The Slaying of Jayadratha

Drona’s fierce slaughter and Drupada’s cry

The battle that broke out again that afternoon between Drona and the Somakas had a roar in it like thunderheads. He came on at an easy pace behind his red horses, the Brahmin teacher of both royal houses, born, the old account says, in a jar, and he dropped one good fighter after another with feathered arrows as if the work were a game. The first to stand in his way was Brihatkshatra of the Kekayas, eldest of five brothers, a chariot fighter no one had ever stopped. He poured arrows on Drona the way a cloud pours on a mountainside. Drona sent fifteen stone-whetted shafts at him, and the Kekaya prince cut down all fifteen with five of his own. Drona sent eight more, and eight arrows met them in the air. The Kaurava troops stared. Drona, who knew craft when he saw it, praised the man aloud and then called up the Brahma weapon, one of the celestial arms that a master summons with a spoken formula and that few men living could turn aside. Brihatkshatra answered it with a Brahma weapon of his own, and when the two had canceled each other he put sixty arrows into the old Brahmin. Then one heavy shaft from Drona’s bow went through his armor, through his body, and on into the ground like a black cobra going into an anthill. The prince, his eyes rolling with rage, still found the strength to hit Drona with seventy arrows and to drive one more into his charioteer. It was the last of his luck. Four arrows killed his four horses, a fifth threw his driver from the seat, two more brought down his standard and his royal umbrella, and a last shaft, carefully aimed, took him in the chest. He fell from his chariot.

Dhrishtaketu saw him fall. He was the son of Shishupala and king of the Chedis, and he told his driver to take him to the place where Drona stood in his armor, killing Kekayas and Panchalas. The swift horses of the Kamboja breed carried him there, and he went at Drona like a moth at a lamp. Sixty arrows struck Drona, his horses, his chariot and his standard, and then more, the act of a man prodding a sleeping tiger. Drona cut the Chedi king’s bow through the middle with a razor-headed arrow fletched with vulture feathers. Dhrishtaketu strung another and shot again. Drona killed his four horses with four shafts, took the head off his charioteer with a smile, and put twenty-five arrows into the king himself. Dhrishtaketu jumped down with a mace in his hands, a gold-chased thing as hard as adamant, and threw it. Drona broke it in the air under a storm of arrows, and it came down with a crash that the ground gave back. A lance followed and then a gilded dart, and each took five arrows and fell in pieces like a pair of snakes torn by Garuda. Then Drona loosed the shaft he had been saving. It went through the armor and the breast of the Chedi king and into the earth behind him, as smoothly as a swan goes down into a lake of lotuses. Dhrishtaketu’s son, a young man well trained in the high weapons, came forward in a fury to take up what his father had dropped. Drona, still smiling, killed him too, as a full-grown tiger in deep forest kills a fawn.

With the Pandava ranks thinning, a son of Jarasandha drove at Drona and covered him with arrows until the teacher could no longer be seen, as cloud covers the sun. Drona answered with shafts by the hundred and the thousand and killed him where he stood on his chariot, in plain view of every bowman on the field. Then he began calling out his own name. The arrows he shot now had that name cut into them, and they killed men, elephants and horses by the hundred. The Panchalas shook like cattle caught in the cold. The sun burned them from above and the arrows from in front, and their best chariot fighters stood like men whose thighs are held in the jaws of crocodiles. The Chedis, the Srinjayas, the Kashis and the Kosalas rushed him all the same, shouting to one another, “Drona is killed! Drona is killed!” as men shout a thing they mean to make true. He sent them to the king of the dead, the pick of the Chedis first. The Panchalas called out to Bhima and Dhrishtadyumna that this Brahmin must have stored up terrible austerities, because a Kshatriya’s business is battle and a Brahmin’s is the ascetic life, and a Brahmin with that power behind him can burn whatever he looks at. Kshatradharma, the son of Dhrishtadyumna, heard them, and with a crescent-headed arrow he cut Drona’s bow in two with the shaft still on the string. Drona picked up a brighter and tougher bow, drew the string to his ear, and let go a single arrow. It went through the young man’s chest and into the ground, and Kshatradharma fell dead from his chariot. Chekitana tried next. He hit Drona with ten arrows and one more in the center of the chest, and put four into the driver and four into the four horses. Drona put sixteen into his right arm, sixteen into his standard and seven into his charioteer, and when the driver died the horses bolted and dragged the chariot away.

Drupada, king of the Panchalas and father of Dhrishtadyumna, had just watched his grandson die and his people break, and what he said now he said aloud: “That man is killing Kshatriyas the way a hungry tiger kills smaller animals. Duryodhana will come to the most wretched of worlds for this. It is his greed that has laid so many of the best Kshatriyas on this field like slaughtered bulls, rolling in their blood, for dogs and jackals to eat.” Then Drupada, who commanded a full akshauhini of his own, put the sons of Pandu at the head of it and drove straight at Drona.

The gist: in the afternoon Drona brings down one great chariot fighter after another, Brihatkshatra of the Kekayas, Dhrishtaketu of the Chedis and his son, a son of Jarasandha, and Dhrishtadyumna’s son Kshatradharma, and drives Chekitana from the field. The Panchalas shake under arrows cut with his name. Drupada lays the dead at the door of Duryodhana’s greed and leads his own army at the teacher.

Yudhishthira’s dilemma and the sending of Bhima

The Pandava army had been shaken loose on every side and had fallen back a long way, and over the killing Drona kept sounding his lion’s roar. Yudhishthira, the eldest of the five brothers and the king in whose name all of this was being fought, looked for somewhere to rest his mind and found nowhere. He began to wonder how the day would end. He searched the field in every direction for Arjuna and saw no ape-marked banner; he listened for the twang of Gandiva, the great bow whose voice the whole army knew, and could not hear it. Krishna was nowhere. Satyaki, the Vrishni champion he had sent in after them, was nowhere either. The king turned it over in silence. “I had one fear before, and now I have two. I sent Satyaki after Arjuna. Whom do I send after Satyaki? If I ask only after my brother and forget Satyaki, the world will say that Yudhishthira looked to his own blood and left the Vrishni to his fate. And I love that man no less than I love Arjuna. I have loaded him with a very heavy task, and he went into that army for the sake of a friend’s request, like a sea-beast into the ocean. I can hear the noise of the men who are fighting him, and there are too many of them. Bhima must go. There is nothing on this earth that Bhima cannot bear. It was on the strength of his arms that we came back alive from the forest. If he goes, both of them will have real help, and I will have done what a man in my place can do.”

He told his charioteer, “Take me to Bhima,” and the man, who knew horses, brought the gold-fitted chariot across the field. Face to face with his brother the king could barely speak. “Bhima,” he said, “I cannot see the banner of Arjuna, who once defeated the gods, the gandharvas and the asuras together from a single chariot.” Bhima had never seen him like this. “I have never heard such words from you,” he said. “When the rest of us were broken, you were the one who steadied us. Get up. Tell me what you want done. There is nothing I cannot do for you. Only do not give your heart to grief.” Yudhishthira’s eyes were wet, and he was breathing in long hisses like a black cobra. “Krishna is blowing Panchajanya, and blowing it in anger. I think it means that your brother lies dead on the field and that Krishna has taken up the fight himself. Arjuna went into that host after the Sindhu king. I know that he went. He has not come back. He is the one we all turn to when we are afraid, the way the gods turn to Indra: dark, young, curly-haired, broad in the chest, long in the arm, with the walk of an elephant in rut and eyes the color of burnished copper. My grief for him and for Satyaki rises like a fire fed with butter. If you hold that my word is yours to obey, go to the place where they are. Remember that I am your eldest brother. Hold Satyaki dearer than Arjuna himself, because he went down that road for my sake, and it is no road for a small man. When you have seen the two Krishnas and Satyaki alive and whole, send me word with a lion’s roar.”

“The chariot those two ride,” Bhima answered, “once carried Brahma, Ishana, Indra and Varuna into battle. Nothing can happen to them. But I take your order on my head, and I am going. Do not grieve. When I have found them I will send you word.” Before he went he gave the king into the keeping of Dhrishtadyumna, the Panchala prince, and he gave him over more than once. “You know that Drona watches every hour for a chance to take Yudhishthira alive,” he told him. “If the choice were mine I would never put this errand above guarding the king. He has ordered me to go, and I cannot refuse him. I am going to the place where the Sindhu king is waiting to die. So you guard Yudhishthira today, with everything you have. Nothing you do on this field matters more.” Dhrishtadyumna gave his word. “Go, and take no worry with you. Drona will have to kill Dhrishtadyumna before he lays a hand on the king.” Bhima bowed to his elder brother, and Yudhishthira embraced him, breathed in the scent of his hair, the way an elder takes leave of someone he loves, and blessed him.

A sub-tale: before Bhima mounted, the leave-taking was done in full. He walked a reverent circle around the Brahmins, who had been honored with worship and gifts, and they performed the rites that turn misfortune aside. He touched the eight auspicious things. He drank Kairataka honey, a heady draft, until the corners of his eyes went red and he felt his strength double in him. The omens that met him promised success, a favoring wind began to blow, and he tasted the victory before he had moved.

The gist: Yudhishthira can see neither Arjuna nor Satyaki and hears Krishna’s conch blown in anger. Fearing the world’s blame if he asks after his brother alone, and loving Satyaki as much, he sends Bhima after both and asks for a lion’s roar as the signal that they live. Bhima goes only after Dhrishtadyumna has sworn to keep the king out of Drona’s hands.

Bhima breaks through the host and meets Drona

Bhima armed. He wore earrings and armlets, leather guards on both hands, and a costly coat of black steel worked with gold that sat on him like a thundercloud with lightning in it. While he was still at it, Panchajanya sounded again across the field, loud enough to frighten three worlds, and Yudhishthira could not keep quiet. “There, the Vrishni is blowing with all his breath. Arjuna is in trouble and Krishna is fighting the Kurus alone. Go, Bhima, go quickly. Every quarter of the sky looks empty to me.” Bhima took his bow, had the drums beaten, blew his own conch, roared, and went. His horses were of the best blood and as fast as wind or thought, and Vishoka held their reins. The Panchalas and the Somakas fell in behind him the way the gods follow Indra. He was crushing the front of the enemy line when the sons of Dhritarashtra closed around him in a body: Duhshasana, Chitrasena, Kundabhedi, Vivimshati, Durmukha, Duhsaha, Shala, Vinda and Anuvinda, Sumukha, Dirghabahu, Sudarshana, Suhasta, Sushena, Dirghalochana, Abhaya, Raudrakarma, Suvarma and Durvimochana, each with his own troops. They covered him with arrows as clouds cover a risen sun. Bhima looked them over and went through them like a lion through lesser game. Beyond them stood the elephant division that screened Drona. He broke it with arrows in almost no time, and the elephants fled trumpeting in every direction.

Drona stopped him as a shoreline stops the sea. Smiling, the teacher put an arrow into Bhima’s forehead, where it stood up like a single ray from the sun. Earlier that day Arjuna had come this way, and Arjuna had greeted his old master with reverence before driving past, and Drona expected the same of the second brother. “Bhimasena,” he said, “you will not get into this army without first beating me, and I am your enemy today. Krishna and your younger brother went in with my permission. You never will.” Bhima’s eyes went the color of blood. “Your permission, Brahmin? Arjuna needs no man’s permission. He would break into an army that Indra himself commanded. If he bowed to you, he did it to honor you, and for no other reason. But I am not soft-hearted like Arjuna. I am Bhimasena, and I am your enemy. We have looked on you as father, teacher and friend. We have thought of ourselves as your sons, and we have always bent low before you. Today you talk to us like this, and so all of that is changed. If you call yourself our enemy, let it be as you say. I will treat you the way Bhima treats an enemy.”

He whirled a mace the way Death whirls his rod and threw it. Drona had already jumped, and the jump saved his life, because the mace drove his chariot into the ground with its horses, its driver and its standard. Bhima went on through the men around it like a gale through trees while Drona climbed onto a second chariot and drove back to the gate of the array to make his stand there. The king’s sons closed on Bhima again. Duhshasana threw a dart made wholly of iron, meaning to kill, and Bhima cut it in two in the air. Then he began on the brothers. Three arrows killed Kundabhedi, Sushena and Dirghanetra. Vrindaraka, a prince the Kurus were proud of, fell next. Three more arrows killed Abhaya, Raudrakarma and Durvimochana. The rest ringed him and rained on him as the clouds at summer’s end rain on a mountainside, and he stood under it like the mountain, feeling nothing. Smiling, he sent Vinda, Anuvinda and Suvarma to the house of Yama, and then he shot Sudarshana, who dropped and died. Eleven of Dhritarashtra’s sons were dead in a very short time. The others scattered like deer at the clatter of chariot wheels, whipping their horses, and Bhima chased them with arrows, roared, and slapped his arms until the chariot force in front of him shook.

