Mahabharata · Chapter 25a · Part 5 of 5 · Satyaki’s expedition: Kritavarma, Jalasandha, the Yavanas and Kambojas, Duhshasana

About 65 minutes

“What can it be but Destiny?”: Dhritarashtra’s inventory of an ocean of an army, Sanjaya’s plain answer, and the Pandavas stopped by Kritavarma alone

The blind king had been listening to a day go wrong for hours, and now he did what men do when the facts will not change: he audited them. Our army, he told Sanjaya, is just as fine as theirs. Just as well regarded, just as correctly arrayed by the rules of the science, just as large. We have always treated it well, and it has always been devoted to us. Its courage has been tested before. The men are neither too old nor too young, neither lean nor fat; they are active, well built, strong, free of disease, in armor and fully armed, trained in every kind of weapon drill, adept at mounting and dismounting elephants, at advancing and stepping back, at striking to effect, at marching and retreating. They have been tried again and again in the handling of elephants, horses and chariots. They were examined and taken on for pay, not for their lineage, not out of favor, not because they were somebody’s relatives. They are no rabble that turned up on its own, and none of them serves without wages. Well born, respectable, contented, well fed, obedient, sufficiently rewarded, famous, intelligent, and guarded besides by our foremost counselors, men of righteous conduct who are like the guardians of the world; and protected as well by countless kings who came over to us of their own will with their forces and their followers, wanting to please us. Our army is like the vast ocean fed by rivers running in from every direction. It is full of horses and chariots which, wingless as they are, still resemble the birds of the air, and of elephants whose cheeks run with rut. How can such an army be slaughtered, unless it is Destiny? He could not leave the ocean alone once he had found it. The numberless fighters are its unending waters, he said; the horses and the other animals its terrible waves; the swords and maces and darts and arrows and lances the oars that ply it; the standards and ornaments, the warriors’ pearls and gems, the lotuses that adorn it; the rushing horses and elephants the winds that whip it into fury. Drona is that ocean’s fathomless cavern, Kritavarma its great whirlpool, Jalasandha its mighty alligator, and Karna the moonrise that makes it swell with energy and pride.

And then the ocean broke, in the very next breath, on a single chariot. When that bull among the Pandavas drove alone through my army, vast as the sea though it is, and drove through it so fast, and when Yuyudhana followed him, I do not see, Sanjaya, how any remnant of my troops will be left alive by Savyasachin and by that foremost chariot warrior of the Satvata line. Seeing those two tireless heroes cut through the divisions at the front, and seeing the ruler of the Sindhus within range of Gandiva’s arrows, what measure did the Kauravas take, driven as they are by fate? When all of them were fighting with their whole minds, what became of them? I think the assembled Kurus have been overtaken by Death himself. Their old prowess in battle is nowhere to be seen. Krishna and the son of Pandu have both entered my host unwounded, and there is no one in it who can stand against them. He went back to the ledger, as if the ledger could still be made to balance: many great chariot warriors were admitted after examination; every one of them is honored with pay according to his worth, and with kind words; there is no man in my army who has not had good offices done to him; each receives the pay and the rations his service merits; there is no one unskilled in battle, no one underpaid, no one unpaid; I have honored the soldiers to the best of my power with gifts and honors and seats, and my sons, my kinsmen and my friends have done the same. And yet the moment Savyasachin appeared they were beaten by him and by the grandson of Shini. What can it be but Destiny? Those who guard them go down the same road: the protected and the protectors together. Then the old man’s speech fell into a rhythm that Sanjaya must have known by heart, because every question ended with the same refrain. Seeing Arjuna arrive in front of Jayadratha, what did my foolish son do? Seeing Satyaki enter the host, what did Duryodhana think fit to do? Seeing those two, who are beyond the reach of any weapon, enter my army, what resolution did my warriors form? I think that seeing Krishna of the Dasharha line and that bull of Shini’s line both engaged for Arjuna’s sake, my sons are filled with grief. Seeing Satvata and Arjuna pass through the army and the Kurus running, my sons are filled with grief. Seeing their chariot warriors despair of beating the enemy and set their hearts on flight; seeing horses and elephants and chariots and heroes by the thousand run from the field in anxiety; seeing the great elephants tormented by Arjuna’s arrows, some fallen, some falling; seeing horses without riders and warriors without chariots at the hands of Satyaki and Partha; seeing whole bodies of cavalry killed or routed by Madhava and Partha; seeing the infantry flying in every direction; seeing those two heroes pass unbeaten through Drona’s division in a moment: my sons are filled with grief, my sons are filled with grief, my sons are filled with grief. I am stupefied, my son, to hear that Krishna and Dhananjaya, those two of undying glory, have penetrated my host with Satvata. After the foremost chariot warrior of the Shinis entered my army and passed through the division of the Bhojas, what did the Kauravas do? And tell me too how the battle went where Drona was afflicting the Pandavas. Drona is mighty, the foremost of all men, accomplished in weapons, unbeatable in battle. How could the Panchalas pierce that great bowman? They hate him, wanting Dhananjaya’s victory, and he hates them. You are skilled in narration, Sanjaya. Tell me everything Arjuna did to bring about the death of the ruler of the Sindhus.

Sanjaya did not answer the question first. He answered the refrain. Bull of Bharata’s race, he said, this calamity is the direct result of your own fault, and you should not lament like an ordinary man. Long ago many of your wise well-wishers, Vidura among them, told you, do not abandon the sons of Pandu. You did not heed them then. The man who ignores the counsel of friends who wish him well ends by weeping in great distress, as you are weeping now. He of the Dasharha line came to you and begged for peace, king, and Krishna, whose fame fills the world, did not get what he asked. Having learned your worthlessness and your jealousy toward the Pandavas, having understood your crooked intentions toward the sons of Pandu, and having heard your delirious lamentations, that mighty Lord of all the worlds, that Being who knows the truth of everything everywhere, Vasudeva, then made the flame of war blaze up among the Kurus. This great and total destruction has come upon you and it was brought about by your own fault. Giver of honors, it does not become you to lay the blame on Duryodhana. In the unfolding of these events there is no merit of yours to be found at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end. This defeat belongs entirely to you. So, knowing the truth of this world as you do, be quiet and hear how that fierce battle, like the old battle of the gods and the Asuras, took place. And then, the reproof delivered, he went back into the day. After the grandson of Shini, whose prowess nothing could baffle, had entered your host, the Parthas led by Bhimasena also rushed at your troops. And one chariot warrior alone, Kritavarma, met the Pandavas as they came on in fury and wrath with all their followers. As the shore holds the surging sea, so the son of Hridika held the Pandava troops in that battle. What we saw then of Hridika’s son was a wonder, for the Parthas together could not get past that one man. Bhima of the mighty arms pierced Kritavarma with three shafts and blew his conch to gladden the Pandavas. Sahadeva pierced the son of Hridika with twenty, Yudhishthira the just with five, Nakula with a hundred. The sons of Draupadi struck him with seventy-three and Ghatotkacha with seven. Virata and Drupada and Drupada’s son Dhrishtadyumna gave him five each, and Shikhandi, having pierced him once with five, pierced him again, smiling, with twenty-five. Then Kritavarma pierced every one of those great chariot warriors with five shafts, and Bhima again with seven, and he cut both the bow and the standard off Bhima’s chariot. And with great speed, in wrath, that mighty warrior struck Bhima, whose bow was gone, in the chest with seventy keen shafts, and Bhima, deeply pierced by those excellent arrows of Hridika’s son, trembled on his chariot like a mountain in an earthquake.

