers each with a single arrow, never spending more than one on any of them, and there was no warrior in the Pandava army then who could bear what came from Drona’s bow. Scorched by the sun and blasted by Drona’s shafts, the Pandava divisions reeled on the field, and your host, slaughtered in the same way by Prishata’s son, seemed to blaze up at every point like a dry forest on fire. While Drona and Dhrishtadyumna were killing the two hosts, the warriors of both armies fought everywhere to the limit of their prowess, in complete disregard of their lives, and there was no one, bull of the Bharatas, in your host or the enemy’s, who ran from that battle out of fear.

The field then broke into pairs, and Sanjaya, who was in it, named them. The full brothers Vivimshati and Chitrasena and the great chariot fighter Vikarna surrounded Kunti’s son Bhimasena on every side, and Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti and Kshemadhurti of great prowess supported your three sons against him. King Bahlika of great energy and noble blood, with his own troops and counselors, held the sons of Draupadi. Shaibya, chief of the Govasanas, with a thousand foremost warriors, faced the mighty son of the king of the Kashis and held him. King Shalya, ruler of the Madras, surrounded royal Yudhishthira, Kunti’s son, who looked like a lit fire. Brave and wrathful Duhshasana, properly supported by his divisions, went angrily against Satyaki, that foremost of chariot warriors. I myself, Sanjaya said, with my own troops, in mail and with weapons, backed by four hundred of the best bowmen, held Chekitana. Shakuni, with seven hundred Gandhara warriors armed with bows, darts and swords, held Madri’s son Sahadeva. Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti, those two great bowmen who had taken up arms for their friend and thrown their lives away in doing it, met Virata, king of the Matsyas. King Bahlika, exerting himself hard, held Shikhandi, son of Yajnasena, unconquered and mighty, who could hold any enemy. The chief of Avanti, with the Sauviras and the cruel Prabhadrakas, held the wrathful Dhrishtadyumna, prince of the Panchalas. Alambusha rushed at the brave Rakshasa Ghatotkacha of cruel deeds as he came on in anger, and the great chariot fighter Kuntibhoja, with a large force, held that fierce-faced prince of Rakshasas. So, Bharata, hundreds of separate combats broke out between the warriors of your army and theirs. And the ruler of the Sindhus stayed at the very back of the whole army, guarded by many of the foremost bowmen and chariot warriors, Kripa among them, with Drona’s son on his right wheel and the Suta’s son on his left, and behind him, led by Somadatta’s son, Kripa and Vrishasena and Shala and unconquerable Shalya, all versed in policy and accomplished in war. Having made those arrangements for Jayadratha, the Kuru warriors fought. The pairs went at each other. Vinda and Anuvinda, wanting to serve your son, struck Virata with ten shafts, and Virata closed with the two of them and their followers, and blood ran like water in that fighting, which was like a lion in the woods against two great elephants with split temples. Yajnasena’s mighty son struck king Bahlika with fierce sharp shafts that could reach the vitals, and Bahlika, enraged, pierced him deep with nine straight gold-winged shafts whetted on stone, and their arrows and darts came so thick that the sky and every quarter were hidden and nothing could be made out; it raised the fear of the timid and the joy of heroes. Shaibya, king of the Govasanas, at the head of the troops, fought the great chariot fighter, the prince of the Kashis, like one elephant against another. The king of the Bahlikas, in his wrath, fighting the five mighty chariot warriors who were Draupadi’s sons, looked like the mind contending with the five senses, and those five princes, shooting at him from every side, fought him like the objects of the senses forever battling the body. Your son Duhshasana struck Satyaki of the Vrishnis with nine keen straight shafts, and Satyaki, whose prowess no one could baffle, deeply pierced by that strong bowman, half lost his senses, then came to himself and pierced your great chariot-fighting son with ten shafts fledged with kanka feathers, and the two of them, each deeply pierced by the other, looked like two kimshuka trees in flower. Alambusha, afflicted by Kuntibhoja’s arrows, looked like a beautiful kimshuka bent under its blossom, and the Rakshasa, having pierced Kuntibhoja with many arrows, roared at the head of your host, and to all the troops the two of them seemed like Shakra and the Asura Jambha in the old days. The two sons of Madri, in fury, ground the Gandhara prince Shakuni, who had wronged them so greatly, with their shafts. The carnage that set in was awful; born of you, monarch, nursed by Karna, kept up by your sons, the fire of the Pandavas’ wrath had swollen now and was ready to consume the whole earth. Forced to turn his back by the two sons of Pandu, Shakuni, unable to show any valor, did not know what to do, and seeing him turn, the two great chariot fighters showered him again like two masses of cloud pouring rain on a great hill, and the son of Subala, struck with straight shafts past counting, fled toward Drona’s division behind his fast horses. The brave Ghatotkacha rushed at the Rakshasa Alambusha with an impetuosity far short of what he was capable of, and the fight between them was fearful to look at, like the fight of Rama and Ravana long ago. King Yudhishthira pierced the ruler of the Madras with five hundred arrows and then with seven more, and the battle that began between them was exceedingly wonderful, like the one between the Asura Shambara and the chief of the gods in the old days. And your sons Vivimshati and Chitrasena and Vikarna, surrounded by a large force, fought Bhimasena.