Drona came out to meet him once more, smiling still, and covered him with arrows. Bhima drank them in as if they were nothing. A ring of kings closed around him at the princes’ urging, and he threw a mace into them that burst among them like Indra’s thunder, so that men fell from their chariots at the sound alone. What he did next astonished both armies. He jumped down from his chariot, shut his eyes, and ran at Drona on foot, taking the arrows on his body the way a bull takes heavy rain. He caught the teacher’s chariot by its pole and threw it over. Drona got onto yet another and went back to the gate with his driver lashing the horses. Bhima remounted and drove on into the host. He ground his way through the Bhoja troops that Kritavarma, son of Hridika, commanded. He passed the Kambojas and tribe after tribe of Mlecchas, all of them good fighters. He saw Satyaki fighting, and kept going. And then, beyond everyone, he saw Arjuna, hard at the work of getting to the Sindhu king, and Bhima shouted like the clouds when the rains come. Arjuna and Krishna heard that voice and shouted back, again and again, two bulls bellowing across a field. Far behind them all, Yudhishthira heard the roars, his brother’s and then Arjuna’s, and the weight went off him. “Bhima, you have sent me my message,” he said to himself. “Arjuna lives. Satyaki lives. The man who once beat Indra himself to feed the god of fire, who broke the Nivatakavachas with a single bow, who drove off all the Kauravas when they came for Virata’s cattle, he lives.” And then the other fear came back. Arjuna had sworn in his grief for his son to kill Jayadratha, and the sun was going down. Would he do it in time? Would Yudhishthira see him again before dark? And if the Sindhu king fell, and Duryodhana saw his own brothers dead at Bhima’s hands, would he at last make peace, and let the sacrifice of Bhishma be the end of it?

The gist: Bhima wrecks two of Drona’s chariots, the first with a thrown mace and the second with his bare hands, kills eleven of Dhritarashtra’s sons on the way, and cuts through the Bhojas, the Kambojas and the Mlecchas until he can see Arjuna. His roar tells Yudhishthira that both brothers and Satyaki are alive. The king’s fear moves at once to the vow and the sinking sun.

The long duel of Bhima and Karna

One man in the Kaurava army could not listen to that roaring and stay where he was. Karna, whom the world called the charioteer’s son and on whom Duryodhana rested his whole hope of victory, drew his bow to the full, shouted, and planted himself in Bhima’s path like a tall tree taking a gale. In the palace the blind king stopped Sanjaya at this point. Who had dared stand in front of Bhima, he wanted to know, when Bhima was going through his sons like fire through dry leaves? “I do not fear Arjuna so much,” Dhritarashtra said, “or Krishna, or Satyaki, or Dhrishtadyumna who was born from the fire, as I fear Bhima.” He would stop Sanjaya over this duel again and again before the telling was done. Sanjaya told him it was like two elephants in rut meeting in a forest. When the two men slapped their palms, the limbs of the fighters around them shook. At Bhima’s shouts bows slipped out of men’s hands, horses and elephants emptied their bowels where they stood, and the sky filled with vultures and kanka birds.

Karna opened with twenty arrows into Bhima and five into his charioteer. Bhima, smiling, sent back sixty-four. Four shafts came at him and he cut them to bits in the air; a cloud of arrows followed, and he answered it by cutting Karna’s bow at the grip and putting ten straight arrows into the man. Karna strung a second bow. Three arrows from Bhima struck him square in the chest and stood there, and with the blood running down from them like streams of red chalk he looked like a mountain with three peaks. He shuddered, steadied, and shot again by the hundred, and Bhima, still smiling, cut his bowstring, killed his driver with a broad-headed arrow, and killed all four of his horses. Karna jumped clear of the dead chariot and climbed onto his son Vrishasena’s. Bhima’s shout of victory rolled back across the field to Yudhishthira, who knew what it meant and was glad. The Pandava conches sounded on every side, Arjuna drew Gandiva, Krishna blew Panchajanya, and Bhima’s voice carried above all of it. He would have driven on to Arjuna then, and Karna would not let him. Karna’s face was as open as a lotus, and he was smiling. “Bhima, I never dreamed that you knew how to fight. Why show me your back and go running after Arjuna? That hardly suits a son of Kunti. Stay where you are and cover me with your arrows.” Bhima turned his chariot. He meant to end it this time. Seventy-three arrows went into Karna, and sixty-four came back and found Bhima’s armor. Karna fought the whole bout coolly, almost gently, with a smile that mocked, and Bhima, who had old wrongs to think about, fought it in a fury. Arrows stood in him until he looked like a porcupine with its quills up, and the blood covered him until he looked like an ashoka tree in spring flower. He put twenty-five long shafts into Karna, then six, then eight; then with a single arrow he cut the bow again, killed the four horses and the driver, and drove a handful of sun-bright shafts through Karna’s chest and into the ground behind him. Karna, hurt and without a bow, went to find another chariot.

He found one and came back in a rage like the sea in a storm, and the king’s sons, seeing his face, counted Bhima as an offering already poured on the fire. Bhima looked at him and remembered. He remembered the dice game, the years in the forest, the time in Virata’s city. He remembered the kingdom that had been taken from them, and the house that had been built to burn his mother and her sons alive. He remembered Draupadi dragged into the hall by her hair, and Karna’s voice telling her to choose another husband, because hers were dead men gone down to hell, sesame seeds with no kernel in them. He remembered that voice again on the day the brothers walked out to exile in deerskins. For thirteen years he had held that fire in. Now he stopped caring whether he lived. Their horses ran in among one another, Karna’s white as swans and Bhima’s dark as bears, like white cloud driven into black, and the Kaurava chariot fighters watched as men watch a contest in an arena and could not say who had the better of it. Whenever Karna lost ground, brothers of Duryodhana came to buy him time, and they did not go back. Durjaya was ordered to kill “that beardless Bhima” and put heart into Karna; he died with his horses and his driver, and Karna, weeping, walked a slow circle around the body where it lay twisting like a snake. Durmukha was sent with a chariot after a six-sided mace four cubits long had killed Karna’s team; Bhima licked the corners of his mouth at the sight of him and killed him with nine arrows, and it was the dead prince’s chariot that Karna mounted, in tears. Five full brothers came together, Durmarshana, Duhsaha, Durmada, Durdhara and Jaya, and twenty-five arrows took all five with their horses and drivers. Six more came, Chitra, Upachitra, Charuchitra, Sharasana, Chitrayudha and Chitravarma, and Bhima gave each of them one arrow. Then seven: Shatrunjaya, Shatrusaha, Chitra, Chitrayudha, Dridha, Chitrasena and Vikarna. Seven shafts went through their hearts and flew on into the sky, gold and red, like bright-feathered birds. Over Vikarna alone Bhima grieved. “I swore to kill every one of you,” he said to the dead man, “and that is why you have fallen, Vikarna. You came to this battle with a Kshatriya’s duty in mind. You always wished us well, and the king most of all.” Thirty-one sons of Dhritarashtra had now died at Bhima’s hands. More than once in the telling the old king cried out that destiny ruled everything and that the lives of his sons were in danger, and Sanjaya answered him without softness: “You grieve over this slaughter, and you are its root. You listened to your sons and lit this enmity yourself. Your friends pressed the medicine on you and you refused it like a man fated to die. You drank the poison. Now take what comes of it.”

The last round was the worst. Karna put three arrows into Bhima and then a swarm of them, and Bhima stood under it like a hill. Then a barbed arrow, oiled and finely tempered, struck Karna in the ear and carried his great earring down to the ground like a star falling. A broad-headed shaft hit him in the chest. Ten long arrows went into his forehead and stood there in a row, like the wreath of blue lotuses he had once worn on his brow. Karna sagged against the pole of his chariot with his eyes shut. When he opened them he was bathed in blood and beside himself. He strung a tougher bow and looked over the field, at the dead of the Kurus, the Sauviras and the Sindhus lying among their armor and standards, and his whole body seemed to catch light. No one could see a gap between his taking an arrow, setting it, drawing and loosing; the bow stood bent in a ring like a wheel of fire, and the shafts left it in an unbroken line across the sky, like a file of cranes. Bhima’s gold-backed bow was bent to the same ring. Their arrows met and struck sparks, the sun went dim, the wind dropped, and for a while both armies stopped fighting to watch, while seers and gandharvas called out their praise and flowers fell from the air. Then the fight turned. Karna’s arrows cut away Bhima’s two quivers, his bowstring and the traces of his horses; they killed the horses, put five shafts into the charioteer, who ran for Yudhamanyu’s chariot, and brought down the flagstaff with its banner. Bhima, bowless, threw a chariot fighter’s dart, and ten arrows cut it into ten pieces. He took up a gold-studded shield and a sword, ready to win or die, and the shield was shot away. He threw the sword. It sheared through Karna’s strung bow and dropped like an angry snake out of the sky. Karna picked up yet another bow, smiling, and shot by the thousand, and Bhima, with nothing left in his hands, leaped high into the air at Karna’s chariot. Karna dropped to the chariot floor and hid, and Bhima came down holding the flagstaff, and Kurus and celestial singers alike cheered a man who had tried to pluck his enemy off a chariot the way Garuda plucks up a snake. He had no weapon now. Karna came on, and Bhima fell back to the place where the elephants Arjuna had killed lay like a range of hills, ground no chariot could enter. He heaved a dead elephant up before him. Karna shot it apart. Bhima threw the pieces, and then chariot wheels, and then dead horses, whatever his hands found, and Karna cut each thing out of the air.

A sub-tale: two promises decided how this duel ended. Bhima raised his fists, which struck like thunder, and could have killed Karna there with his bare hands; then he remembered that Arjuna had vowed to kill this man himself, and he held back so that his brother’s word would stand. Karna, whose arrows had battered the weaponless Bhima nearly senseless, remembered what he had promised Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas: that he would spare every one of her sons except Arjuna. So he did what he could do without killing. He rode up and touched Bhima with the horn of his bow. Bhima tore the bow out of his hand and struck him on the head with it. Karna, red-eyed and smiling, paid him in words: beardless eunuch, ignorant fool, glutton, a child with no skill in arms who ought to go and live on roots in the forest, or stand in the kitchen shouting at the cooks over his dinner, or run to the two Krishnas for protection.

Bhima laughed aloud so that everyone could hear. “I have beaten you over and over, you wretch. Where do you find the breath to brag? The ancients saw even great Indra win and lose. Come down and wrestle me with bare arms, low-born as you are, and I will kill you in front of all these kings the way I killed the giant Kichaka.” Karna understood exactly what was being offered and declined it in the sight of every bowman there. All of this had passed under the eyes of Krishna and Arjuna. At a word from Krishna, Arjuna sent a flight of stone-whetted, gold-decked arrows from Gandiva that went into Karna’s body like cranes into the Krauncha mountain and drove him off. His bow already broken by Bhima, Karna fled on his great chariot. Bhima climbed onto Satyaki’s chariot and followed his brother. Then Arjuna, red-eyed with anger, loosed one arrow meant to finish Karna, and Ashvatthama, Drona’s son, cut it down in mid-air to save him. Arjuna put sixty-four arrows into Ashvatthama and called to him to stand a moment and not run, and Ashvatthama took shelter in a division thick with war elephants and chariots, with Arjuna following, grinding down men, horses and elephants as he went.

The gist: round after round, Bhima and Karna fight. Bhima kills Karna’s horses and drivers again and again, and twenty of Dhritarashtra’s sons die trying to shield him, Vikarna among them, which brings Bhima’s count for the day to thirty-one. In the last round Karna strips Bhima of chariot and weapons. Each could then have killed the other, and each holds back for a promise: Bhima for Arjuna’s vow to kill Karna, Karna for his word to Kunti.