Seeing Bhimasena in that state, the Parthas led by Yudhishthira the just fell on Kritavarma with many arrows, ringing him with throngs of chariots and piercing him cheerfully, wanting to protect the son of the Wind. Then mighty Bhimasena, recovering his senses, took up a dart of steel with a golden shaft and hurled it with all his speed from his own chariot at Kritavarma’s. That dart flew from Bhima’s hands like a snake freed from its slough, fierce to look at, blazing as it went. Seeing it come at him with the splendor of the fire at the end of the age, the son of Hridika cut it in two with a pair of arrows, and the dart, decked with gold, fell to the earth in two pieces, lighting the ten points of the compass like a great meteor falling out of the sky. Seeing his dart baffled, Bhima blazed up in rage. He took another bow, tougher than the first and louder in its twang, and attacked the son of Hridika, and, because of your evil policy, king, struck Kritavarma in the center of the chest with five shafts, so that the ruler of the Bhojas, mangled in every limb, shone on the field like a red ashoka in full flower. Kritavarma, that great bowman, filled with rage and smiling, struck Bhimasena with three, and having struck him hard, pierced in turn every one of those great chariot warriors struggling around him with three shafts each, and each of them pierced him back with seven. Then that mighty chariot warrior of the Satvata line, smiling in his anger, cut Shikhandi’s bow with a razor-faced arrow. Shikhandi, seeing his bow gone, quickly took up a sword and a bright shield adorned with a hundred moons, whirled the great gilded shield, and sent the sword flying at Kritavarma’s chariot. That large sword cut off Kritavarma’s bow with the arrow still fixed on it and fell to the ground like a bright star loosened from the sky. Meanwhile the great chariot warriors pierced Kritavarma quickly and deeply with their shafts. That slayer of hostile heroes, the son of Hridika, threw the broken bow aside, took up another, pierced each of the Pandavas with three straight shafts, and pierced Shikhandi first with three and then with five. The illustrious Shikhandi took up another bow and checked him with many swift shafts headed like tortoise claws. And then, king, the son of Hridika, inflamed with rage, charged that mighty chariot warrior, the son of Yajnasena, the man who had been the cause of the illustrious Bhishma’s fall in battle. Kritavarma rushed at Shikhandi displaying his might, like a tiger at an elephant, and the two chastisers of foes, like two huge elephants or two blazing fires, met each other with clouds of shafts. They took their best bows, aimed, and shot by the hundred like two suns shedding rays, scorching each other with keen arrows, resplendent as two suns risen at the end of the age. Kritavarma pierced the son of Yajnasena with seventy-three shafts and once more with seven, and deeply pierced, Shikhandi sat down in pain on the floor of his chariot, threw aside his bow and arrows, and fainted. Seeing that hero in a swoon, your troops, bull among men, worshiped the son of Hridika and waved their garments in the air, and Shikhandi’s charioteer, seeing his master so afflicted, quickly bore that great chariot warrior out of the battle. The Parthas, seeing Shikhandi lying senseless on his chariot, closed on Kritavarma with crowds of chariots, and then Kritavarma did the most wonderful thing of all: alone, he held every one of the Parthas and their followers in check. Having beaten the Parthas, he beat the Chedis, the Panchalas, the Srinjayas and the Kekayas, all of them men of great prowess, and the Pandava forces, slaughtered by the son of Hridika, ran in every direction, unable to stand coolly in the fight. Having defeated the sons of Pandu with Bhimasena himself at their head, the son of Hridika stood in the battle like a blazing fire, and those mighty chariot warriors, torn by his torrents of shafts and routed, did not dare to face him.

A key to reading this (names and a ledger): Kritavarma is the son of Hridika and king of the Bhojas, a Yadava who fights for Duryodhana; Sanjaya calls him Hridika’s son, the ruler of the Bhojas, and a warrior of the Satvata line, which is Satyaki’s line too. Yuyudhana, the grandson of Shini, Satvata and Madhava are all Satyaki. Yajnasena is Drupada, so the son of Yajnasena is Shikhandi, whose part in Bhishma’s fall is told in chapter 23. Dhritarashtra’s long boast that his men were examined, enrolled for pay, and are no unpaid rabble is one of the epic’s rare glimpses of how an army was actually kept; Sanjaya’s reply, that the defeat is the king’s own at the beginning, the middle and the end, is the sharpest thing he says to him in this book.

The gist: Dhritarashtra describes his army as an ocean and asks how it can lose except by Destiny, and Sanjaya tells him that it is losing because of him. Then the story returns to the field, where the Pandavas under Bhima pour after Satyaki into the Kaurava host and are stopped by Kritavarma alone: Bhima trembles under seventy arrows, his dart is cut in two, Shikhandi is carried off the field unconscious, and the king of the Bhojas stands there like a fire that no one will approach.

Satyaki turns back and breaks Kritavarma, scatters the Trigarta elephants, takes Jalasandha’s arms and head, and drives Duryodhana off his own chariot

Listen with your whole attention, king, Sanjaya said, because the man who saved the Pandavas that hour was the one they had just been protecting. After the high-souled son of Hridika had routed that force, with the Parthas humbled and your troops rejoicing, the grandson of Shini, who was already deep inside your army and moving away from it, heard the fierce uproar behind him, understood what it meant, and turned his chariot around. He came back for Kritavarma. Hridika’s son, wild with rage, covered him with clouds of sharp arrows, and Satyaki, filled with rage of his own, sent one broad-headed arrow and then four more: the four killed Kritavarma’s horses and the first cut his bow. Then Satyaki pierced the enemy’s charioteer and the men guarding his rear with many keen shafts, to afflict the division behind them, and that division, tormented by his arrows, broke. Satyaki, whose prowess nothing could baffle, drove on. Having forded the ocean that was Drona’s division and beaten Kritavarma in the bargain, he said to his charioteer, with the ease of a man on a road he had already traveled once that day, proceed slowly, without fear. But then he looked at what lay ahead, chariots and horses and elephants and infantry, and he spoke again. That large division you see on the left of Drona’s host, dark as a cloud bank, is the enemy’s elephants. Rukmaratha leads it. Those elephants are many, charioteer, and hard to resist in battle. Urged on by Duryodhana, they are waiting for me, ready to throw their lives away. All those fighters are of princely birth, great bowmen, capable of great prowess in battle, from the country of the Trigartas, illustrious chariot warriors with standards decked in gold. They are waiting there because they want to fight me. Urge the horses quickly and take me to them. I will fight the Trigartas in full view of Bharadvaja’s son. The charioteer, obedient to Satvata’s will, went forward at a walk, and the horses harnessed to that chariot bright as the sun, perfectly obedient to their driver, swift as the wind and white as kunda flowers or the moon or silver, carried him there.

The Trigartas closed on him with their elephants from every side, scattering keen arrows of every kind that could pierce anything, and Satvata fought that elephant division with his own keen shafts like a great cloud at the end of summer pouring rain on the breast of a mountain. Slaughtered by those thunder-touched shafts of the foremost of the Shinis, the elephants began to run: tusks broken, bodies covered in blood, heads and frontal globes split, ears and faces and trunks cut off, riders killed, standards cut down, blankets loosened, they ran in every direction. Many of them, mangled by his long shafts and calf-tooth arrows and broad-headed arrows and anjalikas and razor-faced and crescent-shaped arrows, fled with blood pouring down their bodies, voiding urine and dung, uttering cries as deep as the roar of clouds; some wandered, some limped, some fell, some turned pale and listless. Tormented by Yuyudhana with shafts like the sun or fire, that elephant division scattered to the ten directions. And when it had been exterminated, the mighty Jalasandha, exerting himself calmly, brought his own elephant up in front of Yuyudhana’s white-horsed chariot. He was a sight worth the whole day: gold armlets, earrings and diadem, a sword at his side, red sandal paste on his skin, a blazing chain of gold around his head, a cuirass on his chest, a bright gold chain at his throat, that hero of sinless soul standing on his elephant’s head and shaking his gilded bow like a cloud charged with lightning. Like the shore holding the surging sea, Satyaki held that excellent elephant of the ruler of the Magadhas as it came at him in fury, and seeing his elephant stopped by Yuyudhana’s shafts, the mighty Jalasandha filled with rage and pierced the grandson of Shini in his broad chest with arrows of great force. With another sharp, well-tempered broad-headed arrow he cut the Vrishni hero’s bow while he was drawing it, and then, smiling, the heroic ruler of the Magadhas pierced the bowless Satyaki with five keen shafts. And Satyaki, pierced by many arrows, did not tremble in the least. That, Sanjaya said, seemed exceedingly wonderful.

Then mighty Yuyudhana, without any fear, thought about which arrows to use. He took another bow and said to Jalasandha, wait, wait, and having said just that much, smiling, drove sixty arrows deep into Jalasandha’s broad chest. With another razor-faced arrow of great sharpness he cut Jalasandha’s bow at the grip, and with three more he pierced Jalasandha himself. Jalasandha threw the bow aside with an arrow still on it and hurled a lance, which passed clean through Madhava’s left arm in that fierce fight and entered the earth like a hissing snake of enormous size. With his left arm pierced through, Satyaki struck Jalasandha with thirty keen shafts. Then Jalasandha took up his scimitar and a great shield of bull’s hide adorned with a hundred moons, whirled the sword a while, and hurled it at Satvata; it cut the bow of Shini’s grandson and fell to the earth, where it lay shining like a circle of fire. Yuyudhana took up another bow, one that could pierce anything, big as a shala sapling, with a twang like Indra’s thunder, stretched it in a rage and pierced Jalasandha with a single shaft. And then Satyaki, foremost of Madhu’s race, smiling, cut off with a pair of razor-faced arrows both of Jalasandha’s arms with their ornaments still on them. Those two arms, like a pair of spiked maces, dropped from that foremost of elephants like two five-headed snakes falling off a mountain. With a third razor-headed arrow Satyaki cut off his enemy’s large head, with its beautiful teeth and its pair of beautiful earrings. The headless, armless trunk, terrible to see, dyed Jalasandha’s elephant with its blood. Having killed Jalasandha, Satvata quickly shot the wooden howdah off the elephant’s back, and the beast, bathed in blood, its costly seat hanging from its back, tormented by Satvata’s arrows, ran wild through its own ranks crushing friends, screaming in pain. Wails of grief rose from your troops at the sight of Jalasandha killed by that bull among the Vrishnis, and your warriors turned their faces and fled in every direction; despairing of victory, they set their hearts on flight. Meanwhile Drona, foremost of all wielders of bows, came up on his swift horses to the mighty chariot warrior Yuyudhana, and many bulls among the Kurus, seeing the grandson of Shini swelling with pride and rage, charged him along with Drona, and there began between the Kurus and Drona on one side and Yuyudhana on the other a battle like the terrible old battle of the gods and the Asuras.