With that fierce battle under way, the Pandavas went at the Kauravas in their three pieces. Bhimasena rushed at the mighty-armed Jalasandha, Yudhishthira at the head of his troops at Kritavarma, and Dhrishtadyumna, scattering shafts the way the sun throws out its rays, at Drona. Every bowman of the Kurus and the Pandavas, eager for the encounter and hot with anger, was fighting now, and in that terrible carnage, when everyone was fighting everyone without fear, the mighty Drona fought the mighty prince of the Panchalas, and the clouds of arrows he shot filled every spectator with wonder. Drona and the Panchala prince cut off the heads of men by the thousand and scattered them across the field until it looked like a forest of lotuses. In every division robes and ornaments and weapons and standards and coats of mail were soon lying on the ground, and the golden coats of mail dyed with blood looked like clouds charged with lightning. Other great chariot fighters, drawing bows a full six cubits long, brought down elephants and horses and men with their shafts, and in that dreadful clash of brave and high-souled warriors swords and shields, bows and heads and armor lay scattered everywhere, and headless trunks past counting were seen to rise up in the middle of the battle. Vultures and kankas and jackals and swarms of other flesh-eaters were there, eating the flesh of fallen men and horses and elephants, drinking their blood, dragging them by the hair, licking and pecking at their marrow, dragging bodies and severed limbs, rolling heads along the ground. Warriors skilled in battle, accomplished in weapons and fixed in their resolve struggled on, wanting only fame; many drove over the field showing the evolutions of swordsmen; with sabers and darts and lances and spears and axes, with maces and spiked clubs and other weapons, and even with bare arms, men who had entered that arena killed one another in their rage. Chariot warriors fought chariot warriors, horsemen horsemen, elephants the foremost of elephants, foot soldiers foot soldiers, and many infuriated elephants, as if gone mad, shrieked and killed one another the way they do in the sporting arenas. In the middle of it, king, Dhrishtadyumna made his own horses mingle with Drona’s. Those horses with the speed of the wind, white as pigeons and red as blood, mixed together in battle, looked exceedingly beautiful, like clouds with lightning in them. And then the heroic son of Prishata, seeing Drona so close, threw down his bow and took up sword and shield to attempt a hard thing. He seized the shaft of Drona’s chariot and climbed onto it, and he stayed sometimes on the middle of the yoke, sometimes on its joints, sometimes behind the horses, moving fast along the backs of Drona’s red horses with his sword, so that Drona could find no opening to strike him. It seemed a wonder to all of us; it was like the swoop of a hawk in the woods after food, that sally of Dhrishtadyumna’s from his own chariot to kill Drona. Then Drona, with a hundred arrows, cut away the shield of Drupada’s son, the one decked with a hundred moons, and with ten more his sword, and with sixty-four killed his horses, and with two broad-headed shafts cut down his standard and his umbrella, and then killed both his parshni charioteers, and then, drawing the string to his ear with great speed, shot a fatal arrow at him the way the wielder of the thunder hurls the thunder at an enemy. And Satyaki, with fourteen sharp shafts, cut that fatal arrow of Drona’s in pieces before it arrived. So the Vrishni hero rescued Dhrishtadyumna, who had been seized by that lion among men, the first of preceptors, like a deer seized by the king of the forest. Drona, seeing Satyaki save the Panchala prince in that dreadful battle, shot twenty-six arrows at him at once, and the grandson of Shini put twenty-six into the center of Drona’s chest while the preceptor was busy devouring the Srinjayas, and all the Panchala chariot warriors, wanting victory, went at Drona behind the Satvata hero and quickly drew Dhrishtadyumna out of the fight.