Satyaki breaks through, and closes with Bhurishravas

Satyaki had seen Bhima drive on with Karna’s arrows in him, and he followed. He was the grandson of Shini, a Vrishni of Krishna’s own people and Arjuna’s pupil in the bow, and he came through the Kaurava host behind silver-white horses, roaring like the clouds at summer’s end, and no one could hold him. A king named Alambusha tried. He wore golden mail and had never backed away from a fight, and when he blocked the road both armies lowered their weapons to watch. His first ten arrows Satyaki cut down before they arrived. Three more, loosed from a string drawn to the ear, went through Satyaki’s armor and into his flesh, and four struck the four white horses. Satyaki answered with four shafts that killed Alambusha’s team, and then with one broad-headed arrow he took off the king’s head, a face as fair as the full moon with its earrings still on it. He drove on behind his horses of the Sindhu breed, white as milk, as jasmine, as snow, and they took him wherever he pointed them. Duhshasana and the division leaders closed around him, and he killed Duhshasana’s horses and went through. Fifty Trigarta princes under gold standards walled him in with chariots. What men saw then was hard to credit: Satyaki in the west, and in the same breath Satyaki in the east, wheeling north and south as though he were dancing, as though a hundred fighters lived in the one body, until the Trigartas gave way and fell back on their own countrymen. The Shurasenas struck at him the way a mahout strikes an elephant with the hook, and he fought them briefly and passed. He fought the Kalingas, whose division no one was supposed to be able to cross, and crossed it. And then he saw Arjuna, and felt what a spent swimmer feels when his feet find the shore.

Krishna saw him first. “There, Partha, Shini’s grandson is coming up behind you, your pupil and your friend. He has treated every warrior of theirs as so much straw. He has broken Drona and Kritavarma of the Bhojas. He has beaten Duryodhana and his brothers, killed Jalasandha, and laid the faces of thousands of kings on the ground like cut lotuses. Yudhishthira sent him, and he has come through that army on the strength of his own arms, like a lion out of a herd of cattle.” Arjuna heard it without pleasure. “His coming does me no good, Keshava. I do not know how the king is. Satyaki was meant to guard him. With Satyaki gone, Yudhishthira is left to Drona, who hunts him as a hawk hunts a scrap of meat, and I cannot tell whether he is alive. The Sindhu king is still not dead. The sun hangs low. And look there: Bhurishravas is moving on Satyaki. Now I must find out how the king is, and protect Satyaki, and kill Jayadratha, all three. Satyaki is tired. His weapons are used up. His horses and his driver are worn out. Bhurishravas is fresh, and he has men behind him. Satyaki has crossed the ocean. Will he drown now in the hoofprint of a cow?”

Bhurishravas was the son of Somadatta, a prince of the Kuru line, famous for the wealth he gave away at his sacrifices, and he came at Satyaki in a rage that was older than this war. “By good luck you have come where I can see you. I have wanted this meeting all my life. Unless you run, you will not leave here alive. I will kill you, proud as you are of your courage, and make King Suyodhana glad. Krishna and Arjuna will look at you lying on this field burned by my arrows, and Yudhishthira, who sent you in here, will hang his head. You will go to the house of Yama today the way Ravana’s son Indrajit went, when Lakshmana, Rama’s younger brother, killed him.” Satyaki laughed. “I am never afraid in battle, Kuru, and words will not make me so. The man who kills me will be the man who first takes my weapons away. What use is a long speech? Do the thing. Your threats sound like autumn clouds, all thunder, and I cannot keep from laughing. You have wanted this meeting for so long. Let us have it. I am in no mood to wait.” They went at each other like two bull elephants in rut over one female. Bhurishravas hid Satyaki under arrows and then put ten into him, and more, and Satyaki cut the rest out of the air. They tore each other with arrows and with the darts chariot fighters carry, and the blood ran from both, two gamblers playing for their lives. Each killed the other’s horses. Each cut the other’s bow. They jumped down with naked swords and bright shields of bull’s hide and circled, wheeling, leaping, cutting sideways, rushing in, each watching for the other’s mistake, and once, in the sight of both armies, they stopped to breathe. When the swords had hacked both shields to pieces, shields studded with a hundred moons, they put up their swords and wrestled. Both were broad in the chest and long in the arm, and their arms were like iron clubs. They locked arms, clamped necks, butted heads, hooked legs, slapped their own arms in challenge, clawed with their nails, gripped each other around the waist with their legs, rolled on the ground, broke apart, sprang up and closed again, through all thirty-two holds of the art, with a noise like thunder striking a mountainside.

Satyaki had nothing left, and Krishna saw it. “Look at him, that great bowman, fighting on foot. He came into this army on your track and has fought every warrior the Bharatas have. Bhurishravas has caught him worn out. He is your pupil, Arjuna. Do not let him go under for your sake.” Arjuna was half admiring what he saw, the Kuru and the Vrishni sporting like a maddened elephant and a great lion, and he had barely said so when a cry of horror went up from the troops. Bhurishravas had struck Satyaki down. He was dragging him across the ground the way a lion drags an elephant. He drew his sword from its sheath, took Satyaki by the hair, and kicked him in the chest, and then he lifted the blade to take off the head. Satyaki, held by the hair, whipped his head around and around with the arm that gripped it, like a potter’s wheel spun by its stick. “Your pupil, who is as good a bowman as you are, is in the hands of Somadatta’s son,” Krishna said. “They call Satyaki the man whose prowess never fails. That name is about to become a lie.” In his own mind Arjuna honored Bhurishravas for dragging his enemy when he could simply have killed him. Aloud he said, “My eyes were on the Sindhu king, Madhava, and I did not see Satyaki. For the sake of that Yadava I will do a very hard thing.” He set a razor-headed arrow on Gandiva. It crossed the field like a meteor falling, and it cut off the arm of Bhurishravas as it rose to strike, the arm with the armlet on it and the sword still in its fist.

The gist: King Alambusha falls to Satyaki, who breaks through the Trigartas, the Shurasenas and the Kalingas and reaches Arjuna exhausted, with his weapons spent. Bhurishravas, fresh and long his enemy, fights him with arrows, then swords, then bare hands, throws him, kicks him, and raises a sword over his neck. At Krishna’s urging Arjuna, whom Bhurishravas has not seen and is not fighting, shoots off the sword arm from a distance.

Bhurishravas’s fast unto death, and his slaying

The arm fell with its armlet and its sword, and lay on the earth like a five-headed snake, and everything living that saw it grieved. Bhurishravas let go of Satyaki and turned on the man who had done it. “Son of Kunti, this was a cruel and heartless thing. You were not fighting me. I never saw you. And you cut off my arm. What will you tell Yudhishthira? That you struck down Bhurishravas while he was busy with another man? Who taught you this use of weapons? Indra? Rudra? Drona? Kripa? You know the law of arms better than anyone alive. Good men do not strike the heedless, or the frightened, or the man without a chariot, or the man who begs for his life, or the man already in distress. You were born a king’s son in the house of Kuru. How did you fall so far from a Kshatriya’s duty? A man takes on the ways of the company he keeps, and I see whose counsel this was. The Vrishnis and the Andhakas are bad Kshatriyas, quick to do what is shameful. Why did you make them your pattern?” Arjuna answered him. “The mind grows old with the body, it seems, or you would not talk like this. You know Krishna and you know me. I understand the rules of war and what the teachings mean, and I would not do a sinful thing. A Kshatriya fights among his own people, his brothers, fathers, sons, kinsmen and friends, and they fight trusting to his arm. Satyaki is my pupil and my kinsman. He is my right arm in battle, and he was spending his life for my sake. A man does not go into battle to guard himself alone. Whoever is doing your work, you protect. If I had stood by and watched him die, the sin of his death would have been mine. You say you were fighting another. In a host like a sea, with friends and enemies locked together everywhere, who fights only one man? He had fought many and beaten many before you came to him. He was worn out and wounded. You took him in that state, and you meant to cut off his head to show how much the better man you were. I could not look at that and do nothing. Blame yourself, who did not look to your own guard.”

Bhurishravas turned away from Satyaki then and chose his death. His banner carried the sign of the sacrificial post, and he had lived by what it stood for. With his left hand he spread a bed of arrows on the ground and sat down on it in the vow called praya, in which a man fasts and waits for the end. He gave his senses back to the gods who keep them, fixed his eyes on the sun, set his cleansed mind on the moon, held the words of the great Upanishad before him, entered yoga, and stopped speaking. The whole army began to praise him and to blame Krishna and Arjuna. Neither of the two said a harsh word to the dying man, and Bhurishravas took no pleasure in the praise. Arjuna, who could bear the reproach of the king’s sons no longer, spoke without anger, in sorrow, to remind them all. “Every king here knows the vow I have taken: no man on our side will be killed while he stands within reach of my arrows. Remember that, and do not condemn me. You were armed, and you were about to kill an unarmed man, and I cut off your arm. There is no breach of dharma in that. But who among the righteous will praise the killing of Abhimanyu, a boy, without weapons, without a chariot, with his armor fallen from him?” At that Bhurishravas laid his severed right arm on the ground with his left, and sat with his head bowed, saying nothing. Arjuna spoke to him again, gently. “Eldest brother of Shala, the love I have for Yudhishthira, for Bhima, for Nakula and Sahadeva, I have for you. By my word and by Krishna’s, go to the world of the righteous, where Shibi the son of Ushinara is.” And Krishna said, “You have kept the sacrifices and the daily fire all your life. Go, without delay, to those pure worlds of mine that blaze with light, worlds that even the gods with Brahma at their head desire. Become my equal there, and let Garuda carry you on his back.”

Satyaki got to his feet. He had been thrown, dragged and kicked in front of two armies, and he drew his sword and walked toward the seated man. Every warrior who saw what he meant to do cried out against it. Krishna forbade him. Arjuna forbade him, and Bhima, and Yudhamanyu and Uttamaujas who guarded Arjuna’s wheels; and from the other side Ashvatthama, Kripa, Karna, Vrishasena and even the Sindhu king shouted at him to stop. He was past hearing. While the soldiers were still calling out, he cut off the head of Bhurishravas, a man whose arm was gone, who had withdrawn his senses from the fight, who sat like an elephant with its trunk cut away, waiting to leave his body. No one praised Satyaki for it. The siddhas and the charanas, the gods and the men who stood there praised Bhurishravas, who had looked like Indra and had died keeping his vow. Among the Kaurava soldiers some argued the other side: the Vrishni was not to blame, the thing had been ordained, the Creator had made Satyaki the cause of this death, and anger over it would only bring more sorrow.

To all of them Satyaki gave one answer. “You sinful Kauravas in the clothing of the righteous, you tell me in pious words that Bhurishravas should not have been killed. Where was this righteousness when you killed Subhadra’s son, a boy without a weapon in his hand? I once swore, in a proud hour, that whoever threw me down alive in battle and struck me with his foot in anger would die by my hand, even if he had taken an ascetic’s vow. My arms and my eyes were whole and I was still fighting, and you took me for dead. That was your mistake. The killing of this man was right and proper. And Partha, who cut off his sword arm out of love for me and to keep his own vow, has only robbed me of glory. What is ordained happens. It is destiny that acts. He died in the press of battle. What sin is mine? Long ago Valmiki sang this verse on earth: ‘You say, monkey, that women should not be killed. Yet in every age a man should do, with all his resolve, the thing that gives pain to his enemies.’” When he had finished, no one on either side said a word. In their hearts they honored the dead man, who had given away gold by the thousand and who had sat there like a forest hermit, like one made holy with mantras at a great sacrifice. His head, with its dark blue hair and its eyes red as a pigeon’s, lay like the head of the horse on the altar of a horse sacrifice. Made clean by his courage and by death on the edge of a weapon, Bhurishravas left his body on that field and rose to the worlds above, and the sky was filled with his merit.

A sub-tale: Dhritarashtra could not understand it. Drona, Karna, Vikarna and Kritavarma had all failed to stop Satyaki; how had Bhurishravas thrown him to the ground? Sanjaya answered with an old story. From Atri came Soma, from Soma Budha, from Budha Pururavas, then Ayus, Nahusha and Yayati, whose eldest son by Devayani was Yadu. In Yadu’s line came Devamidha and his son Shura, the father of Vasudeva, and in Shura’s line was born Shini. When Devaka held a bride-choosing for his daughter Devaki, Shini defeated all the kings there and carried the princess off on his chariot for Vasudeva. Somadatta would not stand for it. The two wrestled for half a day, and Shini threw him, lifted a sword, took him by the hair and struck him with his foot in the middle of thousands of watching kings, and then, out of pity, let him go with the one word, “Live!” Somadatta, burning, worshiped Mahadeva until the god offered him a boon, and he asked for a son who would strike Shini’s son down among thousands of kings and put his foot on him in battle. Bhurishravas was that son, and it was Shini’s grandson he threw. Short of such a boon, Sanjaya said, no man, however great, could have beaten the Satvata, for the Vrishnis rely on no strength but their own, honor their elders, covet nothing that belongs to those who help them, and cannot be overcome by gods, gandharvas or men.