They came at him shooting clouds of arrows, all of them accomplished in smiting, carefully, and Sanjaya gave the king the count. Drona struck him with seventy-seven very keen shafts. Durmarshana struck him with a dozen, Duhshasana with ten. Vikarna pierced his left side and the center of his chest with thirty keen shafts fledged with kanka feathers. Durmukha struck him with ten, Duhshasana with eight more, Chitrasena with two, and Duryodhana and many other heroes tormented that great chariot warrior with dense showers of arrows. Checked on every side by your sons, those mighty chariot warriors, Yuyudhana of the Vrishni line pierced each of them separately with straight shafts: the son of Bharadvaja with three, Duhshasana with nine, Vikarna with twenty-five, Chitrasena with seven, Durmarshana with a dozen, Vivimshati with eight, Satyavrata with nine, Vijaya with ten. Having pierced Rukmangada too, Satyaki, shaking his bow, went straight for your son, and in the sight of all men pierced deeply with his arrows the king, the greatest chariot warrior in the whole world. So the two of them fought, each shooting keen arrows, each aiming countless shafts, each making the other invisible. Satyaki, pierced by the Kuru king, looked splendid with the blood running freely down his body, like a sandalwood tree shedding its resin; your son, pierced by Satvata’s clouds of shafts, looked beautiful as a sacrificial post covered with gold. Then Madhava, smiling, cut the Kuru king’s bow with a razor-faced arrow and pierced the bowless king with countless shafts, and the king, pierced by that fast-moving enemy, could not bear this sign of the enemy’s success. Duryodhana took up another formidable bow, its back decked with gold, and quickly pierced Satyaki with a hundred arrows, and Yuyudhana, deeply pierced by your mighty son, blazed with anger and began to afflict him. Seeing the king in trouble, your sons, those mighty chariot warriors, shrouded Satyaki with dense showers of arrows shot with great force, and shrouded by that multitude of your sons, Yuyudhana pierced each of them with five arrows and again with seven, and quickly pierced Duryodhana with eight swift arrows and, smiling, cut the bow that had frightened all his enemies. With a few arrows he felled the king’s standard with its jeweled elephant. With four arrows he killed Duryodhana’s four horses, and with a razor-faced shaft he felled the king’s charioteer, and then, full of joy, he pierced the mighty Kuru king with many arrows that could reach the vitals. And your son Duryodhana, king, struck in that battle by the excellent arrows of Shini’s grandson, suddenly fled, and quickly climbed, bow in hand, onto the chariot of Chitrasena. Seeing the king assailed by Satyaki and reduced to the condition of the moon seized by Rahu in the sky, cries of grief rose from every part of the Kuru host.

Hearing that uproar, the mighty chariot warrior Kritavarma came fast to the place where the powerful Madhava was fighting, shaking his bow, urging his horses, urging his charioteer with the words go with speed, go with speed. Seeing Kritavarma rushing at him like the Destroyer himself with his mouth wide open, Yuyudhana said to his driver, that is Kritavarma, armed with arrows, coming at me in his chariot at speed. With his horses urged to their utmost and his chariot fully equipped, Satyaki came upon the ruler of the Bhojas, that foremost of all bowmen, and those two tigers among men, both inflamed with rage, both like fire, met like two tigers full of energy. Kritavarma pierced the grandson of Shini with twenty-six whetted arrows of keen point and his driver with five, and skilled in battle, the son of Hridika pierced with four mighty shafts Satyaki’s four excellent, well-broken horses of the Sindhu breed. With his gilded standard and his golden mail, shaking his formidable gold-backed bow, Kritavarma checked Yuyudhana with gold-winged shafts. Then the grandson of Shini, who wanted to get on and see Dhananjaya, sent eight arrows at Kritavarma with great speed, and that scorcher of foes, deeply pierced by that mighty enemy, that invincible warrior, began to tremble like a hill in an earthquake. Satyaki, whose prowess nothing could baffle, quickly pierced Kritavarma’s four horses with sixty-three keen arrows and his driver with seven, and then, aiming another gold-winged arrow that gave off blazing flames and looked like an angry snake or the rod of the Destroyer, he pierced Kritavarma himself. That terrible arrow went through his enemy’s brilliant gilded armor and entered the earth dyed with blood, and Kritavarma, tormented by Satvata’s shafts and bathed in blood, threw aside his bow and arrow and fell upon his chariot. That lion-toothed hero of immeasurable prowess, that bull among men, afflicted by Satyaki’s arrows, fell to his knees on the floor of his chariot. Having thus held off Kritavarma, who was like the thousand-armed Arjuna of old or the Ocean of immeasurable might, Satyaki went on. Through Kritavarma’s division bristling with swords and darts and bows, thick with elephants and horses and chariots, over ground made hideous by the blood of hundreds of foremost Kshatriyas, that bull among the Shinis drove on in the sight of all the troops, like the slayer of Vritra through the array of the Asuras. And the mighty son of Hridika, taking up yet another huge bow, stayed where he was, holding the Pandavas in battle.

A key to reading this (names): Jalasandha is the king of Magadha, of Jarasandha’s house, fighting for Duryodhana; in the previous scene Dhritarashtra called him the great alligator of his ocean of an army, and here he is the first of that ocean’s monsters to die. Rukmaratha leads the Trigarta elephant division; these are the same Trigartas whose sworn samsaptakas drew Arjuna away from the main field on earlier days. The calf-tooth arrows, anjalikas, razor-faced and crescent-shaped arrows are types named for the shape of their heads. The “thousand-armed Arjuna” to whom Kritavarma is compared is Kartavirya Arjuna, the Haihaya king killed by Parashurama, and has nothing to do with the Pandava. The Sindhu breed of Satyaki’s horses is a breed, not a reference to Jayadratha.

The gist: Satyaki turns back to rescue the men who were supposed to be guarding him, strips Kritavarma of bow and horses, breaks the Trigarta elephants, and cuts the arms and then the head off Jalasandha of Magadha. Drona and the Kuru princes ring him; he answers every one of them by count, drives Duryodhana off his chariot and onto Chitrasena’s, brings Kritavarma to his knees when the Bhoja comes back for more, and rides on through the wreckage toward Arjuna.

Drona and Satyaki matched hand for hand, a warrior holding his own reins, Drona’s driverless chariot tracing a thousand circles, and the head of Sudarshana

Everywhere the grandson of Shini passed, the Kuru host shook, and it was then that the son of Bharadvaja covered him with a dense shower of arrows. The encounter that followed between Drona and Satvata, fought in full view of all the troops, was extremely fierce, like the old fight between Bali and Vasava. Drona pierced the grandson of Shini on the forehead with three beautiful arrows made entirely of iron, like snakes of virulent poison, and Yuyudhana, pierced on the forehead by those straight shafts, looked handsome as a mountain with three peaks. The son of Bharadvaja, always alert for an opening, sped many more arrows at Satyaki that came with the roar of Indra’s thunder, and he of the Dasharha line, who knew the highest weapons, cut all of them out of the air with two beautifully winged arrows of his own. Seeing that lightness of hand, Drona smiled and suddenly pierced that bull among the Shinis with thirty arrows, and then, surpassing with his own lightness the lightness of Yuyudhana, pierced him again with fifty and then with a hundred. Those mangling arrows came out of Drona’s chariot like strong snakes in a rage pouring out of an anthill, and in the same way blood-drinking arrows shot by Yuyudhana in hundreds and thousands covered the chariot of Drona. Then Sanjaya said the sentence the whole scene is built on: we marked no difference between the lightness of hand displayed by that foremost of the twice-born and that displayed by the man of the Satvata line. In this respect those two bulls among men were equal. Satyaki, inflamed, struck Drona with nine straight arrows, struck his standard with many sharp ones, and pierced his driver with a hundred in Bharadvaja’s son’s own sight. Drona, seeing that speed, pierced Yuyudhana’s driver with seventy shafts and each of his four horses with three, and with a single arrow cut down the standard on Madhava’s chariot, and with another broad-headed arrow, feathered and winged with gold, cut the bow of that illustrious hero of Madhu’s race.