Dhritarashtra wanted the rest. When Drona’s arrows had been cut and Dhrishtadyumna rescued by Yuyudhana, that first of the Vrishnis, what did Drona, the great bowman, the foremost of all who wield weapons, do to that tiger among men, the grandson of Shini? And Sanjaya described a duel that stopped the war. Drona came at Yuyudhana like a great snake with wrath for its poison, the stretched bow for its gaping mouth, sharp shafts for its teeth and whetted arrows for its fangs, his eyes red as copper, breathing hard, perfectly fearless, on red horses so fast they seemed to leave the ground or climb a mountain, scattering gold-winged arrows as he came. The hero of Shini’s line, that subduer of hostile cities whom no one could beat in battle, saw the irresistible Drona-cloud coming, its rain the arrows, its thunder the chariot wheels, its bulk the drawn bow, its lightning the long shafts, its thunderbolts the darts and swords, its wind his anger, driven forward by the hurricane of his horses, and he spoke to his charioteer, smiling. Suta, go quickly and cheerfully, and drive the horses at their greatest speed, against that heroic Brahmana fallen from the duties of his order, that refuge of Dhritarashtra’s son, that dispeller of the Kuru king’s sorrows and fears, that preceptor of all the princes, that warrior who never stops boasting of his prowess. The silver horses of the Madhu hero, fast as the wind, went at Drona, and the two chastisers of foes struck each other with thousands of shafts. They filled the sky with arrows and covered the ten points of the compass; they poured on each other like two clouds emptying themselves at the end of summer. The sun disappeared. The wind stopped. The arrows in the air made a thick continuous gloom that the other heroes could not bear, and inside that gloom neither man was ever seen to pause. Both were quick with weapons and both were counted lions among men, and the sound of their arrows striking each other was like the sound of Shakra’s thunder, and the forms of the heroic warriors pierced with long shafts looked like snakes bitten by snakes of virulent poison. The twang of their bows and the slap of their palms went on and on like thunder falling on the summits of mountains. Their chariots, their horses and their charioteers, pierced with gold-winged shafts, became beautiful to look at. The downpour was fierce, bright straight shafts shining like poisonous snakes freshly out of their sloughs. Both umbrellas were cut down, both standards, both men were covered in blood and both were inspired by the hope of victory; with blood trickling down every limb they looked like two elephants with their secretions running, and they went on striking each other with fatal shafts. And the roars and shouts of the soldiers, the conches, the drums, all of it stopped, because no one made a sound. Every division fell silent and every warrior stopped fighting. People became spectators, curious, and chariot warriors and elephant riders and horsemen and foot soldiers stood in a ring around those two bulls among men and watched with unmoving eyes; the elephant divisions stood still, and the horse, and the chariots, all of them still in their arrays. The two hosts, variegated with pearls and corals, decked with gems and gold, with standards and ornaments and golden mail, with the triumphal banners and rich caparisons of the elephants, fine blankets, bright sharp weapons, gold-and-silver yak-tails on the heads of the horses, garlands around the frontal globes of the elephants and rings around their tusks, looked, Bharata, like a mass of cloud at the end of summer set with rows of cranes and myriads of fireflies under it and adorned with rainbows and flashes of lightning. Our men and Yudhishthira’s watched that fight between Yuyudhana and the high-souled Drona, and so did the gods, led by Brahma and Soma, and the Siddhas and Charanas and Vidyadharas and the great snakes, standing on their sky-going chariots, and the forward and backward movements of those two lions among men and their strokes at each other filled everyone who saw them with wonder.