The gist: one-armed and rebuked by Arjuna’s answer, Bhurishravas sits down on a bed of arrows to fast to death, and Arjuna and Krishna bless his passing. Satyaki, against the shouts of both armies, cuts off the head of the seated man and defends the act by an old vow and by the killing of Abhimanyu. The episode holds two contested deeds: Arjuna’s arrow from outside the duel, and Satyaki’s sword on a man who had given up the fight.

Arjuna races at Jayadratha, and six great warriors ring the Sindhu king

Bhurishravas was gone to the other world, and the sun had not waited for him. “Drive the horses harder, Krishna,” Arjuna said. “Take me to the place where King Jayadratha is. The sun is running for the western hills, and many of their great chariots stand around him. Drive so that I can kill him before it sets and make my vow true.” Krishna knew horses as few men have known them, and he sent the silver-white team straight at Jayadratha’s chariot. Duryodhana, Karna, Vrishasena and the Sindhu king himself came fast to meet them. Arjuna found Jayadratha in front of him at last, and the look he gave him seemed hot enough to burn.

Duryodhana turned quickly to Karna. “Son of Vikartana, the hour has come. Show what you are. See to it that Arjuna does not kill Jayadratha. The day is nearly spent. If it ends, the victory is ours: keep the Sindhu king alive until sunset, and Partha, with his vow broken, will walk into a blazing fire. His brothers and all who follow them will not live an hour in a world that has no Arjuna in it, and when the sons of Pandu are dead we will hold the whole earth, with its mountains and waters and forests, and no thorn left in it. He swore this oath without weighing what could and could not be done. Destiny bent his judgment and he swore it for his own destruction. How is he to reach Jayadratha before the sun goes down, with you alive, and Shalya and Kripa guarding the man, and Drona’s son, and Duhshasana, and me?” Karna answered him plainly. “Bhimasena has shot my body full of arrows. Every limb I have is burning. I am still on this field because a man like me ought to be on it. All the same, I will fight with everything I have left. My life is yours. While I am shooting, Arjuna will not get to the Sindhu king, and whatever a man who loves you can do, I will do. Victory is another matter. Victory rests with destiny.”

While they talked, Arjuna was killing. His broad-headed arrows took off arms as thick as iron clubs and the heads above them; they cut the trunks from elephants, the necks from horses and the axles from chariots, and cut lancers, already red with blood, into two and three pieces, until the ground under him was soaked. So he came up to the Sindhu king, with Bhima and Satyaki guarding him. The Kaurava chiefs could not stand the sight. Duryodhana, Karna, Vrishasena, Shalya king of the Madras, Ashvatthama and Kripa put Jayadratha behind them and ringed Arjuna on every side, with the Sindhu king himself shooting from the rear. The sun had turned red. Every man in that ring wanted it down, and they bent their bows and sent arrows at Arjuna by the hundred, and he cut them into two pieces, three, eight. Ashvatthama, whose banner bore a lion’s tail, planted himself in the track of Arjuna’s chariot with ten arrows for Arjuna and seven for Krishna. Arjuna turned aside the weapons of Ashvatthama and of Ashvatthama’s uncle Kripa, and put nine arrows into each man in the ring. Ashvatthama gave him twenty-five back, Vrishasena seven, Duryodhana twenty, Karna and Shalya three apiece, and they drew their chariots up wheel to wheel around him. Karna came out to hold him. Arjuna hit him with ten arrows, Satyaki with three, Bhima with three, Arjuna with seven more, and Karna, alone against all three, gave each of them sixty. A hundred arrows from Gandiva covered Karna in blood, and he answered with fifty. Then Arjuna cut his bow, put nine shafts into his chest, and loosed one arrow bright as the sun to end him, which Ashvatthama cut down with a crescent-headed shaft before it arrived. They hid the sky between them and shouted through it, “I am Partha, wait for me,” and “I am Karna, wait, Phalguna,” until four arrows killed Karna’s four horses and a fifth threw his driver from the seat, and Ashvatthama had to take him up onto his own chariot. Shalya struck Arjuna with thirty arrows, Kripa struck Krishna with twenty and Arjuna with twelve, Jayadratha struck each of them with four and Vrishasena with seven. Arjuna paid every one of them: sixty-four for Ashvatthama, a hundred for Shalya, ten broad-heads for the Sindhu king, three for Vrishasena, twenty for Kripa. Then, with twelve years of wrongs in his mind, he called up the weapon of Varuna on every side at once, and fear went through the sons of Dhritarashtra.

The gist: Arjuna cuts his way to Jayadratha with Bhima and Satyaki beside him, and six great chariot fighters, Duryodhana, Karna, Vrishasena, Shalya, Ashvatthama and Kripa, close around the Sindhu king. Karna, wounded as he is, loses his horses and driver to Arjuna and fights on from Ashvatthama’s chariot. Duryodhana has said aloud what both sides know: if Jayadratha lives until sunset, Arjuna must burn.

The cataclysm of Gandiva, and the false dusk raised by Krishna’s power

The sound of Gandiva being drawn was like Death calling, or like Indra’s thunder breaking, and the Kaurava host heaved at it the way the sea heaves, fish and sea-beasts and all, under the storm that comes at the end of an age. Arjuna seemed to be in every quarter of the field at one time. No one could mark the moment he took an arrow from the quiver, or set it on the string, or drew, or let go. In his anger he called up the weapon of Indra, and blazing shafts with mouths of fire poured out of it by the hundred and the thousand, until the sky could not be looked at. The Kauravas had made a darkness with their arrows that no one else could have thought of lifting, and he scattered it as the sun scatters night at daybreak. He drank the lives of men the way the summer sun drinks ponds. He cut off the arm with the spear from the elephant rider, the arm with the lance from the horseman, the arm with the shield from the foot soldier, the arm with the bow from the chariot fighter, the arm with the whip and goad from the driver. Where he had passed, the ground was the playing field of Rudra: elephants without trunks or tusks, horses without hooves or necks, chariots in splinters, men with their entrails out, bodies by the hundred and the thousand, some lying still and some still moving. Severed trunks lay about like snakes and severed heads like lotuses strung for a garland, and the gold of crowns and armlets and harness made the earth as bright as a new bride. Through it he set a river running, a river like the dreadful Vaitarani itself. Marrow and fat were its mud and blood was its current. Hair was its weed, heads and arms the stones along its banks, umbrellas and bows its waves, the carcasses of horses its shores, and broken chariots floated on it like rafts by the hundred. Crows, jackals and vultures were the crocodiles and sharks of it, and ghouls danced beside it. A panic of a kind they had never known took hold of the Kurus.

He passed the great chariots one by one as the noon sun passes over men who cannot look up at it. He gave Ashvatthama fifty arrows, Vrishasena three, Kripa nine, and those nine gently, Shalya sixteen, Karna thirty-two, and the Sindhu king sixty-four, and then he roared like a lion. Jayadratha could no more bear it than an elephant can bear the hook. From under his banner with the boar on it he shot back, long straight arrows fletched with vulture feathers, three into Krishna, six into Arjuna, eight into the horses, one into the standard. Arjuna knocked the rest aside, and with two arrows loosed in the same instant he took off the head of Jayadratha’s charioteer and cut down the boar banner, which came down like a falling flame.

And the sun kept dropping. Krishna spoke quickly. “Look, Partha. Six great chariot fighters have put the Sindhu king in the middle of them, and he stands there afraid. You will not kill him without first beating all six, even if you fight without drawing breath. So I am going to use yoga to cover the sun. He will think it has set. He wants so much to live that in his joy he will stop hiding, and that will be his death. Use that moment and strike. And do not stop your own work in the belief that the sun has truly set.” Arjuna said, “Let it be so.” Then Krishna, who is also called Hari, the lord of all who practice yoga, made the darkness. The Kaurava warriors could not see the sun, and joy filled them: the day was over, and Partha would have to lay down his life. They stood with their heads thrown back, every one of them, staring at the sky. King Jayadratha stood the same way, looking for the sun.

“See him,” Krishna said. “The Sindhu king has put away his fear of you and is looking at the sky. This is the hour to kill that wretch. Cut off his head, quickly, and make your vow true.” Arjuna went in. His arrows shone like fire. He put twenty into Kripa, fifty into Karna, six each into Shalya and Duryodhana, eight into Vrishasena and sixty into Jayadratha himself, and when the guard recovered and poured arrows over him he lost his temper and wove a net of shafts across them all. The troops around the Sindhu king broke and ran, and ran so wildly that no two men could be seen running together. What Arjuna did in those minutes, Sanjaya said, had never been done before and would not be done again. Like Rudra killing at the end of time he struck down elephant and rider, horse and horseman, chariot fighter and driver, and Sanjaya did not see one man or one animal there without an arrow in it. In the dust and the darkness the Kauravas could not tell each other apart. Blood fell so heavily that it laid the dust, and chariot wheels sank in it to the hub. Riderless elephants trampled their own lines, and men crawled under the bodies of dead ones to hide. Then Arjuna came to the six. He cut Karna’s bow and Vrishasena’s, threw Shalya’s driver from his seat with a broad-headed arrow, and drove shaft after shaft into Kripa and Ashvatthama, uncle and nephew, until nothing stood between him and the man he had come for.

A sub-tale: the darkness of that evening was Krishna’s work from first to last. By yoga he covered the sun while it still stood above the western hills, so that the men guarding Jayadratha believed the day was over and the vow had failed. He told Arjuna beforehand what he was about to do, and warned him to keep striking and to give no thought to a sunset that only seemed. Once Jayadratha was dead he drew the darkness back, and the Kauravas learned then what they had been looking at.

The gist: Arjuna looses the weapon of Indra and turns the field into a river of blood, shoots down Jayadratha’s driver and boar banner, and still cannot get past the six who guard him before sunset. Krishna covers the sun by yoga. The Kauravas, sure that the day has ended, throw back their heads to look at the sky, and Jayadratha, his fear gone, does the same.

The slaying of Jayadratha, and the bursting of Vriddhakshatra’s head

Arjuna took out an arrow he had been keeping. It had the look of Indra’s thunderbolt and could bear any strain a bow could put on it; it had been honored daily with incense and garlands of flowers, and now he charged it with mantras until it carried the force of the thunderbolt itself. When that burning shaft was laid on Gandiva’s string, loud voices cried out in the sky. Krishna spoke again, fast. “Dhananjaya, cut off the head of that evil man now. The sun is about to touch the western mountain. But first hear what I have to tell you about the manner of his death.

“His father is Vriddhakshatra, a king the whole world knows, who waited many years for this son. When the boy was born, a voice with no body behind it, deep as cloud or drum, told the old king that his son would be a credit to his blood, well conducted, self-restrained, a Kshatriya whom heroes would honor, and that one day, in the thick of a battle, some great Kshatriya famous through the world would cut off his head in anger. Vriddhakshatra thought about that for some time. Then, because he loved his son past reason, he called his kinsmen together and said, ‘The man who makes my son’s head fall to the earth, while my son is straining in battle under a heavy burden, will have his own head burst into a hundred pieces.’ He set Jayadratha on the throne and went away to the forest to practice austerities. He is there now, performing the hardest of penances, just outside this very Samantapanchaka. So do this, brother of Bhima. When you have cut off Jayadratha’s head, use that terrible celestial weapon of yours to carry it, earrings and all, into the lap of Vriddhakshatra himself. If you let it drop to the ground, your own head will split into a hundred pieces, and there is no doubt of it. And do it in such a way that the old Sindhu king does not know it has been done. There is nothing in the three worlds that you cannot do, son of Indra.”

Arjuna ran his tongue over the corners of his mouth and loosed. The arrow left Gandiva and took Jayadratha’s head from his shoulders as a hawk takes a small bird from the top of a tree. It did not fall. Arjuna shot again and again, each arrow catching the head and passing it on, and so, to the grief of his enemies and the joy of his friends, he drove it through the air and out beyond the bounds of Samantapanchaka. At that hour King Vriddhakshatra, father of the blind king’s son-in-law, was sitting at his evening prayers. The head came down into his lap, with its black hair and its earrings, and the old man, deep in his prayer, did not see it. He finished. He stood up. The head rolled from his lap and struck the ground, and in the instant it touched earth the head of Vriddhakshatra burst into a hundred pieces. Every creature that saw it was struck with wonder, and they praised Krishna and Arjuna together.