Satyaki set the bow aside in his anger, took up a huge mace, and hurled it at the son of Bharadvaja, and Drona stopped that iron mace, wound about with cords, with many arrows of diverse shapes as it came rushing at him. Satyaki took another bow and pierced the heroic son of Bharadvaja with many arrows whetted on stone, and having pierced Drona he uttered a lion’s roar, and Drona, the foremost of all wielders of weapons, could not bear that roar. He took up an iron dart with a golden shaft and sped it at Madhava’s chariot. That dart, fatal as Death, did not touch the grandson of Shini; it passed through his chariot and entered the earth with a terrible noise. The grandson of Shini pierced Drona with many winged arrows, and striking him on the right arm afflicted him greatly, and Drona in his turn cut Madhava’s huge bow with a crescent-shaped arrow and struck his driver with a dart. Struck by that dart, Yuyudhana’s driver fainted and lay for a while motionless on the floor of the chariot. And then Satyaki did what Sanjaya called a superhuman thing: he became his own charioteer, holding the reins himself, and went on fighting Drona. Driving and shooting at once, the mighty chariot warrior Yuyudhana struck that Brahmana with a hundred arrows and rejoiced exceedingly at what he had done. Drona sped five arrows at Satyaki, fierce ones that went through his armor and drank his blood, and pierced by those frightful shafts Satyaki blazed with rage and shot back at the warrior of the golden chariot. With a single shaft he brought Drona’s driver down to the earth, and with his arrows he set the driverless horses running, so that the chariot was dragged away to a distance, and the bright chariot of Drona began to trace a thousand circles across the field like a sun in motion. Then all the kings and princes of the Kaurava host set up a loud cry: run, rush, seize Drona’s horses. Quickly abandoning Satyaki, all those mighty chariot warriors rushed to where Drona was, and your troops, seeing those chariot warriors run, tormented by Satyaki’s arrows, broke again and lost heart. Meanwhile Drona, carried out of Satyaki’s presence by those wind-swift horses that the Vrishni hero’s shafts had maddened, came at last to the gate of the array and took his station there. And seeing his array broken in his absence by the Pandavas and the Panchalas, the valiant son of Bharadvaja made no attempt to follow the grandson of Shini, but set himself to protecting what was broken. Holding the Pandavas and the Panchalas, the Drona fire, blazing up in wrath, stayed there consuming everything, like the sun that rises at the end of the age.

Having beaten Drona and the other warriors of your army led by the son of Hridika, that bull among the Shinis, foremost of men, laughed and said to his charioteer: our enemies, Suta, were consumed already by Keshava and Phalguna. In beating them again we are only the apparent means. They were killed already by that bull among men, the son of the chief of the gods; we have only killed the dead. And having said that to his driver, that bull among the Shinis, foremost of bowmen, slayer of hostile heroes, mighty warrior, scattering his arrows with great force all around him in that dreadful battle, went on like a hawk hunting for prey. The Kuru warriors attacked him from every side and could not stop him, that foremost of chariot warriors like the thousand-rayed sun himself, who had pierced the Kaurava ranks and was driving on behind his excellent horses white as the moon or a conch. None of those who fought on your side, Bharata, could resist Yuyudhana, irresistible in prowess, unimpaired in might, equal in valor to him of the thousand eyes, looking like the autumn sun in the sky. Then Sudarshana, that foremost of kings, versed in every mode of warfare, in a golden coat of mail, armed with bow and arrows and filled with rage, came out to meet the rushing Satyaki and tried to stop him, and the encounter between them was fierce in the extreme; both your warriors and the Somakas praised it as a fight like Vritra’s with Vasava. Sudarshana tried to pierce the foremost of the Satvatas with hundreds of keen shafts before they could reach him, and standing on his excellent chariot he cut into two or three pieces with his own fine arrows every shaft that Satyaki, like Indra himself, sped at him. Seeing his arrows baffled by the force of Satyaki’s arrows, Sudarshana of fierce energy, as if to burn his enemy up, wrathfully shot beautiful gold-winged arrows, and pierced him again with three beautiful arrows like fire, gold-winged, shot from a bowstring drawn to the ear; those went through Satyaki’s armor and into his body. Aiming four more blazing arrows, the prince struck Satyaki’s four horses, white as silver. So afflicted, the grandson of Shini, endowed with great speed and with prowess equal to Indra’s own, swiftly killed Sudarshana’s horses with keen shafts and roared aloud. Then, cutting off the head of Sudarshana’s driver with a broad-headed arrow that had the force of Shakra’s thunder, the foremost of the Shinis cut from Sudarshana’s trunk, with a razor-faced arrow like the fire of the age, his head with its earrings, like the full moon, graced with an exceedingly radiant face, as the wielder of the thunder in the old days forcibly cut off the head of the mighty Vala in battle. That high-souled bull among the Yadus, having killed the grandson of a king, was filled with delight and shone like the chief of the gods himself. Then Yuyudhana, that hero among men, drove on along the track by which Arjuna had gone before him, holding back all your troops as he went with clouds of shafts, riding that same chariot with those same excellent horses, and filling everyone with amazement. All the foremost warriors gathered there praised that most astonishing feat of his, for he consumed every enemy who came within reach of his arrows, like a fire consuming everything in its path.

A key to reading this (what happens and why it matters): The hinge of the scene is Sanjaya’s single sentence that he could see no difference between Drona’s speed of hand and Satyaki’s. Satyaki fighting on with his fainted driver’s reins in his own hands is what Sanjaya calls superhuman. His remark that he has only killed the dead echoes what Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, that these warriors are already slain by him and Arjuna is only the instrument. Sudarshana here is a king on the Kaurava side, “the grandson of a king,” and has nothing to do with Krishna’s discus of the same name. Bali against Vasava, Vritra against Vasava, and the beheading of Vala are three comparisons drawn from Indra’s old wars with the Asuras.

The gist: Drona and Satyaki fight to a standstill hand for hand; a mace and a dart both fail, Satyaki’s driver faints and Satyaki drives and shoots at once, and then he kills Drona’s driver and sends the preceptor’s chariot wheeling across the field in a thousand circles until the Kaurava princes chase it down. Drona returns to guard the gate of his array, and Satyaki takes Sudarshana’s head and follows the track Arjuna cut before him.

“What is left of the array is a shallow stream”: Satyaki cuts through the Yavanas and Kambojas, and Duryodhana’s chariot bolts without a driver

Sudarshana was dead behind him, and Satyaki, the grandson of Shini, stood on his chariot and took stock the way a sailor does when the worst water is astern. He spoke to his driver, and what he said was a map of the morning. We have forded the ocean of Drona’s division, he said, an ocean that was very nearly unfordable, thick with chariots and horses and elephants; its waves were arrows and darts, its fish were swords and scimitars, its crocodiles were maces; it roared with the whistle of shafts and the clash of every kind of weapon, it drank lives, it was intolerable to anyone who wanted to win, and its shore was infested with man-eaters, which is to say the army of Jalasandha. What remains of the array we will cross like a poor stream of shallow water. So drive on, and drive without fear. I think Savyasachin is very near. Having beaten Drona and his people, and Kritavarma, Hridika’s son, the best of chariot-warriors, I cannot be far from Dhananjaya now. Fear does not come into my heart even when I see numberless enemies in front of me; they are a heap of straw and dry grass to a forest fire. Look at the road the diadem-wearer took, the foremost of the Pandavas: it is rough with the bodies of foot-soldiers and horses and chariot-fighters and elephants lying where he killed them. Look, the Kaurava army he routed is running. Look at the brown dust their retreating chariots and elephants and horses are raising. I think I am very close to Arjuna of the white horses, whose charioteer is Krishna. Listen: that is the twang of Gandiva, which has no measure, and I know it. From the omens I can see, I am certain Arjuna will kill the ruler of the Sindhus before the sun sets. Do not spend the horses; take them slowly toward the enemy ranks over there, where the warriors under Duryodhana stand with their hands cased in leather, and the Kambojas of fierce deeds, armored and hard to defeat, and the Yavanas with their bows, who know how to strike, and the Shakas and Daradas and Barbaras and Tamraliptakas and countless other Mlecchas with weapons of every sort, all of them facing me and resolved to fight me. Consider, charioteer, that I have already passed through that fortress, that I have already killed every one of them with their chariots and elephants and horses and foot-soldiers.