Then the thing that made Drona think. Both of them, strong and light-handed, kept piercing each other, and the hero of Dasharha’s race cut the illustrious Drona’s arrows with his own great shafts and, a moment later, cut his bow. In the twinkling of an eye the son of Bharadvaja took another and strung it; Satyaki cut that one too; Drona had a third in hand at once; and as often as Drona strung a bow, Satyaki cut it, nine times and seven times over. Watching that superhuman feat, Drona thought in his own mind: the force of weapons I see in this foremost of the Satvatas exists in Rama and in Dhananjaya, and it was seen in Kartavirya and in that tiger among men, Bhishma. And the son of Bharadvaja, silently, applauded Satyaki’s prowess. Seeing a lightness of hand equal to Vasava’s own, that first of the twice-born, that foremost of all who understand weapons, was greatly pleased with Madhava, and the gods with Vasava at their head were pleased too; the gods and the Gandharvas, monarch, had never before seen that quickness in the fast-moving Yuyudhana, though they and the Siddhas and Charanas knew well what Drona could do. Then Drona, the grinder of Kshatriyas, took up another bow and aimed certain weapons, and Satyaki baffled them with the illusion of his own weapon and struck him with sharp shafts, and this seemed a great wonder, and those among your warriors who were judges of skill applauded a feat no one else could have done. Satyaki shot the same weapons Drona shot. Seeing that, the preceptor fought with a little less boldness than usual. Then that master of the science of war, filled with wrath, called up celestial weapons to destroy Yuyudhana, and seeing the terrible foe-slaying Agneya weapon coming, Satyaki, that great bowman, called up another celestial weapon, the Varuna. Cries of Oh and Alas went up as the two took celestial weapons in hand, and the very creatures of the sky stopped ranging through it. And the Varuna and the Agneya, laid on their shafts, met each other and came to nothing. At that moment the sun went down in his course. Then king Yudhishthira and Bhimasena, son of Pandu, and Nakula and Sahadeva, wanting to protect Satyaki, went quickly toward Drona with the Matsyas and the Shalveya troops, and thousands of princes with Duhshasana at their head went quickly toward Drona to protect him, since he was surrounded, and a fierce battle began between them and your bowmen. The earth was covered with dust and with the arrows both sides shot, and with everything covered nothing could be made out any more, and once the troops were swallowed in that dust the battle went on with no regard for persons or rules.

A key to reading this (names and counting): “Prishata’s son” is Vyasa’s usual way of naming Dhrishtadyumna; Prishata was Drupada’s father, so the prince is strictly Prishata’s grandson. Yajnasena is another name of Drupada, so “Yajnasena’s son” is Shikhandi. Satyaki appears as the grandson of Shini, the Satvata, the Vrishni hero, Madhava and the hero of Dasharha’s race, all the same man. “Nine times and seven times” is Vyasa’s own arithmetic: sixteen bows strung by Drona and sixteen cut by Satyaki. The parshni charioteers are the assistant drivers who sat by the rear wheels. Sanjaya’s “I myself held Chekitana” is his own testimony that he was on the field as a fighter that day.

The gist: With Arjuna gone through and Duryodhana gone after him, the war narrows to the gate of the array, where Dhrishtadyumna cuts the Kuru host into three columns, hundreds of pairs fight up and down the field, and Jayadratha sits at the very back ringed by Ashvatthama, Karna, Kripa and Shalya. Dhrishtadyumna climbs onto Drona’s chariot with a sword and lives only because one arrow of Satyaki’s cuts Drona’s fatal shaft in the air. The duel of Drona and Satyaki that follows stops both armies and the gods to watch: sixteen bows cut, weapon answered with the same weapon, Agneya against Varuna, and then the sun going down over a battle drowned in dust that no longer keeps any rule.