With the Sindhu king dead, Krishna withdrew the darkness he had made, and the sons of Dhritarashtra and their followers learned that the night they had rejoiced in was his illusion and nothing more. The true sunset was still to come. So Jayadratha died at the hands of Arjuna, whose power no one can measure: Dhritarashtra’s own son-in-law, who, as Sanjaya told the king, had been the cause of eight akshauhinis of troops being slaughtered. The king’s sons looked at the body and wept. Krishna blew his conch, and Arjuna blew his, and Bhima, to send word to Yudhishthira, filled the sky with a lion’s roar. Far behind them Yudhishthira heard that roar and understood that the Sindhu king was dead. He had the drums and the other instruments sounded to put heart into his own men, and he turned the army on Drona.

The gist: under the false darkness, Arjuna cuts off Jayadratha’s head with a mantra-charged arrow and, as Krishna has told him to, keeps it in the air with arrow after arrow until it drops into the lap of Vriddhakshatra, who is at his evening prayers outside Samantapanchaka. When the old man rises, the head falls to the ground, and by his own pronouncement his head bursts into a hundred pieces. Krishna withdraws the darkness. The vow is kept before the true sunset.

The fighting after Jayadratha’s death, and the sunset

The men who had failed to save Jayadratha turned on his killer. Kripa, son of Sharadvat, covered Arjuna with a dense shower of arrows, and Ashvatthama drove at him from the other side, so that the two chariots had him between them. Kripa had been Arjuna’s teacher, and Ashvatthama was the son of Drona, his other teacher, and Arjuna did not want either man dead. He turned their weapons aside and answered as a master answers pupils, with arrows sent softly. There were a great many of them all the same. Kripa lost his strength and fainted on the floor of his chariot; his driver, believing him killed, carried him out of the fight, and Ashvatthama, seeing his uncle go, fled as well. Arjuna stood on his chariot with tears on his face. “Vidura saw all this,” he said. “On the day that wretched Suyodhana was born, he told Dhritarashtra to put the child to death, because through him a great ruin would come on the greatest of the Kurus. It has come. It is because of that man that I see my own teacher stretched on a bed of arrows. A curse on the Kshatriya’s way of life, and on my strength and skill. Who but a man like me would fight a Brahmin who is also his teacher? Kripa is a seer’s son. He is my teacher and Drona’s dear friend, and he lies senseless on his chariot with my arrows in him. It hurts me more than the killing of my own son. Look at him, Krishna. Those who repay their teachers with gifts become like gods, and those who strike them go to hell, and I have surely earned hell today. When I sat at his feet learning arms, he said to me, ‘Never strike your teacher, child of Kuru.’ I have disobeyed him. I bow to that son of Gotama, who never turned his back in battle. Shame on me.”

He was still grieving when Karna, who had seen the Sindhu king fall, came charging across the field, and the two Panchala princes and Satyaki moved to meet him. Arjuna smiled and turned to Krishna. “Adhiratha’s son is making for Satyaki. He cannot stomach the death of Bhurishravas. Drive me there, Janardana. I do not want Karna sending the Satvata down the same road.” Krishna refused. “Satyaki is a match for Karna by himself, son of Pandu, and he will have Drupada’s two sons beside him. This is no time for you to fight Karna. He is carrying the dart that Vasava gave him, a thing that blazes like a great meteor. He worships it, and he is keeping it for you. Let him go at the Satvata as he likes. I know that wicked man’s hour, Partha, the hour when your arrows will throw him from his chariot.”

Dhritarashtra asked the obvious question: Satyaki had no chariot, so on what did he fight? Sanjaya told him that Krishna, who knows what has been and what will be, had known in his heart before the day began that Bhurishravas would overcome Satyaki, and had given his own charioteer, Daruka, an order the day before: “Have my chariot ready and equipped tomorrow.” Now, seeing Satyaki on foot and Karna coming, Krishna blew his conch in the note called rishabha. Daruka heard, understood, and brought up Krishna’s own chariot under its tall golden standard, bright as fire, drawn by the four horses Shaibya, Sugriva, Meghapushpa and Balahaka in harness of gold. With Krishna’s leave Satyaki mounted it and drove at Karna behind a cloud of arrows, and Yudhamanyu and Uttamaujas left their places at Arjuna’s wheels and went with him. Karna met them shooting. Sanjaya said that nothing like the fight that followed had been heard of on earth or in heaven. Chariots, horses, elephants and foot soldiers stood still to look at it, and at Daruka’s hands on the reins as much as at the two fighters: he sent that chariot forward and back and sideways, wheeled it in circles, and stopped it dead, while gods, gandharvas and danavas watched from the air.

Karna had a death to pay for, since it was Satyaki who had killed the Kuru champion Jalasandha earlier that day, and he came on hissing like a snake, with a look that seemed meant to burn. Again and again he rushed, and Satyaki took each rush as one elephant takes another on its tusks. Then Satyaki went to work with shafts made wholly of iron. He put them into every limb Karna had. A broad-headed arrow threw Karna’s driver from his seat, four arrows killed the four white horses, and a hundred more cut Karna’s standard into a hundred pieces, and Karna stood without a chariot in full view of Duryodhana. A cry went up from the whole Kaurava army. Vrishasena, Shalya and Ashvatthama closed around Satyaki, and in the confusion Karna, weak with wounds and breathing hard, climbed onto Duryodhana’s own chariot, thinking of the friendship that had bound him to the king since boyhood and of the kingdom he had promised to win for him. The king’s brothers, with Duhshasana at their head, were at Satyaki’s mercy then, and he did not kill them. He took their chariots and left them their lives, because Bhima had sworn to kill the sons of Dhritarashtra himself, as Arjuna, at the second dice game, had sworn to kill Karna. Ashvatthama, Kritavarma and hundreds of other Kshatriyas tried to bring Satyaki down, and he beat them all with one bow, smiling. There are three great bowmen in this world, Sanjaya told the king: Krishna, Arjuna and Satyaki, and no fourth is to be seen. By then the day had only moments left in it.

The gist: after Jayadratha falls, Arjuna shoots his old teacher Kripa senseless without meaning to and curses his own calling. Karna rides at Satyaki, and Krishna keeps Arjuna out of it because of the dart of Indra that Karna is saving for him. Satyaki fights from Krishna’s own chariot, which Daruka has ready on an order given the day before, and leaves Karna without horses, driver or standard, sparing the king’s brothers for the sake of Bhima’s vow.

Satyaki’s new chariot, and the cleverness of Daruka’s younger brother

The blind king was not done with Satyaki. “So Satyaki, proud of his arms and Vasudeva’s equal in battle, climbed onto Vasudeva’s own unconquerable chariot, with Daruka at the reins, and stripped Karna of his,” Dhritarashtra said. “Did he ride some other chariot after that? I want to hear it, Sanjaya. You tell these things well, and I hold that man’s strength to be more than anyone can bear.”

Sanjaya told him how it had gone. Daruka had a younger brother, a quick-witted man, and he lost no time in bringing up a second chariot for Satyaki, fitted with everything a fighter needs. Its shafts were made fast with chains of iron and gold and with bands of silk. A thousand stars were worked on it, banners flew from it, and the standard carried the figure of a lion. The horses in its traces were as fast as the wind and wore harness of gold, and when it moved, the rattle of it was as deep as thunder. Satyaki mounted this chariot and drove into the Kaurava troops, and Daruka, free to go where he pleased, went back to Krishna’s side.

Karna was given a new chariot as well. Four horses of the best blood drew it, white as conch shells or as milk, in trappings of gold. Its side guard and its standard were golden, banners flew above it, engines of war were mounted on it, an excellent driver held the reins, and weapons of every kind were stacked in it in plenty. Karna climbed aboard and went back at his enemies.

Sanjaya had answered what he was asked, and he did not leave it there. He told the king to hear, once more, the size of the ruin his own bad policy had bred. Thirty-one of his sons had died at Bhima’s hands, Durmukha foremost among them, every one of them trained in all the ways of war. Satyaki and Arjuna, fighting alongside Bhima, had killed heroes by the hundred, and Bhagadatta with them. That, Sanjaya said, was how the destruction born of the king’s own counsels had begun.

A key to reading this (lineage): Satyaki, also called Yuyudhana, is a Vrishni of the Yadu line and so one of Krishna’s own people; the names Satvata, Madhava and Shini’s grandson all point to him. Karna is called the Suta’s son, Adhiratha’s son and Radha’s son after the charioteer Adhiratha and his wife Radha, who found him as an infant and brought him up, and Vikartana’s son after the Sun. Vrisha and Vasushena are also his names.

The gist: the king asks what Satyaki rode once Krishna’s chariot went back to its owner, and Sanjaya describes the lion-bannered chariot that Daruka’s younger brother brought him, and the white-horsed one brought for Karna. Then he gives Dhritarashtra the count: thirty-one sons killed by Bhima alone, and the ruin only starting.

Bhima’s anguish, and Arjuna’s vow to kill Vrishasena

Dhritarashtra asked, “When the fighting between their heroes and mine stood like that, what did Bhima do? Tell me all of it, Sanjaya.”

Sanjaya went back to the man Karna had left standing among the dead elephants. Bhima had lost his chariot, and the things Karna had said to him were still lodged in him like arrows. Shaking with rage, he went to Arjuna. “Dhananjaya, you were looking on when Karna said it to me, and said it more than once: ‘Eunuch. Fool. Glutton. You have no skill with weapons. Do not fight, child. You cannot carry the weight of a battle.’ I have sworn that any man who speaks to me so will die by my hand, and Karna has spoken so. You know the vow I took together with you, and you remember what I said that day. See to it, son of Kunti, that my vow does not turn out a lie, and that yours does not. Do whatever will make my word come true.”

Arjuna heard his brother out. Then he drove up close to Karna and spoke. “Karna, you fight falsely. Son of a Suta, you sing your own praise. Your understanding is crooked, so listen to what I tell you. A brave man meets one of two things in battle, victory or defeat, and neither is certain, son of Radha, even when Indra himself is the one fighting. Yuyudhana took your chariot from you. Your senses had left you and you stood at the door of death. He remembered that I have sworn to kill you, and for that reason only he let you go with your life.

“It is true that you managed to take Bhimasena’s chariot from him. What you said to him afterward was a sin. Men who are truly good and truly brave do not boast when they have beaten an enemy, and they do not speak ill of anyone. You know very little, son of a Suta, and that is why such words come out of you. And the names you threw at Bhimasena while he fought, a man of great courage who keeps to the ways of the righteous, were not even true. Before all these troops, before Keshava, before me, Bhimasena took your chariot from you many times over. That son of Pandu never gave you one hard word.

“You gave Vrikodara many. And you, with others, killed Subhadra’s son where I could not see it. For those offenses you will be paid today. It was for your own destruction, you wretch, that you cut Abhimanyu’s bow that day. For that, man of small sense, I will kill you, with your followers, your troops and your animals. Do now whatever you have left to do, because a great calamity is hanging over you. I will kill Vrishasena in battle while you watch. Every other king who is fool enough to come against me I will send to the house of Yama. I say this in truth, with my hand on my weapon. You are a fool, without wisdom, and swollen with vanity, and I tell you that when Duryodhana sees you lying on this field he will cry aloud.”

A sub-tale: this is the second oath that Abhimanyu’s death draws out of his father. The first, the death of Jayadratha before sunset, has just been kept. The second is aimed at Karna through his son: Karna and the others killed Arjuna’s boy where Arjuna could not see it, and so Arjuna swears to kill Vrishasena with Karna looking on. The epic keeps that promise much later, in the Karna Parva, where Vrishasena falls to Arjuna’s arrows before his father’s eyes.

When Arjuna had sworn the death of Karna’s son, a loud and terrible uproar rose among the chariot fighters. And in that frightful hour, with confusion spreading on every side, the thousand-rayed sun dimmed his light and went down behind the western hills.

The gist: Bhima, without a chariot and smarting from Karna’s taunts, reminds Arjuna of the vows the two of them share. Arjuna tells Karna to his face that Satyaki spared him only for the sake of Arjuna’s oath, that mocking Bhima was a sin, and that for Abhimanyu’s death he will kill Vrishasena before Karna’s eyes. On that oath the true sun sets.

Keshava’s felicitation, and the sight of the field

Then Krishna, standing at the front of the battle, put his arms around Arjuna, whose oath was kept. “Jishnu, by good fortune your great vow is fulfilled. By good fortune Vriddhakshatra is dead together with his son. The general of the gods himself, if he had to face the army of Dhritarashtra’s sons, would lose his wits in the fight; I have no doubt of that. Search the three worlds, even in thought, and I can find no one except you who could have fought this host. Duryodhana called many kings here, men of great prowess, your equals or more than your equals, and in all their armor they could not come near you once you were angry. Your force and your strength are those of Rudra, or of Death. No one else could do in battle what you did today, alone and with no one at your side. I will praise you like this again when the evil-hearted Karna has been killed with his followers. I will sing your fame when that enemy has been beaten and lies dead.”