The driver answered a soldier’s answer. I have no fear, Vrishni, you whose prowess cannot be baffled. If Jamadagni’s son himself were in front of you in his wrath, or Drona, the first of chariot-warriors, or the ruler of the Madras, fear would still not enter my heart, mighty-armed one, so long as I am in the shadow of your protection. Countless Kambojas in mail, hard to defeat, you have already beaten, and many Yavanas with their bows, and Shakas and Daradas and Tamraliptakas and other Mlecchas with every weapon. I have never known fear in any battle, so why should I know it in this miserable fray? Long-lived one, by which road shall I take you to Dhananjaya? With whom are you angry? Who are they who will run when they see the prowess you show, which is the Destroyer’s own at the end of the age? Of whom is King Vaivasvata thinking today? Satyaki told him. As Vasava destroys the Danavas I will destroy these shaven-headed warriors. By killing these Kambojas I will fulfill my vow. Take me there. I will make a great slaughter among them and go on to the dear son of Pandu today. The Kauravas, with Suyodhana at their head, will see my prowess today when this division of shaven-headed Mlecchas is wiped out and the whole Kaurava army is put in the greatest distress. Suyodhana will grieve today when he hears the wailing of his host, mangled and broken by me. Today I will show my teacher, the high-souled Pandava of the white horses, the skill in weapons I got from him. Duryodhana will be plunged in grief when he sees thousands of his best warriors killed by my arrows. The Kauravas will see the bow in my hands as a circle of fire when I stretch the string, light-handed, to loose my shafts. Suyodhana will count two Arjunas today while I kill the foremost of the Kurus in my anger. Killing thousands of kings, I will show my love and my devotion to the high-souled sons of Pandu. The Kauravas will learn today the measure of my strength and my energy, and of my gratitude.

The driver put the whip to the moon-colored horses, well trained and beautiful in their pace, and they went with the speed of wind or of thought, devouring the sky, and carried Yuyudhana to where the Yavanas stood. The Yavanas were many and quick of hand, and they closed on the unretreating Satyaki and buried him in arrows. He cut every shaft and every weapon of theirs out of the air with his own straight arrows as he came on, and then, with his anger up, he began to take heads and arms with sharp, straight shafts winged with gold and vulture feathers. Many of those arrows went through coats of mail made of iron and brass and buried themselves in the earth. The Mlecchas fell in hundreds under the brave Satyaki’s hand, their lives gone. His bow was drawn to its full stretch and the arrows came from it in unbroken lines, and he was killing five, six, seven, eight Yavanas at a time. Thousands of Kambojas and Shakas and Barbaras died the same way. Shini’s grandson made the earth impassable, a mire of flesh and blood. The field was strewn with the robbers’ headgear and with their shaven heads, which, because of the long beards still on them, looked like featherless birds. Headless trunks dyed with blood covered the ground until it looked like a sky full of copper-colored clouds. The Yavanas, killed by the Satvata’s straight arrows, whose touch was like Indra’s thunder, lay over the surface of the earth. The small remnant of those mail-clad troops, beaten and cheerless and with their lives about to be taken, broke, and put goads and whips to their horses, and fled in every direction. So the tiger among men who had gone into your army, Satyaki, whose prowess could not be baffled, routed the invincible Kamboja host and the Yavanas and the great force of the Shakas, and, crowned with victory, told his driver, proceed. The Charanas and the Gandharvas, seeing a feat in battle that no one had achieved before, praised him highly, and, king, even your own warriors, watching Yuyudhana push on to Arjuna’s aid, were filled with delight at his heroism.

So Sanjaya told it to the blind king. Having beaten the Yavanas and the Kambojas, Yuyudhana, foremost of chariot-warriors, went toward Arjuna straight through the middle of your troops. Like a hunter killing deer, that tiger among men with the beautiful teeth and the excellent armor and the beautiful standard killed the Kaurava troops and put fear in them. He rode shaking his bow with great force, the bow whose back was worked with gold, whose toughness was great, and which was set with many golden moons. His arms wore golden armlets, his headgear was worked with gold, his body was in golden mail, his standard and his bow were so embellished with gold that he shone like the summit of Meru; giving off that radiance, with the circular bow in his hand, he looked like a second sun in autumn. A bull among men, with a bull’s shoulders and tread and eyes, he stood among your troops like a bull in a cow pen, and your warriors came at him wanting his death as a tiger comes at the leader of an elephant herd, the one with the split temples standing proud in the middle of the herd, for Satyaki had the tread of an elephant in rut. He had passed through Drona’s division and the unfordable division of the Bhojas, he had forded the sea of Jalasandha’s troops and the host of the Kambojas, he had escaped the crocodile that was Hridika’s son, he had crossed all those oceans of men, and now many chariot-warriors of your army surrounded him in anger. Duryodhana and Chitrasena and Duhshasana and Vivimshati, and Shakuni and Duhsaha, and the young Durdharshana, and Kratha, and many other brave warriors skilled in arms and hard to defeat, came after Satyaki in wrath as he pushed on. A great uproar rose among your troops, like the ocean at full tide lashed into fury by a storm. Seeing them all rushing at him, the bull of the Shinis smiled and said to his driver: go slowly. This Dhartarashtra force, swollen with rage and pride, thick with elephants and horses and chariots and infantry, rushing at me and filling the ten directions with the deep roar of its cars and making the earth and the sky and the very seas tremble, this sea of troops I will hold in great battle the way the continent holds the ocean when it swells to its height at the full moon. Watch, charioteer, my prowess, which is equal to Indra’s in great battle. I will consume this hostile force with my whetted arrows. Watch these foot-soldiers and horsemen and chariot-warriors and elephants killed by me in thousands, their bodies pierced with my fiery shafts.

He was still saying it when they were on him, shouting as they came, slay, rush, wait, see, see! Of the men who shouted that, Satyaki killed three hundred horsemen and four hundred elephants with his sharp arrows. The passage of arms between those united bowmen on the one side and Satyaki on the other was as fierce as the war between the gods and the Asuras in the old days, and an awful carnage set in. Shini’s grandson received your son’s force, which looked like a bank of clouds, with shafts like snakes of virulent poison; he shrouded every side with downpours of arrows and killed a great many of your troops without fear. And I saw a thing there, king, that was exceedingly wonderful: not one arrow of Satyaki’s failed of its effect. That sea of troops, full of chariots and elephants and horses, with its waves of foot-soldiers, stood still the moment it touched the Satyaki shore. Slaughtered on every side by his shafts, the host of panic-stricken men and elephants and horses turned and turned and wandered here and there as if it had been struck by the chill blasts of winter. We saw no foot-soldier or chariot-warrior or elephant or horseman or horse that had not been hit by Yuyudhana’s arrows. Not even Phalguna had made such a carnage there as Satyaki made among those troops. The dauntless grandson of Shini, light of hand and displaying the utmost skill, fought that day surpassing Arjuna himself. Then the counting began. King Duryodhana pierced the Satvata’s driver with three keen shafts and his four horses with four, and Satyaki himself with three and again with eight. Duhshasana pierced the bull of the Shinis with sixteen arrows. Shakuni pierced him with twenty-five, and Chitrasena with five, and Duhshasana put fifteen into his chest. Struck with all those arrows, the tiger of the Vrishnis proudly pierced every one of them with three. Then, piercing all his enemies deeply with shafts of great energy, Shini’s grandson wheeled across the field with the speed of a hawk. He cut Subala’s son’s bow and the leather fence on his hand, and put three shafts into the center of Duryodhana’s chest; he pierced Chitrasena with a hundred arrows and Duhsaha with ten, and Duhshasana with twenty. Your brother-in-law took up another bow and pierced Satyaki with eight arrows and again with five; Duhshasana pierced him with three; Durmukha with a dozen; and Duryodhana, having pierced Madhava with seventy-three arrows, pierced his driver with three keen ones. Satyaki answered each of those brave and mighty chariot-warriors, fighting together, with five shafts apiece. And then that foremost of chariot-warriors struck your son’s driver with a broad-headed shaft, and the man fell to the earth without life. With the driver gone, your son’s chariot was carried out of the battle by its own horses with the speed of the wind. Your sons and the other warriors, seeing the king’s chariot go, fled in their hundreds. Seeing that host fly, Satyaki covered it with showers of keen shafts whetted on stone and winged with gold, and having routed all your fighters by the thousand, he went on toward Arjuna’s chariot. And your own troops, king, watching Yuyudhana shoot and shield his driver and himself as he fought, worshiped him.

A key to reading this (names): Satyaki, Yuyudhana, the Satvata, Madhava and “Shini’s grandson” are all one man, the Vrishni warrior who is Arjuna’s pupil in arms, which is why he speaks of showing his teacher what he learned. Sudarshana, whose death opens the scene, fell in the previous scene; Kritavarma (Hridika’s son) and Jalasandha’s force were the fights before that. The “shaven-headed” fighters are the Yavanas, Kambojas, Shakas, Daradas, Barbaras and Tamraliptakas, foreign contingents the text calls Mlecchas and robbers; the long beards on the shaven heads are the detail behind the image of featherless birds. Sanjaya calls Duryodhana “the king” and Shakuni “your brother-in-law” because he is speaking to Dhritarashtra.