Spent horses, the end of the two brothers of Avanti, and a house of arrows and a lake dug with an arrow in the middle of the field

The sun had begun to lean toward the western hills. The sky was full of dust, the heat was going out of the light, and the day, which had to hold Jayadratha’s death inside it or make Arjuna a liar, was running out. Sanjaya told the blind king what the field looked like in that hour: some men resting where they stood, some still fighting, some turning back into the fight because they thought victory might still be had. Through all of it Arjuna and Vasudeva kept moving toward the one place that mattered, the place where the ruler of the Sindhus was. Arjuna cut the road himself. His arrows opened a lane through the enemy wide enough for a chariot, and Janardana drove down the lane as it opened. Wherever the chariot of Pandu’s son turned, Dhritarashtra’s troops broke and gave way, and Krishna, driving, showed what he could do with horses, wheeling them through circle after circle. Sanjaya lingered on the arrows themselves, because a man who had watched them all day could not help it: shafts engraved with Arjuna’s name, tempered, like the fire at the end of an age, bound with sinew, straight in the joints, thick, long in flight, some of split bamboo and some entirely of iron, taking life after life and drinking, along with the vultures that had gathered, the blood of living things. Standing on the chariot, Arjuna shot two miles ahead of himself, and by the time the chariot reached the spot the arrows had already killed whoever was there. Hrishikesha drove those horses, which had the speed of Garuda or the wind, so fast that the world wondered. The chariot of Surya, Sanjaya said, or of Rudra, or of Vaishravana, never went like that; no chariot had ever moved in battle like Arjuna’s, which moved with the speed of a wish. And then the truth under the marvel. When Keshava took the chariot into the thick of the enemy’s cars, the horses could barely pull it. They were hungry, thirsty, and worn through, cut all over by the weapons of men who loved fighting, and still they made their beautiful circles, stepping over dead horses and dead men and broken cars and the bodies of elephants that lay by the thousand like hills.

The two brothers of Avanti saw the horses first. Vinda and Anuvinda, at the head of their forces, understood what tired horses meant and came at Arjuna with joy, putting 64 arrows into him, 70 into Janardana, and 100 into the four horses. Arjuna, who knew where the vital places of the body are, answered each brother with 9 straight shafts, every one of them capable of reaching a vital place. The brothers covered Vibhatsu and Keshava with showers of arrows and roared like lions. Partha of the white horses cut both their handsome bows with two broad-headed shafts, then their two standards, bright as gold. They took up new bows and ground him with arrows, and he cut those bows too, and with a few gold-winged arrows sharpened on stone he killed their horses, their drivers, the two men who guarded their rear, and the men who followed them. Then one razor-edged broadhead took the elder brother’s head, and Vinda fell without life, like a tree broken by the wind. Anuvinda, mighty and proud, saw his brother dead, left his horseless chariot, and picked up a mace. He came on with it in his arms as if he were dancing, to avenge Vinda, and he brought the mace down on Vasudeva’s forehead. Krishna did not tremble. He stood like the mountain Mainaka. Arjuna’s six arrows did the rest: neck, two legs, two arms, head, and the pieces of Anuvinda fell like so many hills. Their followers rushed in, hundreds of arrows flying, and Arjuna killed them quickly and shone like a fire eating a forest at winter’s end, and when he had worked his way through those troops with some difficulty he looked like the risen sun coming out from under the clouds that had hidden it. The Kauravas were frightened when they saw him, and then, recovering, they were glad. They had noticed two things: that he was tired, and that the ruler of the Sindhus was still far off. They surrounded him with lion roars.