Arjuna answered him. “It was by your grace, Madhava, that I kept this vow, which the gods themselves would have found hard to keep. Those who have you for their lord, Keshava, win, and there is nothing to wonder at in their winning. By your grace Yudhishthira will have the whole earth. All of this comes from your power, Vrishni. The victory is yours. Our good fortune is your charge, and we are your servants, slayer of Madhu.”

Krishna smiled a small smile at that and set the horses walking. As they went, he showed Arjuna the field, and it was crowded with cruel sights.

“Kings who wanted victory, or a name the whole world would know, are lying on the ground with your arrows in them,” Krishna said. “Their weapons and their ornaments are scattered. Their horses, chariots and elephants are broken and torn. Their armor is pierced or split open, and they have come to the last of grief. Some of them are still breathing and some are dead, and the dead have such a light on them still that they look alive. See how the earth is covered with their gold-winged arrows, with all their other weapons for striking and for guarding, and with the animals that died under them.

“The earth is shining. It shines with coats of mail and strings of gems, with heads that still wear their earrings, with turbans and diadems, with wreaths of flowers and the jewels from crowns, with neck chains and armlets and collars of gold and every other kind of ornament. It is strewn with quivers, with standards and banners, with the fittings, seats, poles and crests of chariots, with broken wheels and fine axles past counting, with yokes and the harness of horses, with belts and bows and arrows, with the housings of elephants, with spiked maces and iron hooks, with darts and short arrows, with spears and pikes, with clubs, with shataghnis and bhushundis, with swords and axes, with cudgels short and heavy, with mallets and maces, with whips bound in gold, with the bells and trappings of great elephants, with garlands, and with rich cloth that has slipped from the bodies of men and beasts. With all of that on it, it is as bright as the sky in autumn, full of planets and stars.

“Kings who ruled the earth were killed for the earth, and now they sleep on her with their arms and legs around her, as a man holds a wife he loves. Look at the elephants, each one as big as Airavata, each one a hill. Blood runs out of the holes that weapons made in them the way red chalk runs in streams from the caves and clefts of a mountain. See them, hero, those huge animals, stuck with arrows and jerking on the ground. See the horses lying there in their golden trappings. And look, Partha, at the chariots, with no fighter and no driver left in them. They looked once like the vehicles of the gods, or like the cloud shapes in an evening sky. They lie on the ground now with their standards, banners, axles and yokes hacked to pieces and their poles and crests snapped. The foot soldiers who carried bows and shields have been killed by the hundred and the thousand, and they lie soaked in blood, holding the earth with every limb, their hair gray with dust.

“Look at those warriors whose bodies your weapons have torn. Look at the ground itself. Yak-tail whisks and fans are scattered across it, and umbrellas and standards, horses and chariots and elephants, blankets of many kinds, reins, fine robes and costly chariot fenders, so that it seems to be spread with an embroidered cloth. Men who fell from the backs of well-harnessed elephants lie beside the animals they rode, like lions struck by lightning and thrown from a mountain top. Riders and foot soldiers lie in heaps, mixed with their horses and their bows, covered in blood. The face of the earth is terrible to look at. It is heaped with dead elephants, horses and chariot fighters, it is deep in a mud of blood and fat and rotting flesh, and dogs, wolves, ghouls and the creatures that walk by night are running across it in delight. A deed like this, one that makes a man’s name, could be done on a battlefield by you alone, or by Indra, the king of the gods, who kills the Daityas and the Danavas in great battle.”

So, Sanjaya said, Krishna showed the field to the diademed Arjuna. Then he blew Panchajanya, and the soldiers of the Pandava army, wild with happiness, blew their own conches in answer. When Arjuna had seen it all, Krishna turned the horses and drove fast toward Yudhishthira, whom men called Ajatashatru, the king without an enemy, to tell him that Jayadratha was dead.

A key to reading this (concept): Krishna’s words in the embrace, that Vriddhakshatra has been killed together with his son, look back to the old king’s pronouncement over the infant Jayadratha: whoever made that head fall to the earth would have his own head burst into a hundred pieces. Arjuna therefore kept the severed head in the air with his arrows and set it down in the lap of Vriddhakshatra as he sat at prayer, and when the old man stood up, the head fell from his own lap to the ground. The curse he had laid on his son’s killer struck him.

The gist: Krishna embraces Arjuna and tells him that no one else in the three worlds could have fought this army, and Arjuna answers that the victory belongs to Krishna’s grace. Then, driving slowly, Krishna shows him the field he has made: kings asleep on the earth they died for, elephants bleeding like hillsides, chariots in pieces, the ground bright with gold and thick with scavengers. He blows Panchajanya and drives to give Yudhishthira the news.

Yudhishthira’s joy, and his praise of Krishna

Sanjaya told the king what happened when the news arrived. Krishna came to Yudhishthira, the son of Dharma, with gladness in his face, paid him honor, and said, “King of kings, by good fortune your prosperity is growing. Your enemy is dead. By good fortune your younger brother has kept his vow.” Yudhishthira came down from his chariot. Tears of joy were standing in his eyes, and he put his arms around the two Krishnas, as Vasudeva and Arjuna were called together, and wiped his own bright face, and spoke to them both.

“Great warriors, by good fortune I see you both again with your task done. By good fortune that sinful wretch, the king of the Sindhus, is dead. By good fortune, Krishnas, you have done the thing that fills me with happiness, and by good fortune our enemies are sunk in an ocean of grief. You, slayer of Madhu, are the sovereign lord of all the worlds, and those who have you for their guide find nothing in the three worlds beyond their reach. By your grace, Govinda, we will conquer our enemies as Indra conquered the Danavas in the old days.

“Let it be the conquest of this world or the conquest of all three, child of the Vrishnis: for those with whom you are pleased, it is certain. No sin can touch them and no defeat can come to them in battle. It was by your grace, Hrishikesha, that Shakra became chief of the gods. By your grace that blessed one won the sovereignty of the three worlds on the field of battle, and by your grace he gained immortality and enjoys worlds that do not end. With a strength that had its source in your grace he killed the Daityas by the thousand and took the lordship of heaven.

“By your grace, Hrishikesha, this universe of things that move and things that stand keeps to its ordained course and is busy with prayer and with offerings poured on the fire. In the beginning it was wrapped in darkness, one vast sheet of water, and by your grace it became manifest. You are the maker of all the worlds. You are the Supreme Soul, and you do not change. Those who see you are never bewildered. You are the highest God, the God of gods, the Eternal, and those who take refuge in you are never bewildered. Without beginning and without death, you are divine, the creator of all the worlds, the unchanging one, and those who are devoted to you cross over every difficulty.

“You are the Supreme, the Ancient One, the divine Being, that which is higher than the highest, and the one who reaches that supreme Self of yours is marked for the highest good. The four Vedas sing of you; it is you they sing. Taking shelter in you I will come to a prosperity that has no rival. You are the supreme God and the God of the highest gods, the lord of winged creatures and the lord of all men, the highest master of everything that is. I bow to you, best of beings. You are the Lord and the Lord of lords. Prosperity to you, Madhava. Large-eyed one, soul of the universe, you are the source of all things. And whoever is a friend of Dhananjaya, or works for Dhananjaya’s good, comes to you, who are Dhananjaya’s teacher, and finds happiness.”

Krishna and Arjuna answered the king gladly, and they gave the credit back to him. “The sinful King Jayadratha was burned up in the fire of your anger. The army of Dhritarashtra’s sons is huge and swollen with pride, and all the same it is being struck down, killed and wiped out, and it is your anger that is destroying the Kauravas. You can kill with your eyes alone. Suyodhana was evil-minded enough to anger you, and he will have to lay down his life in battle with his friends and his kinsmen. Bhishma, the grandsire of the Kurus, whom no one could conquer, lies on a bed of arrows today: your anger killed him first, and then the gods themselves struck him down.

“Those who have you for an enemy, son of Pandu, cannot win in battle, and death is waiting for them. The man you are angry with soon loses his kingdom, his life, the people he loves, his children and every kind of happiness. You keep the duties of a king. Since you are angry with the Kauravas, we count them as lost already, with their sons and their kin.”

Then Bhima and Satyaki came in, both of them cut all over with arrows, and bowed to their elder. The two great bowmen sat down on the ground with the Panchalas around them. Yudhishthira saw them waiting there with their palms joined, full of joy, alive, and he greeted them both.

“By good fortune I see the two of you come back alive out of that sea of troops, where Drona was a crocodile no one could master and the son of Hridika a savage shark. By good fortune you have beaten all the kings of the earth, and I see you victorious. By good fortune Drona has been beaten in battle, and Hridika’s mighty son. By good fortune Karna has been beaten with barbed arrows, and Shalya was forced by the two of you to turn away from the field. By good fortune I see you both returned whole, masters of the chariot and of war. You crossed that ocean of an army because I ordered it. You went into battle to do me honor. You are heroes who love a fight, and you are as dear to me as my own life. By good fortune I see you both.”

He embraced them both, Satyaki and Bhima, and wept for joy. Gladness went through the whole Pandava army after that, and every man in it turned his mind to battle again.

The gist: Krishna brings Yudhishthira the news, and the king comes down from his chariot, embraces Krishna and Arjuna, and praises Krishna as the maker of the worlds, the Supreme Soul of whom the four Vedas sing, by whose grace Indra rules heaven. The two answer that it is Yudhishthira’s own anger that is consuming the Kauravas. Bhima and Satyaki arrive wounded, and the king welcomes them back from an army he likens to a sea with Drona and Kritavarma for its beasts.

Suyodhana’s lament, and his self-reproach before Drona

On the other side of the field, Sanjaya said, the king’s son was weeping. When the Sindhu king fell, Suyodhana’s face ran with tears, and he breathed in hot, short gusts like a snake whose fangs have been broken. He had wronged the whole world, and now grief had him by the throat. He looked at what Arjuna, Bhima and Satyaki had done to his army that day, and the color went out of him. He was dejected and sick at heart, and his eyes kept filling. It came to him that there was no fighter on the earth to set beside Arjuna, and that neither Drona, nor Radha’s son, nor Ashvatthama, nor Kripa could stand in front of that man once he was angry.

He said it to himself. “Partha beat every great chariot fighter I have and killed the Sindhu king, and no one could stop him. The Pandavas have all but wiped out this huge army of mine. I do not believe anyone could protect it now, even Purandara himself. I went into this war leaning on one man. Karna has been beaten in battle, and Jayadratha is dead. When Krishna came to me to sue for peace, it was because I had Karna that I counted him as a straw. And that Karna has been beaten in battle.”

With that grief working in him, the man who had wronged the whole world went to find Drona. He came to the teacher and told him all of it: the great slaughter of the Kurus, the victory of their enemies, and the disaster that had fallen on the sons of Dhritarashtra.

“Teacher, look at this slaughter of kings. I came to this war with my grandfather, the heroic Bhishma, at the head of my army. Shikhandi killed him, and Shikhandi, with that ambition satisfied, stands at the very front of their troops with all the Panchalas around him, hungry for another triumph. Another of your pupils, Savyasachi, whom no one can beat, has killed seven akshauhinis of my soldiers and sent King Jayadratha to the house of Yama. Those allies of mine wanted my victory and worked always for my good, and they have gone to Yama for it. How am I ever to pay what I owe them? Kings who wanted to rule the earth are lying on the earth, with all their earthly fortune left behind.

“I am a coward, and that is the truth. I have brought about such a killing of friends that I dare not think even a hundred horse sacrifices could make me clean. I am greedy. I am sinful. I have trampled on what is right. It is through my doing, and mine alone, that these kings who hoped for victory have gone to the house of Yama. Why does the earth not open a hole for me, here in front of these kings, sinful as my conduct is, and I the one who set kinsmen at each other’s throats? And my grandfather, lying there with his eyes red as blood, the unconquered man who has already won the next world: when he sees me among the kings, what will he say to me?

“Look at Jalasandha, that great bowman, killed by Satyaki. He came to this battle for my sake, proudly, ready to lay down his life. The king of the Kambojas is dead. Alambusha is dead, and many others who stood with me. When I see that, what reason do I have left for keeping my own life? They fought for me and did not turn back. They strained with all their strength to beat my enemies, and they died of it. Today I will free myself of what I owe them. I will put out the whole of my strength, and I will go to the Yamuna and satisfy them with offerings of water.