The gist: With Drona, Kritavarma and Jalasandha behind him, Satyaki tells his driver that what is left of the array is a shallow stream, vows to destroy the Kambojas for his teacher Arjuna, and kills the Yavanas, Shakas and Barbaras by the thousand. Duryodhana, Duhshasana, Shakuni and the brothers close on him and he answers them arrow for arrow, kills the king’s driver, and watches the king’s chariot bolt from the field with its master aboard. Sanjaya says outright that on that day Satyaki fought beyond Arjuna.

Mountaineers who fight with stones, Drona’s rebuke to a fleeing Duhshasana, and Dhrishtadyumna climbing onto Drona’s chariot with a sword

In Hastinapura the blind king had stopped asking for victory and started asking for explanations. Watching Shini’s grandson go toward Arjuna grinding that great force as he went, what did those shameless sons of mine do? When Yuyudhana, who is Savyasachin’s equal, was in front of them, how could those wretches, already at the point of death, set their hearts on battle? What did all those Kshatriyas do after they were beaten? How did Satyaki, whose fame is worldwide, pass through them? How, while my sons were alive, could Shini’s grandson go on? Tell me all of it. This thing I have heard from you is beyond wonder, this encounter between one man and many, and the many all mighty chariot-warriors. I think fate has turned against my sons, Suta, since that one warrior of the Satvata line has killed so many of them. My army is no match for Yuyudhana alone when his anger is up. Let the Pandavas hang up their weapons. Satyaki will defeat Drona himself, who knows every weapon and every mode of war, and kill my sons the way a lion kills lesser animals. Kritavarma first among them, hero after hero fought him with everything they had and could not kill him. He will kill my sons, without doubt. Phalguna himself has not fought the way the famous grandson of Shini has fought. Sanjaya’s reply began where his replies always began. All this, king, was brought about by your evil counsels and Duryodhana’s acts. Listen carefully to what I tell you.

At your son’s command the samsaptakas rallied and resolved to fight fiercely. Three thousand bowmen under Duryodhana, with a number of Shakas and Kambojas and Bahlikas and Yavanas and Paradas, and Kalingas and Tanganas and Ambashthas and Pishachas and Barbaras and mountaineers, all of them burning with rage and armed with stones, rushed at Shini’s grandson like insects into a blazing fire. Five hundred other warriors rushed at Satyaki likewise. And another great body, a thousand chariots, a hundred great chariot-warriors, a thousand elephants, two thousand heroes and countless foot-soldiers, rushed at him too. Duhshasana urged them all on, shouting kill him, and surrounded Satyaki with them. Then we saw the grand and wonderful conduct of Shini’s grandson, for alone he fought those innumerable foes without fear. He killed that entire body of chariot-warriors, and that elephant force, and all those horsemen, and that whole body of robbers. Like the autumn sky spangled with stars, the field became strewn with chariot wheels broken and crushed by his mighty weapons, with innumerable axles and beautiful shafts reduced to fragments, with crushed elephants and fallen standards, with mail and shields scattered everywhere, with garlands and ornaments and robes and the undercarriages of chariots. Many of the foremost elephants, huge as hills, born of the line of Anjana or of Vamana or of other lines, lay on the ground without life. Satyaki killed many of the best horses of the Vanayu, the mountain, the Kamboja and the Bahlika breeds, and foot-soldiers born in various realms and of various nations in their hundreds and thousands. While those soldiers were being cut down, Duhshasana turned on the robbers: you warriors who know nothing of morality, fight! Why do you retreat? They ran without listening to him, and so your son turned to the brave mountaineers who were skilled at fighting with stones. You are accomplished at battling with stones, he told them. Satyaki knows nothing of this way of war. Stop him, then, this warrior who wants to fight but does not know your method. The Kauravas also know nothing of it. Rush at Satyaki. Do not fear. He will not be able to reach you. Urged that way, those hill Kshatriyas, all of them versed in the way of stones, went at Shini’s grandson the way ministers go to a king. With stones as big as elephants’ heads lifted in their hands, the men of the mountains stood before Yuyudhana, and others, urged by your son and wanting the Satvata’s death, ringed him on every side with missiles.

Satyaki aimed at the men rushing at him with their stones and loosed showers of keen shafts. With arrows like snakes the bull of the Shinis cut into fragments the dense rain of stones the mountaineers threw, and the fragments, like a swarm of blazing fireflies, killed many fighters where they stood, and cries of oh and alas went up from the field. Then five hundred brave men with huge stones lifted in their hands fell to the ground with their arms cut off. Then a full thousand, and again a hundred thousand, among the others, fell without reaching Satyaki, their arms cut off with the stones still in their grip. He killed many thousands of those who fight with stones, and all of it seemed exceedingly wonderful. Many of them came back to the fight and hurled showers of stones at him, and Daradas and Tanganas and Khasas and Lampakas and Pulindas, armed with swords and lances, hurled their weapons at him, and Satyaki, who knew the use of weapons, cut the stones and the weapons apart with his shafts. The stones, pierced and broken in the air by his whetted arrows, made a fierce noise at which many chariot-warriors and horses and elephants fled the battle, and, struck by the fragments, men and elephants and horses could no longer keep the field, for they felt as if wasps had stung them. The small remnant of the elephants that had come at Satyaki, covered in blood, their heads and frontal globes split open, ran from Yuyudhana’s chariot. Then a noise rose from your troops, as Madhava ground them, like the sea at full tide. Drona heard it and spoke to his driver. Suta, that great chariot-warrior of the Satvata line is tearing our army into pieces in his anger and wheeling through the battle like the Destroyer himself. Take the chariot to where that furious uproar is coming from. Yuyudhana is surely engaged with the mountaineers who fight with stones. Our chariot-warriors are being carried off by their own bolting horses. Many of them, without weapons or armor, wounded, are falling. The drivers cannot check the horses; the horses are running wild. The driver answered Bharadvaja’s son, that foremost of all who wield weapons, with a question of his own. Long-lived one, the Kaurava troops are flying. Look, our warriors, routed by the foe, are flying in every direction. And there, those heroes, the Panchalas and the Pandavas together, are rushing from all sides wanting to kill you. Chastiser of foes, decide which of these tasks should come first. Shall we stay here to meet the advancing Pandavas, or go after Satyaki? As for Satyaki, he is far ahead of us now. While the driver was still speaking to Bharadvaja’s son, Shini’s grandson suddenly came into view, slaughtering a great number of chariot-warriors. The troops he was cutting down fled from Yuyudhana’s chariot toward where Drona’s division was, and the other chariot-warriors, the ones who had gone forward with Duhshasana, likewise rushed in panic to where Drona’s chariot could be seen.

Drona saw Duhshasana’s chariot draw up beside his own, and what he said to the prince was the most humiliating speech anyone had made to a son of Dhritarashtra on that field. Why, Duhshasana, are all these chariots flying? Is the king well? Is the ruler of the Sindhus still alive? You are a prince. You are the king’s brother. You are a mighty chariot-warrior. Why do you run from battle? Secure the throne for your brother and be his regent. You said once to Draupadi: you are our slave, won by us at dice; do not confine yourself to your husbands, cast aside your chastity, be a bearer of robes to the king, my eldest brother; your husbands are all dead, they are as worthless as sesame seeds without the kernel. Having said that then, why do you run from battle now? Having provoked such fierce hostility with the Panchalas and the Pandavas yourself, why are you afraid in battle before Satyaki alone? When you took up the dice at the gambling match, could you not see that the dice in your hand would soon turn into fierce shafts like snakes of virulent poison? It was you who heaped abuse on the Pandavas. Draupadi’s sorrows have you for their root. Where now is that pride, that insolence, that bragging of yours? Why do you run, having angered the Pandavas, who are terrible snakes of virulent poison? When you, Suyodhana’s brave brother, are bent on flight, it is you, hero, who should be protecting this routed and panic-stricken Kaurava host today, relying on the strength of your own arms. Instead you abandon the battle in fear and increase the joy of your enemies. Slayer of foes, when the leader of the host runs like this, who else will stay? When you, its refuge, are frightened, who will not be frightened? Fighting one warrior of the Satvata line your heart is set on flight; what, Kaurava, will you do when you see the wielder of Gandiva in battle, or Bhimasena, or the twins? The arrows of Satyaki, from which you are running to save yourself, are scarcely equal to Phalguna’s, which are like the sun or fire in splendor. If your heart is firmly bent on flight, then let the sovereignty of the earth be given to King Yudhishthira the Just when peace is concluded. Before Phalguna’s shafts, like snakes freed from their sloughs, enter your body, make peace with the Pandavas. Before the high-souled Parthas kill your hundred brothers in battle and wrest the earth by force, make peace with the Pandavas. Before King Yudhishthira is enraged, and Krishna too, who delights in battle, make peace with the Pandavas. Before the mighty-armed Bhima penetrates this vast host and seizes your brothers, make peace with the Pandavas. Bhishma told your brother Suyodhana long ago, the Pandavas cannot be conquered in battle; amiable one, make peace with them. Your wicked brother Suyodhana did not do it. So set your heart firmly on battle and fight the Pandavas vigorously. Go quickly on your chariot to where Satyaki is. Without you this host will fly. For your own sake, fight Satyaki, whose prowess cannot be baffled. Your son said nothing in reply. Pretending he had not heard Bharadvaja’s son, Duhshasana went to where Satyaki was, and with a large force of unretreating Mlecchas he came up with him in battle and fought that hero vigorously.