What Arjuna did next was to smile, and to speak to Krishna in a low voice. Our horses are wounded and tired, he said, and the Sindhu king is still a long way off. What do you think should be done now? Tell me truly, Krishna. You are always the wisest of us; the Pandavas, having you for their eyes, will defeat their enemies. I will tell you what seems right to me: unyoke the horses and pull the arrows out of them, Madhava. Keshava said that he was of the same opinion. Then hold the whole army back, Arjuna said, and do what has to be done next. He climbed down from the chariot with Gandiva in his hand and stood on the ground, fearless, like a hill that cannot be moved. The Kshatriyas saw him on foot and took it for their chance. They rushed him with shouts, ringed the lone man with a great crowd of chariots, drew their bows and rained on him, and hid him in arrows the way clouds hide the sun, and they came at that lion of a man like maddened elephants. What we saw then, Sanjaya said, was the strength of Partha’s arms, because alone and on foot he held back that uncountable host. He broke their weapons with his own and covered all of them with arrows, and where the two dense showers met, a fire started in that part of the sky and threw sparks without stopping. The air went hot with the breath of bleeding horses and shrieking elephants and the rage of great bowmen who had joined for one purpose. Sanjaya reached for the sea to describe it, an ocean of chariots with no far shore: arrows for its current, standards for its eddies, elephants for its crocodiles, foot soldiers for its fish, conches and drums for its roar, cars for its waves, helmets for its tortoises, umbrellas and banners for its foam, and the bodies of dead elephants for the rocks under its surface. Arjuna’s arrows held that sea back the way a continent does.

In the middle of that, Janardana said something practical. There is no well here on the battlefield, Arjuna, for the horses to drink from. They want water to drink, not to bathe in. Arjuna said cheerfully, here it is, and drove a weapon into the earth, and there was a lake. It was a good lake, wide and clear, with swans and ducks on it and chakravaka birds, full-blown lotuses of the finest kind, fish of every sort, and so deep that many rishis came to it; the celestial rishi Narada himself came to look at a lake made in a moment. Then Partha, who could do work worthy of Tvashtri, the maker of the gods, built a hall beside it out of arrows, with arrows for its beams and rafters, arrows for its pillars, arrows for its roof, and Govinda laughed with pleasure and said, excellent, excellent. With the water made, the enemy held, and the hall standing, Vasudeva climbed down and unyoked the horses, pierced and torn as they were. No one had ever seen such a thing, and the Siddhas and Charanas and all the warriors on the field shouted their applause. The great chariot warriors, gathered together, could not overcome the son of Kunti even while he fought on foot; throngs of chariots and myriads of elephants and horses came at him and he felt no fear, and he received the showers of arrows and the maces and lances of the kings the way the ocean receives hundreds of rivers, and standing alone on the ground he made all those kings on their chariots useless, the way the one fault of greed makes a whole set of virtues useless. The Kauravas praised him in spite of themselves. What in this world has ever been more wonderful, they said, or ever will be, than Partha and Govinda unyoking their horses in the middle of a battle? Those two have shown us a courage that puts thoughts into our heads. And Hrishikesha, lotus-eyed, smiling with the coolest ease, as if he stood in a gathering of women and not among armed enemies, led the horses into the hall of arrows in full view of all Dhritarashtra’s troops. He was a skilled groom. He took the fatigue and the pain and the froth and the trembling out of them, drew the arrows, rubbed them down with his own hands, walked them properly, let them drink, and when the tiredness had gone out of them he yoked them carefully to that best of chariots, mounted beside Arjuna, and drove off at speed.

The Kuru captains, seeing the chariot back on fresh horses, sighed like snakes whose fangs have been drawn. Fie on us, they said. Partha and Krishna have gone, in the sight of every Kshatriya here, riding one chariot, clad in mail, killing our men as easily as boys playing with a toy; they have gone with all our men shouting and struggling, and nothing stopped them. Others called for a charge: Kauravas, ride to kill Krishna and the diadem-decked one; he of Dasharha’s line yoked his horses in front of all our bowmen and now he is driving toward Jayadratha, killing us as he goes. And some of the kings said something quieter among themselves. Through Duryodhana’s fault, they said, these warriors of Dhritarashtra, the Kshatriyas, and the whole earth are being destroyed, and king Duryodhana does not understand it. Others said that the ruler of the Sindhus had already been sent to Yama’s house, and that Duryodhana, narrow-sighted and ignorant of means, could now do for that king whatever there was to do. Meanwhile Pandu’s son, watching the sun move toward the western hills, drove harder on his watered horses toward the ruler of the Sindhus. No one could resist him; he came like the Destroyer in anger, and he shook that army the way a lion shakes a herd of deer. Krishna urged the horses through the enemy and blew Panchajanya, the conch the color of a cloud, and the arrows Arjuna had shot ahead began to fall behind the chariot, so fast did the wind-swift horses draw it. Kings and Kshatriyas, furious, surrounded the man who wanted Jayadratha; and when he stopped for a moment and the Kuru warriors came on toward him, Duryodhana came fast behind Partha. Many men lost heart at the sight of that chariot, the rattle of it like thunder, the ape on its standard, its banner flying in the wind. And then the dust the fighters raised covered the sun almost entirely, and the Kuru warriors, torn by arrows, could no longer even see the two Krishnas.