“I tell you truly, first of all who bear arms, and I swear it by the good I have done, by my courage and by my sons: either I will kill all the Panchalas together with the Pandavas and have peace of mind, or they will kill me and I will go to the worlds where those allies of mine have gone. I will follow the men Arjuna killed while they were fighting for me. The friends who are left can see that we do not protect them well, and they no longer wish to stand with us. They have begun to think the Pandavas the better choice.

“And you, whose aim never fails, have arranged our destruction in this war, because you go easy on Arjuna. He is your pupil. That is why everyone who tried to win for us is dead, and why it seems that Karna is the only one left who wants us to win. A man of weak understanding who takes someone for a friend without testing him, and then trusts him with work that only a friend should do, is sure to be hurt. That is how my best friend has handled this affair of mine. I am greedy beyond measure, sinful, crooked at heart, and ruled by avarice. King Jayadratha has been killed, and Somadatta’s son, that great fighter, and the Abhishahas, the Shurasenas, the Shibis and the Vasatis. I am going today to the place where they have gone, those men whom Arjuna killed as they fought for me. With them gone I have no use for life. Teacher of the sons of Pandu, give me your leave.”

A sub-tale: in this speech Duryodhana says of himself what his enemies have said of him. He calls himself a coward, greedy, sinful, crooked at heart, the man who stirred kinsmen to war; he wants the earth to open under him; he cannot think how he will meet the eyes of Bhishma, who lies dying on his bed of arrows. In the same breath he tells Drona that the teacher has gone easy on Arjuna and so caused the deaths of his allies, and what he asks leave for is to kill the Pandavas or die.

A key to reading this (numbers in modern terms): Duryodhana speaks of Savyasachi, the archer who shoots with either hand, destroying seven akshauhinis of troops. By the count the Mahabharata itself gives, one akshauhini is 21,870 chariots, the same number of elephants, 65,610 horses and 109,350 foot soldiers, which makes 218,700 in all. Seven of them come to about one and a half million. Sanjaya, earlier on this same evening, put the cost of Jayadratha at eight.

The gist: Jayadratha’s death breaks Duryodhana. He goes to Drona, calls himself a coward and a sinner who has led his friends to their deaths, names the dead, and swears by his sons to kill the Panchalas and the Pandavas or follow his allies to the next world. Along with the self-reproach he makes a charge: Drona has gone easy on his pupil Arjuna.

Drona’s reply, and the memory of Vidura’s unheeded words

Dhritarashtra asked, “After Savyasachi had killed the Sindhu king, and after Bhurishravas had fallen, what was the state of your own minds? And when Duryodhana had spoken to Drona like that, in the middle of the Kurus, what did the teacher say to him? Tell me all of it, Sanjaya.”

Sanjaya said that a great wailing went up in the Kaurava army after Bhurishravas and the Sindhu king were killed. Every man there had lost respect for the counsels of the king’s son, those counsels that had cost the lives of leaders of men by the hundred. Drona listened to what Duryodhana said to him, and it filled him with grief. He thought for a little while, and then he answered, in great pain.

“Why do you stab me with words like these, Duryodhana? I told you long ago that Arjuna cannot be beaten in battle. Shikhandi killed Bhishma, and it was the diademed Arjuna who shielded Shikhandi while he did it. That one deed was test enough of what Arjuna is in a fight. Neither gods nor Danavas could defeat Bhishma, and when I saw him truly killed in battle, I knew then that this army of the Bharatas was doomed. In all three worlds he was the one we held to be the first of heroes. He has fallen. Whom is there left for us to lean on?

“Those dice that Shakuni threw long ago in the assembly of the Kurus were never dice. They were sharp arrows, made to kill, and it is those arrows, with Arjuna behind them now, that are killing us. Vidura told you what they were, and you would not understand him. Wise Vidura wept as he spoke to you that day, and the good words he said, words that urged peace, you would not hear. The disaster he foretold has arrived. This frightful killing, Duryodhana, is what has come of your disobeying him. A fool who brushes aside the sound advice of friends he can trust, and follows his own opinion, soon comes to a pitiable end.

“And this great evil, son of Gandhari: Draupadi, who deserved no such treatment, a woman born in a noble house and given to every virtue, was dragged into the assembly of the Kurus while we looked on. Know that what you are suffering for it now is small. Worse is waiting for you in the next world. You beat the Pandavas at dice by cheating and sent them into the forest dressed in deerskins. They have always kept to what is right, and they are like sons to me. What Brahmin in this world, except me, would try to do them harm?

“With Dhritarashtra’s approval, in the middle of the Kuru assembly, you and your helper Shakuni roused the anger of the Pandavas. Karna joined Duhshasana and fanned it. You brushed aside what Vidura said and fanned it yourself, again and again. Then today all of you gathered around Arjuna with every care, determined to stand by the Sindhu king. Why, then, have all of you been beaten? Why has Jayadratha been killed? You are alive, Kauravya, and Karna, and Kripa, and Shalya, and Ashvatthama. With all of you alive, how did the Sindhu king come to die? The kings on your side spent the whole of their fierce strength to save him. Why was he killed in the middle of them?

“King Jayadratha counted on me to bring him safe out of Arjuna’s hands, and the rescue he hoped for never came to him. I do not see safety for my own self, either. Until I have killed the Panchalas, and Shikhandi with them, I am a man sinking in the swamp that is Dhrishtadyumna. I failed to save the Sindhu king, descendant of Bharata, and I am burning with grief over it. Why do you stab me with words on top of that? You no longer see the golden standards of Bhishma on this field, Bhishma whose aim was sure and who never tired in battle. How can you hope for success? The Sindhu king and Bhurishravas have both been killed in the very middle of so many great chariot fighters. What do you imagine the end will be?

“Kripa is still alive, king, and he is a hard man to beat. He did not go down the road Jayadratha went, and for that I praise him highly. Bhishma did the hardest things ever done in war. The gods with Vasava at their head could not have killed him in battle, and I saw him killed, Kaurava, before your eyes and before the eyes of your younger brother Duhshasana. I thought that day that the Earth had abandoned you. Now look there. The troops of the Pandavas and the Srinjayas have joined together and are rushing at me. For your good, son of Dhritarashtra, I will not take off my armor until I have killed all the Panchalas.

“Go, king, and find my son Ashvatthama, who is here in this battle, and tell him that he must not let the Somakas go, even if it costs him his life. And tell him this from me: ‘Keep every instruction your father gave you. Be steady in humility, in self-restraint, in truth and in right conduct. Attend to dharma, to wealth and to pleasure, never neglecting dharma and wealth, and choose always the acts in which dharma comes first. Keep the Brahmins content with gifts. Every one of them deserves your worship. Never do anything that injures them, for they are like flames of fire.’

“As for me, with the wounds of your words in me I am going into the enemy’s army to give great battle. Go and protect your troops, Duryodhana, if you are able. The Kurus and the Srinjayas are both enraged, and they will fight on through the night.” With that Drona went out against the Pandavas, and he began to dim the Kshatriyas in front of him as the sun dims the stars.

A key to reading this (lineage): Drona is the son of the sage Bharadvaja, born, as the old account has it, from seed that the sage kept in a vessel, which is why he is called the jar-born. His wife Kripi is the daughter of Sharadvat of the line of Gotama and the sister of Kripa, so that Kripa is the maternal uncle of Drona’s son Ashvatthama. The two were the uncle and nephew whom Arjuna wounded together at the death of Jayadratha.

The gist: Arjuna was never beatable, Drona answers, and the army was doomed from the day Bhishma fell. He traces the slaughter to Shakuni’s dice, to Draupadi dragged into the hall, and to the weeping Vidura whose counsel of peace was refused, and he asks Duryodhana why Jayadratha died in the middle of all his guards. Then he declares that his armor stays on until the Panchalas are dead, sends his son a father’s instructions, and goes out to a battle that will run on into the night.

The Duryodhana and Karna dialogue, and Karna’s discourse on destiny

Drona’s words did their work, Sanjaya said. King Duryodhana was full of rage now, and his mind was set on fighting. But first he took his grievance to Karna. “Look at what has happened. The diademed son of Pandu, with Krishna and no one else to help him, broke into the array the teacher built, an array the gods themselves could not have pierced, and he killed the Sindhu king while Drona was fighting right there and many of our best were watching. Look, son of Radha, at all these great kings lying dead on the ground. Partha did it by himself, as a lion kills a herd of lesser animals, under the eyes of Drona and under mine, while we strained to stop him.

“The son of Shakra has left me a scrap of the army I had. Drona stood in his way. How, then, did Phalguna keep his vow and kill the Sindhu king? If Drona himself had not wished it, how could the son of Pandu have fought his way past his own teacher and broken an array that cannot be broken? The truth is that Phalguna is very dear to him. That is why he let him in without a fight. See how my luck runs. Drona promised the Sindhu king his protection, and then Drona opened the array to Arjuna.

“If he had let the Sindhu king go home at the start, none of this killing would have happened. Jayadratha wanted to go home. He wanted to live. I had Drona’s promise that he would be protected in battle, and I was the fool who stopped him from leaving. And today my brothers, Chitrasena first among them, have all died while we wretches stood and looked on.”

Karna would not have it. “Do not blame the teacher. That Brahmin is fighting with all the strength and courage he has, and he does not spare his own life. If Arjuna of the white horses got past him and into our array, no fault at all lies with Drona. Phalguna is a master of weapons. He is quick, he is young, he is a hero who has made every weapon his own, and no one moves as fast as he does. He came armed with the weapons of the gods, on a chariot with the ape on its banner and Krishna holding the reins, in armor nothing can pierce, with the celestial bow Gandiva, whose strength never fades, in his hand. He came scattering sharp arrows, proud of what his arms can do, and he passed Drona. There is nothing in that to wonder at.

“The teacher is old, king. He cannot move quickly, and his arms cannot keep at their work for long. That is how Phalguna, with his white horses and Krishna for a driver, got past him, and for that reason too I see no fault in Drona. All the same, since Arjuna did pass him and did get into our array, it seems that the teacher, for all his skill with weapons, is not able to beat the Pandavas in battle. I think that what fate has ordained never turns out otherwise.

“We fought with everything we had, Suyodhana, and the Sindhu king was killed all the same. It seems, then, that fate is all-powerful. You and all of us put out the last of our strength on that field, and fate undid the effort and did not smile on us. We have always worked to hurt the Pandavas, by deceit and by valor both. Whatever a man does while fate is against him, fate brings to nothing, however hard he strives at it. Even so, whatever a man of perseverance ought to do, he should do, and do without fear. Success rests with fate.

“The sons of Pritha were tricked by deceit, descendant of Bharata. They were given poison. They were burned in the house of lac. They were beaten at dice, and by the rules of statecraft they were driven into the forest. We did all of it with care, and fate made all of it useless. Fight on with resolve, king, and set fate at nothing. When you and they are both striving with all your prowess, fate may yet turn kind to the side that outdoes the other. The Pandavas have used no clever plan that came of a better understanding. And I do not see, hero, that you, who carry on the line of Kuru, have done anything foolish for want of understanding. Wise act or unwise, it is fate that settles what comes of it. Fate is bent on its own purposes, and it is awake when everything else is asleep.

“Your army was vast and your fighting men were many. That is how this war began. Their force was small, and ours, far larger and made up of men who strike hard, has been cut down by it to this. I am afraid it is fate at work, and that fate has undone everything we tried.”

They were still talking like this, Sanjaya told the king, when the Pandava divisions came into view, drawn up for battle. Then chariots met chariots and elephants met elephants, and a savage fight began between the two armies. And all of it, Sanjaya said to the old man in front of him, was the fruit of his own bad policy.

A key to reading this (concept): the word Karna keeps returning to is fate, and he sets it over against a man’s own effort. His reasoning is plain. The Kauravas tried everything, and he lists it without shame: the deceit, the poison, the house of lac, the dice, the exile. Everything failed, and so fate must be against them. He does not conclude that Duryodhana should stop. A man of perseverance does what he must without fear, he says, and fate may still favor whichever side outdoes the other.

The gist: Duryodhana tells Karna that Drona let Arjuna into the array because he loves him, and blames himself for keeping Jayadratha from going home. Karna defends the teacher: Arjuna is young, fast and divinely armed, Drona is old, and no fault lies with him. Karna lays the defeat on fate, which has undone the deceit, the poison, the house of lac and the dice alike, and still tells the king to fight on. While they talk, the Pandava army comes on again.