Drona, foremost of chariot-warriors and burning with anger, went against the Panchalas and the Pandavas at a moderate speed. He penetrated the middle of the Pandava host and began to crush its warriors by hundreds and thousands, proclaiming his name as he did it, and he made a great carnage among the Pandavas, the Panchalas and the Matsyas. The illustrious Viraketu, son of the ruler of the Panchalas, rushed at Bharadvaja’s son while he was breaking the Pandava ranks. He pierced Drona with five straight shafts, then his standard with one and his driver with seven, and I saw a thing there, king, that was exceedingly wonderful: Drona, exerting himself with all his strength, could not get at the prince of the Panchalas. Then the Panchalas, seeing Drona checked, surrounded him on every side for King Yudhishthira’s victory and covered him with showers of fiery shafts and strong lances and every other kind of weapon. Drona baffled those dense showers with his own numberless shafts, as the wind drives banks of cloud from the sky, and he was resplendent in it. Then that slayer of hostile heroes aimed a fierce shaft with the blaze of the sun or of fire at Viraketu’s chariot. It went through the prince of the Panchalas and into the earth, bathed in blood, blazing like a flame, and the prince fell from his chariot like a champaka tree uprooted by the wind falling from a mountain summit. When that great bowman of great strength fell, the Panchalas closed on Drona from every side, and Chitraketu and Sudhanvan and Chitravarman and Chitraratha, grieving for their slain brother, came at Bharadvaja’s son together, wanting battle, shooting arrows at him like clouds at the end of summer. Struck from all sides by those mighty chariot-warriors of royal blood, that bull among Brahmanas gathered all his energy and all his anger for their destruction and shot showers of shafts at them. Struck by those arrows from a bow drawn to its fullest, the princes, best of kings, were confounded and did not know what to do. Seeing them stupefied, the angry Drona smiled and stripped them of their horses and drivers and chariots, and then, with sharp arrows and broad-headed shafts, took off their heads the way a man plucks flowers from a tree. Without life, the princes fell from their chariots to the earth like the Daityas and Danavas slain in the old war between the gods and the Asuras, and having killed them the valiant son of Bharadvaja shook his invincible bow with its gold-worked back. Dhrishtadyumna saw those mighty chariot-warriors of the Panchalas, who were like the gods themselves, lying dead, and his anger came up through tears; he wept there in the battle and drove at Drona’s chariot. Cries of woe went up when Drona was seen covered with the Panchala prince’s arrows, but though the high-souled son of Prishata shrouded him completely, Drona felt no pain; he went on fighting, and smiling as he fought. Then the prince of the Panchalas, furious, struck Drona in the chest with many straight shafts, and deeply pierced by that mighty warrior, the illustrious son of Bharadvaja sat down on the terrace of his chariot and fell into a swoon. Dhrishtadyumna, of great prowess and energy, laid aside his bow and took up a sword, jumped down from his own chariot, and in no time was on Bharadvaja’s, his eyes red with wrath, meaning to cut Drona’s head from his trunk. But the valiant Drona came back to his senses, took up his bow, and, seeing Dhrishtadyumna so close and so bent on killing him, began to pierce him with shafts only a span long, made for fighting at close quarters. Those span-length arrows for close fighting were Drona’s own knowledge, and with them he weakened Dhrishtadyumna. Struck with a great number of them, the mighty Dhrishtadyumna jumped down from Drona’s chariot; his impetuosity baffled, he mounted his own again, took up his great bow, and once more began to pierce Drona, and Drona pierced Prishata’s son in return. The battle between them was wonderful in the extreme, like that between Indra and Prahlada when each wanted the sovereignty of the three worlds. Both knew the ways of battle; they wheeled over the field showing every motion of the chariot and mangled each other with shafts, and they shot showers of arrows like two great clouds in the rainy season, stupefying the warriors’ minds, until the sky and the directions and the earth were shrouded. All creatures, king, the Kshatriyas and the other fighters there, applauded that battle, and the Panchalas shouted, without doubt Drona, having met Dhrishtadyumna, will fall to us. Then Drona cut off the head of Dhrishtadyumna’s driver as a man plucks a ripe fruit from a tree. The horses of the high-souled Dhrishtadyumna bolted, and when they had carried him off the field, Drona of great prowess began to rout the Panchalas and the Srinjayas. Having beaten the Pandus and the Panchalas, Bharadvaja’s son, that chastiser of foes, took up his station once more in the middle of his own array, and the Pandavas did not venture to defeat him in battle.

A key to reading this (people and things): The stone-fighting mountaineers are named with the Daradas, Tanganas, Khasas, Lampakas and Pulindas, hill peoples of the northwest; Duhshasana’s argument is simply that neither Satyaki nor the Kauravas know that way of fighting. Anjana and Vamana are the lines of the elephants of the quarters, from which the best war elephants were said to descend. The words Drona throws back at Duhshasana are the ones the prince spoke to Draupadi in the dice hall of the Sabha Parva, the day she was dragged by the hair. Viraketu, Chitraketu, Sudhanvan, Chitravarman and Chitraratha are Drupada’s sons and Dhrishtadyumna’s brothers, which is why Dhrishtadyumna weeps as he charges. “Prishata’s son” is the text’s address for Dhrishtadyumna; Prishata was Drupada’s father, so he is strictly Prishata’s grandson. The span-length arrows are short shafts for fighting at arm’s reach, the one distance at which a man standing on your chariot with a sword can be shot.

The gist: Dhritarashtra concedes that his whole army is no match for one Satyaki, and Sanjaya answers that Duhshasana threw the samsaptakas, the Mlecchas and the stone-throwing hill men at him, and that Satyaki broke the flying stones with arrows and killed them by the thousand. Drona comes to the noise, catches Duhshasana fleeing, throws his own dice-hall words back at him and even tells him to make peace; the prince says nothing and rides off toward Satyaki. Then Drona turns on the Panchalas, kills Viraketu and his four brothers, and Dhrishtadyumna climbs onto his chariot with a sword, only to be driven off it by span-length arrows and carried away by his own horses when his driver’s head is taken.

Duhshasana in a spider’s web, an arrow held back by the memory of Bhima’s vow, and the day when three battles ran at once

Meanwhile Duhshasana came at Shini’s grandson scattering thousands of shafts, a great cloud pouring torrents of rain. He pierced Satyaki with sixty arrows and again with sixteen and could not make him tremble; Satyaki stood in that battle as immovable as the mountain Mainaka. With a great crowd of chariots from many realms around him, that foremost of Bharata’s line shot numberless arrows and filled the directions with roars as deep as thunder, and Satyaki of the mighty arms, seeing the Kaurava come on, rushed at him and shrouded him with shafts. The men at the front of Duhshasana’s force, buried under those arrow showers, fled in fear under your son’s own eyes. When they had gone, your son Duhshasana stayed in the battle without fear and set about afflicting Satyaki with arrows: four into his four horses, three into his driver, a hundred into Satyaki himself, and then a loud roar. Madhava’s anger came up, and with his straight arrows he made Duhshasana’s chariot and driver and standard and Duhshasana himself disappear. He shrouded the brave prince completely; as a spider winds its threads around a gnat that has come within reach, that vanquisher of foes wrapped Duhshasana in shafts. King Duryodhana, seeing his brother covered like that, sent a body of Trigartas at Yuyudhana’s chariot, three thousand Trigarta chariot-fighters of fierce deeds and accomplished in battle, firmly resolved to fight and sworn not to retreat, and they ringed Yuyudhana with a great crowd of chariots. He struck down five hundred of the best of them at the head of the force as it advanced, shooting its showers at him, and they fell like tall trees torn from mountaintops by a tempest. The field, strewn with mangled elephants and fallen standards and the bodies of horses in golden trappings, torn by the arrows of Shini’s grandson and welling with blood, looked like a plain of kimshuka trees in flower. Your soldiers, slaughtered by Yuyudhana, found no protector, like elephants sunk in a morass, and all of them turned toward Drona’s chariot, as great snakes make for their holes in fear of the prince of birds.