A key to reading this (names and a measure): “The two Krishnas” is Vyasa’s name for Krishna and Arjuna together, since Arjuna is dark too and is also called Krishna; it recurs through this chapter. Vinda and Anuvinda are the kings of Avanti, the country around Ujjain, counted as atirathas on Duryodhana’s side in Bhishma’s reckoning in the Udyoga Parva. Dasharha, Hrishikesha, Shauri, Keshava, Janardana, Madhava and Govinda are all Krishna; Partha, Vibhatsu, Dhananjaya and “the diadem-decked one” are all Arjuna. The lake dug with an arrow, the hall of arrows, and Narada coming to look at the lake are all in Vyasa’s text as told here. Ganguli’s “two miles” for the reach of Arjuna’s arrows is kept as he gives it.

The gist: The day is failing and Jayadratha is still far away. Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti see Arjuna’s horses failing and attack, and both die. Then Arjuna does the unthinkable: he gets down and holds the whole Kaurava army on foot while Krishna, in a hall built of arrows beside a lake made with one arrow, unyokes the horses, draws their arrows, rubs them down and waters them in front of the enemy. The Kauravas curse their own king, the chariot goes on faster than before, and Duryodhana sets off after it.

Out of Drona’s net: the sun and moon loosed from Rahu’s jaws, Jayadratha in sight, and Duryodhana’s chariot in Drona’s armor racing past

The kings of the Kaurava army ran when they saw Vasudeva and Dhananjaya come through the last of the divisions and into the open. Sanjaya did not soften it for the blind king: they fled in fear. A little later, shame and rage and their own strength brought them back, cool and collected now, and they turned and went at Dhananjaya again; and those who went at him in that mood, wanting vengeance, did not come back, as rivers do not come back from the sea. Some, seeing that, chose sin and hell and ran from the battle, the way an atheist turns away from the Vedas. And the two bulls among men pushed through the crowd of chariots and came out on the far side of it, and looked, Sanjaya said, like the sun and the moon when Rahu’s jaws let them go. The comparisons came thick in his telling, because nothing single would do for what he had seen. The two Krishnas, their weariness gone, having pierced that vast host, were two fish that had gone through a strong net; having forced Drona’s division, whose road was blocked with dense showers of weapons, they were two suns rising at the end of an age; free of that imminent danger and themselves darkening the sky with weapons, they were men escaped from a raging fire, or two fish out of the jaws of a makara, and now they stirred the Kuru host as two makaras stir the sea. Dhritarashtra’s sons and warriors had been sure, while Partha and Krishna were inside Drona’s division, that they would never come out of it. That certainty had been the whole of their hope for Jayadratha. They had told themselves that no one could get past Drona and Hridika’s son Kritavarma. The two Krishnas had crossed Drona’s division and the almost impassable division of the Bhojas as well, and when the Kauravas saw them ford those divisions like two blazing fires, they gave up hope for the Sindhu king’s life.

The two men in the chariot were talking about exactly that. This Jayadratha, Arjuna said, has been placed in the middle of six of the foremost chariot warriors of the Dhartarashtras. The ruler of the Sindhus will not escape me once I have seen him. If Shakra himself with all the gods stood as his protector in this battle, we would kill him anyway. That is what the two Krishnas said to each other, Sanjaya told the king, looking for the Sindhu king as they said it, and when your sons heard it they set up a wail. Sanjaya kept reaching for likenesses. The two of them were like thirsty elephants of great swiftness, refreshed by water after crossing a desert; like two merchants who have come over a mountain country full of tigers and lions and elephants, past death and past decay; and the Kauravas, seeing them free of Drona and Kritavarma, thought the color of Partha’s face and Krishna’s face was dreadful, and from every side the wail went up. Free of Drona, who was like a snake of virulent poison or a blazing fire, and free of the other lords of the earth, Partha and Krishna were two blazing suns; free of Drona’s ocean of a division, they were as happy as men who have crossed the deep in safety; free of those dense showers of weapons, of the divisions Drona and Hridika’s son guarded, Keshava and Arjuna were Indra and Agni, or blazing light itself. They were pierced with the sharp arrows of Bharadvaja’s son and their bodies ran with blood, and so they were two mountains covered with flowering karnikara trees. They had forded a wide lake in which Drona was the alligator, darts were the fierce snakes, arrows the makaras and Kshatriyas the deep water; they had come out from under a cloud made of Drona’s weapons, whose thunder was the twang of bows and the slap of palms and whose lightning was maces and swords, and they were the sun and the moon freed from darkness. Every creature that watched them cross the region blocked by Drona’s weapons thought of the five rivers in the rains, the Shatadru, the Vipasha, the Iravati, the Chandrabhaga, and the Vitasta, with the ocean for a sixth, full of water and full of alligators, and of two men who had swum all six with the strength of their arms.

Then they saw him. Jayadratha was not far off now, and the two heroes, their eyes on him and their minds on killing, looked like two tigers waiting to fall on a ruru deer. Their faces were such, Sanjaya said, that your warriors, king, regarded Jayadratha as already dead. Red-eyed, side by side, Krishna and Pandu’s son saw the ruler of the Sindhus and were filled with joy, and they roared, again and again. Shauri standing with the reins in his hand, Partha standing with the bow, shone like the sun or like fire. Their joy at the sight of the Sindhu king, after Drona’s division, was the joy of two hawks at the sight of meat, and they went at him in anger the way hawks stoop at meat. And that is when Duryodhana did the bravest and most foolish thing of his day. He had watched Hrishikesha and Dhananjaya pass the divisions; he was wearing the armor that Drona had bound on his body with mantras that morning; he knew horses, how to groom them and how to drive them; and on a single chariot he raced out for the protection of the Sindhu king. He left the two great bowmen behind him, Krishna and Partha, and then he turned and faced Keshava of the lotus eyes with his back to Jayadratha. When Dhritarashtra’s son outran Dhananjaya like that, every musical instrument in the Kaurava army was blown and beaten with joy; lion roars went up mixed with the blare of conches at the sight of Duryodhana standing in the face of the two Krishnas; and the warriors who stood as Jayadratha’s guards, blazing like fires themselves, rejoiced to see the king come into the fight. Krishna watched Duryodhana and his followers pass them. Then he turned to Arjuna and said the words the moment called for.

A key to reading this (the armor and the rivers): The armor on Duryodhana is the one Drona bound on him a short while earlier, with mantras, promising that in it he would be safe from Arjuna’s arrows; its test comes in the next scene. Hridika’s son is Kritavarma, commander of the Bhojas, which is why “Drona’s division and the division of the Bhojas” are named together. The five rivers are the rivers of the Punjab: the Shatadru (Sutlej), Vipasha (Beas), Iravati (Ravi), Chandrabhaga (Chenab), and Vitasta (Jhelum); Vyasa names them because in the rains no one could swim them. A ruru is a kind of deer. Rahu is the demon who swallows the sun and moon at eclipses and lets them go.

The gist: Krishna and Arjuna cut their way out of the divisions of Drona and Kritavarma, and for the first time the Kauravas give up hope for Jayadratha’s life. The two say aloud that the Sindhu king, ringed by six chariot warriors, will not escape once he is seen, and then they see him. At that moment Duryodhana, wearing the armor Drona bound on him with mantras, drives past them on a single chariot and turns to stand between them and Jayadratha; the Kaurava army sounds its instruments, and Krishna turns to Arjuna with something to say.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Drona Parva. This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, sections LI-CXXIII (51-123); the Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters differently. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. Dialogue and commentary are adapted, not a verbatim translation. About the sources.