Having killed those five hundred brave men with shafts like snakes of virulent poison, the hero went on slowly toward where Dhananjaya was. As he went, your son Duhshasana quickly pierced him with nine straight arrows, and that mighty bowman pierced Duhshasana in return with five straight, sharp arrows winged with gold and vulture feathers. Duhshasana, smiling, pierced Satyaki with three arrows and again with five. Shini’s grandson struck your son with five, cut his bow, and went on smiling toward Arjuna. Then Duhshasana, inflamed and wanting the Vrishni hero’s death, hurled a dart made wholly of iron at him as he went, and Satyaki cut that fierce dart of your son’s apart with shafts fledged with kanka feathers. Your son took up another bow, pierced Satyaki with some arrows and roared. Satyaki, angry now, stunned your son with shafts like flames of fire into the center of his chest and pierced him again with eight arrows made wholly of iron and very keen at the point. Duhshasana pierced him in return with twenty. The highly blessed Satyaki put three straight arrows into the center of Duhshasana’s chest, and then Yuyudhana, the great chariot-warrior, killed Duhshasana’s horses with straight shafts and, in his anger, his driver too. With one broad-headed arrow he cut your son’s bow, and with five the leather fence on his hand; being master of the highest weapons, he cut Duhshasana’s standard and the wooden shafts of his chariot with two broad-headed arrows, and with a number of keen shafts he killed both of your son’s side-drivers. Bowless, chariotless, horseless and driverless, Duhshasana was taken up onto the chariot of the leader of the Trigarta warriors. Shini’s grandson pursued him for a moment and then held himself back and did not kill him, for the mighty-armed hero remembered Bhimasena’s words. Bhimasena, in the middle of the assembly, had vowed the destruction of all your sons in battle. So Satyaki, having beaten Duhshasana, went on quickly along the track Dhananjaya had taken before him.

Dhritarashtra tried one more time to find the flaw in the story. Were there no mighty chariot-warriors in that army of mine, Sanjaya, who could kill or hold Satyaki while he went toward Arjuna? His prowess cannot be baffled, his strength is equal to Shakra’s, and alone he did feats in battle like the great Indra among the Danavas. Or perhaps the road Satyaki took was empty? He has true prowess, and alone he crushed numberless warriors! Tell me how Shini’s grandson, alone as he was, passed through that vast force that fought him. Sanjaya answered with the size of the thing. King, the fierce exertions and the uproar of your host, thick with chariots and elephants and horses and foot-soldiers, were like what is seen at the end of an age. Giver of honors, when your assembled host was mustered each day, it seemed to me that another assemblage like your army had never been on earth. The gods and the Charanas who came there said, this muster will be the last of its kind on earth. Never had such an array been formed as the one Drona formed on the day of Jayadratha’s slaughter. The uproar of those vast bodies of soldiers rushing at one another was the ocean’s own when a tempest lashes it. In your host, and in the Pandavas’ too, there were hundreds and thousands of kings, and the noise those angry heroes of fierce deeds made in battle was tremendous and made the hair stand on end. Then Bhimasena and Dhrishtadyumna, and Nakula and Sahadeva and King Yudhishthira the Just, shouted: come, strike, rush! The brave Madhava and Arjuna have entered the enemy’s army. Do quickly whatever will let them go easily to where Jayadratha’s chariot is. And they went on: if Satyaki and Arjuna are killed, the Kurus will have achieved their object and we will be defeated. All of you together, then, churn this ocean of an army quickly, as impetuous winds churn the deep. Urged by Bhimasena and the prince of the Panchalas, the warriors smothered the Kauravas, reckless of their very lives; full of energy, all of them wanting death in battle at the point or the edge of a weapon in expectation of heaven, they showed no regard for their lives in fighting for their friends. And your warriors likewise, wanting great renown and nobly resolved on battle, stood on the field determined to fight. In that fierce and terrible battle Satyaki, having beaten every fighter, went on toward Arjuna. The sun’s rays came back off the bright armor of the warriors so that the fighters had to look away from it. And Duryodhana too penetrated the mighty host of the high-souled Pandavas as it struggled vigorously in battle, and the encounter between him on one side and them on the other was exceedingly fierce, and great was the carnage there.

The blind king heard the name of his son inside the enemy’s army and asked, before anything else, whether the boy had run. When the Pandava host was going forward to battle and Duryodhana penetrated it, he must have been in great distress. I hope he did not turn his back on the field, Suta! That encounter between one and many in dreadful battle, and the one a king, seems to me very unequal. Besides, Duryodhana was brought up in great luxury, in wealth and possessions; he is a king of men. Alone against many, I hope he did not turn back from the fight. Sanjaya gave him his son at his best. Listen, king, while I describe that wonderful battle your son fought, that encounter between one and many. The Pandava army was agitated by Duryodhana in that battle like a bed of lotus stalks in a lake by an elephant. Seeing the army struck like that by your son, the Panchalas, with Bhimasena at their head, rushed at him. Duryodhana pierced Bhimasena with ten arrows and each of the twins with three and King Yudhishthira with seven; he pierced Virata and Drupada with six each and Shikhandi with a hundred; piercing Dhrishtadyumna with twenty, he struck each of Draupadi’s five sons with three. With his fierce shafts he cut down hundreds of other fighters in that battle, elephants and chariot-warriors among them, like the Destroyer in his wrath exterminating creatures. Because of his skill, cultured by practice, and the power of his weapons, he seemed, as he struck his enemies down, to hold his bow bent in a perpetual circle whether he was aiming or letting fly; that formidable bow with its gold-worked back was seen by everyone to be drawn into an unbroken circle as he killed. Then King Yudhishthira, with two broad-headed shafts, cut your son’s bow as he struggled in the fight, and pierced him deeply with ten excellent shafts, and those arrows, touching Duryodhana’s armor, quickly broke into pieces. The Parthas, delighted, surrounded Yudhishthira as the gods and the great rishis surrounded Shakra in the old days at the slaughter of Vritra. Your valiant son took up another bow, said to Pandu’s son Yudhishthira, wait, wait, and rushed at him, and the Panchalas, cheerful and hoping for victory, came forward to receive him. Then Drona, wanting to rescue the Kuru king, received the charging Panchalas the way a mountain receives banks of rain-heavy cloud driven by a storm. The battle that followed between the Pandavas and your warriors was exceedingly fierce and made the hair stand on end, and the carnage of all creatures there was like the sport of Rudra himself at the end of the age. Then a great uproar rose from the place where Dhananjaya was, and that uproar, which made the hair stand on end, climbed above every other sound. So went the battle between Arjuna and your bowmen. So went the battle between Satyaki and your men in the middle of your army. And so went the fight between Drona and his enemies at the gate of the array. That, lord of the earth, is how the carnage went on upon the earth, with Arjuna and Drona and the mighty chariot-warrior Satyaki all roused to wrath at once.

A key to reading this (a held arrow): Satyaki has Duhshasana stripped to nothing, pursues him, and stops, because Bhima vowed in the dice hall to kill every son of Dhritarashtra; Duhshasana’s death belongs to Bhima and will come in the Karna Parva on the seventeenth day. The side-drivers are the two assistant charioteers who ride at the rear of a war chariot. The Trigartas are Susharma’s people, the same who swore the samsaptaka oath to draw Arjuna away in this war. The kimshuka is the flame-of-the-forest tree, whose red blossom is the epic’s regular image for a bloodied plain. The armor on which Yudhishthira’s arrows shatter is the one Drona bound onto Duryodhana by mantra earlier this same day. The three simultaneous battles Sanjaya counts at the end are the shape of what follows: Arjuna’s front leads into the next chapter, which opens with Drona’s afternoon slaughter and Drupada’s cry.

The gist: Duhshasana pours arrows into Satyaki by the hundred and is wrapped in return like a gnat in a web; of the three thousand Trigartas Duryodhana sends, five hundred die at the front. Stripped of bow, horses, driver, standard and side-drivers, Duhshasana is carried off by the Trigarta leader, and Satyaki lets him go for Bhima’s sake. Dhritarashtra asks whether the road was empty, and Sanjaya answers that this muster was the last of its kind on earth; Yudhishthira and his brothers drive their army forward, Duryodhana alone plunges into it and wounds every Pandava, Yudhishthira cuts his bow but his arrows break on the mantra-bound armor, and Drona comes to pull the king out. The day is now three battles at once: Arjuna’s, Satyaki’s and Drona’s.

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.