The Ghatotkacha-vadha Parva begins: Duryodhana’s fury and Yudhishthira’s counterstroke

Sanjaya took up the story at the hour when the day ought to have ended. Jayadratha was dead, the light was going, and the two armies stayed locked together on the plain. The Kaurava elephant corps, swollen with its own strength, was pressing the Pandava line back wherever the two met. Panchalas and Kauravas alike had settled it in their minds that they would see the next world that evening, and they fought like men competing for a place inside the wide kingdom of Yama, the god who receives the dead. Brave men sought out brave men, ran them through with arrows, lances, and darts, and sent each other quickly to Yama’s house. Chariot fighters closed with chariot fighters, and blood ran in a stream between the wheels. Elephants in rut drove their tusks into other elephants in rut. Horsemen who wanted a name for themselves speared and hacked other horsemen down in the crush with lances, darts, and battle-axes. The foot soldiers, hundreds of them at a time, ran at one another with weapons raised, again and again, and their courage held.

The hosts had become so tangled that a Panchala could be told from a Kuru only by what he shouted as he struck: the name of his people, the name of his family, his own name. Those shouted names, Sanjaya said, were all that he and the men beside him had to go by. The fighters went about the field without fear, dispatching one another with arrows, darts, and axes. Thousands of shafts were in the air, and with the sun now set the ten directions no longer stood out as they had by day. Into that dimming field Duryodhana drove his chariot. The killing of Jayadratha, the Sindhu king whom he himself had kept from going home, had filled him with a rage that left room for nothing else. He had resolved to lay down his life, and he went straight into the middle of the Pandava army.

The rattle of his wheels filled the ground and shook it as he came on. Where he struck the Pandava host the collision was terrible, and men died in great numbers. Duryodhana burned through the enemy ranks with his arrows the way the sun at noon burns everything its rays can reach, and the Pandavas found they could not even look at the cousin they still called brother. They gave up hope of beating him and began to think of leaving the field. The Panchalas, cut down by the gold-winged, fire-bright points that kept coming from his bow, ran in every direction.

Pandava soldiers dropped where those sharp shafts found them. Sanjaya told the king plainly that the Pandavas themselves had never done in battle what his royal son did in that hour. Their army looked like a lake of lotuses that an elephant has waded through, churned from bank to bank and trampled. It looked, too, like a lotus bed when sun and wind have drunk the water from under it and the flowers lose their beauty all at once. So the Pandava host withered under Duryodhana.

He counted out his arrows among their champions. Ten went into Bhimasena. Three each went into Nakula and Sahadeva, the twin sons of Madri. Virata and Drupada took six apiece, Shikhandi a hundred, Dhrishtadyumna seventy, Yudhishthira seven. The Kaikeyas and the Chedis he struck with sharp shafts beyond counting. Satyaki took five, each of Draupadi’s five sons three, and Ghatotkacha a few, and then Duryodhana roared like a lion. His fierce arrows went on cutting down other warriors by the hundred, and elephants and horses with them, until he seemed to be the Destroyer himself, out among living creatures in a rage.

Yudhishthira stopped it. While Duryodhana was still at this slaughter, the eldest son of Pandu loosed a pair of broad-headed arrows that cut Duryodhana’s bow, a weapon with gold laid along the back of its staff, into three pieces. Ten sharp arrows followed, shot with great force. They went through Duryodhana’s vital parts, came out the other side, and buried themselves in the earth one behind another in a straight line. The Pandava troops standing near closed around Yudhishthira the way the gods once closed around Indra when he set out to kill Vritra. Then Yudhishthira, a man who is hard to beat, sent one more fierce arrow at Duryodhana. It went deep, and Duryodhana sat down on the floor of his fine chariot.

A great shout went up from the Panchala troops, and the words in it were, “The king is killed!” The air was loud with the fierce whir of arrows. At that moment Drona showed himself in that part of the field. Duryodhana, meanwhile, had come back to his senses and taken a firm grip on a bow, and he rushed at Yudhishthira, calling, “Wait! Wait!” The Panchalas, who wanted the victory finished, surged forward at speed. Drona meant to save the Kuru prince, and he took the whole of their charge on himself. He began to destroy them the way the bright-rayed sun destroys clouds that a storm has already torn and scattered, and between the two sides, each as eager to fight as the other, a battle began in which the killing had no measure.

A sub-tale: the cry the Panchalas raise is false. Yudhishthira’s last arrow drops Duryodhana onto the floor of his chariot, and for a moment the Panchala troops believe he is dead. He recovers almost at once, takes up a bow, and goes for Yudhishthira shouting at him to wait. Between that false cry and the Panchala charge that follows it stands Drona, who appears at exactly this moment and receives all of them himself.

The gist: the Ghatotkacha-vadha Parva, the book of the killing of Ghatotkacha, opens here with the sun already down. Duryodhana, in a rage over Jayadratha and ready to die, drives into the Pandava army and wounds its leaders with counted arrows: ten for Bhima, a hundred for Shikhandi, seventy for Dhrishtadyumna, seven for Yudhishthira. Yudhishthira cuts his bow into three pieces, puts ten arrows through him, and with one more forces him to sit down in his chariot. The Panchalas shout that the king is killed and charge, and Drona arrives to meet them.

The terrible night battle begins

Dhritarashtra had not forgotten what Drona said before he rode off: that he would not take off his armor until he had killed all the Panchalas. Now the blind king asked what came of it. “Drona said all that to my son Duryodhana, who has never once obeyed me, and then that great archer went into the Pandava army in anger and ranged over the field on his chariot. How did the Pandavas try to stop him? Who guarded the right wheel of the teacher’s chariot in that dreadful battle? Who guarded the left while he cut the enemy down? Which brave men followed at his back as he fought, and who stood in front of him? When that unbeaten bowman went in among the Pandavas, dancing along the track of his own chariot, I think his enemies must have felt a deep cold come on them out of season. I think they shook like cattle left out in the winter wind. He burned up the Panchala troops like a fire running wild. How, then, did such a man come to his death?”

Sanjaya answered with the names of those who went against him. Arjuna had killed the Sindhu king as evening came on; he met Yudhishthira and the great archer Satyaki afterward, and then moved on Drona. Yudhishthira moved quickly against Drona too, and so did Bhimasena, each at the head of a separate division. Nakula went, and Sahadeva, and Dhrishtadyumna with his own division, and Virata, and the king of the Shalvas with a large force. King Drupada, Dhrishtadyumna’s father, went against Drona with the Panchalas guarding him. The sons of Draupadi went, and the Rakshasa Ghatotkacha, each with his troops. Six thousand Prabhadraka Panchalas, hard hitters every one, went with Shikhandi at their head. Other leading men and great chariot fighters of the Pandava side joined together and went against Drona as well.

By the time those warriors moved to the attack the night had turned pitch black, and the fear of the timid grew with it. Many fighters gave up their lives in that hour of darkness. The night was the death of many elephants and horses and men on foot. Jackals howled on every side, their mouths glowing like fire, and spread terror as they went. Fierce owls settled on the standards of the Kauravas and hooted from them, and their hooting boded ill.

A fierce uproar rose from the troops. The loud beating of drums and cymbals ran together with the grunting of elephants, the neighing of horses, and the stamp of hooves, and the noise spread over the whole field. In that evening hour the battle between Drona and all the Srinjayas was savage. The world had been swallowed by darkness, and nothing in it could be made out. Dust kicked up by the fighters covered the sky. Then the blood of men and horses and elephants ran together on the ground, and the dust of the earth was laid. Sanjaya admitted to the king that he and everyone with him lost heart completely. All through that night the clash of weapons came to them like the cracking of a bamboo forest on fire on a mountainside.

Mridangas and anakas, vallakis and patahas, drums of every kind and size, were beating, men were shouting, horses were screaming, and a dreadful confusion set in everywhere. With the field wrapped in darkness, no one could tell a friend from an enemy. A kind of madness took hold of every man that night. The dust that had risen was soon laid by showers of blood. And then the golden coats of mail and the bright ornaments on the warriors began to do the work of light, and the darkness thinned. The Bharata host, decked with gems and gold and bristling with darts and standards, looked like the night sky set with stars. Jackals yelled across the field and crows cawed, elephants grunted, fighting men shouted and cried out, and all those sounds ran together into one roar that made the hair stand on end and filled every quarter like the crash of Indra’s thunder.

At dead of night the Bharata army seemed lit by its own armlets and earrings, its breastplates and its weapons. Elephants and chariots plated with gold looked like clouds carrying lightning. Swords, darts, maces, scimitars, clubs, lances, and axes flashed like sudden fire as they came down. Sanjaya gave the king the whole of that host as a storm. Duryodhana was the gust of wind that runs ahead of it. The chariots and elephants were its dry clouds, and the din of drums and other instruments was the roll of its thunder. The bows, with the standards crowding above them, were its lightning. Drona and the Pandavas were its rain clouds; scimitars, darts, and maces were its thunderbolts, arrows its downpour, and the other weapons its ceaseless gusts. The winds that blew through it were very hot and very cold at once. It was terrible and stunning and fierce, it destroyed life, and there was no shelter from it anywhere.

Men who wanted battle went into that frightful host on that dreadful night, with its terrible noises that deepened the fear of the timid and gladdened the brave. As the night battle grew fiercer, the Pandavas and the Srinjayas joined forces and rushed at Drona in anger. Every one of them who came straight at him was either made to turn back or sent to the house of Yama. That night Drona, alone, put his arrows through elephants by the thousand, chariots by the ten thousand, and foot soldiers and horses by millions upon millions.

A key to reading this (concept): this is ratri-yuddha, battle by night. The sun has set and the fighting goes on; Drona had told Duryodhana before he rode out that Kurus and Srinjayas were both angry enough to fight through the night. Darkness changes what a battle is. Men can be told apart only by the clan, family, and personal names they shout, friend can no longer be distinguished from foe, and Sanjaya says a kind of madness took hold of everyone on the field. For a time the only light is the gleam of gold armor and ornaments.

The gist: Dhritarashtra asks who stood against Drona and how such a man could have died. Sanjaya names the attackers: Arjuna, Satyaki, Yudhishthira, Bhima, the twins, Dhrishtadyumna, Virata, the Shalva king, Drupada, Draupadi’s sons, Ghatotkacha, and six thousand Prabhadraka Panchalas under Shikhandi. The night turns pitch black, jackals and owls give their omens, and friend cannot be told from foe until gold armor and ornaments make the army shine like a starry sky. Everyone who comes straight at Drona is turned back or killed.

Drona’s slaughter, and the slaying of King Shibi

The king pressed him. “When Drona, whom no one could beat, could not endure the killing of Jayadratha and went in fury into the middle of the Srinjayas, what did all of you think? He had said those words to my disobedient son Duryodhana and then gone into the enemy ranks: what steps did Arjuna take? Jayadratha had fallen, and brave Bhurishravas had fallen, and Drona was moving on the Panchalas: what was in Arjuna’s mind? What did Duryodhana judge the best thing to do at such an hour? Who followed that giver of boons, that first among Brahmins? Who stood behind him while he fought, and who fought in his van while he killed? I think the Pandavas, with his arrows in them, were like lean cattle shivering under a winter sky. Having gone in among the Panchalas, how did that great bowman meet his death? On that night, when all the troops had come together and all the great chariot fighters were being ground down one by one, which of you kept his wits? You tell me my troops were killed, or crowded into a huddle, or beaten, and that my chariot fighters lost their chariots. What did they think, sinking into such misery on that dark night with the Pandavas grinding them? You tell me the Pandavas were in good heart and full of hope, and mine were dejected and seized with panic. Sanjaya, how could you tell the Kurus from the Pandavas, who would not retreat, on a night like that?”

Sanjaya said that while the night battle raged the Pandavas and the Somakas all rushed at Drona together. Drona’s swift arrows sent every one of the Kaikeyas, and the sons of Dhrishtadyumna with them, into the world of spirits. The great chariot fighters who came straight at him, kings in their own lands, all went to the country of the dead. Then King Shibi, a powerful fighter, came at him in a fury while he was grinding the Pandava fighters down. Drona saw that great chariot fighter of the Pandava side advancing and hit him with ten arrows made wholly of iron. Shibi put thirty shafts into Drona in return, each one winged with the feathers of the kanka, and then, smiling as he did it, knocked Drona’s driver off his seat with a single broad-headed arrow. Drona killed Shibi’s horses and killed his driver, and then cut Shibi’s head from his body with the headgear still on it. Duryodhana quickly sent Drona another man to drive. The moment the new driver had the reins in his hands, Drona rushed at his enemies again.

The gist: Dhritarashtra wants to know what Arjuna and Duryodhana thought and did, and how anyone could tell one army from the other in the dark. Sanjaya tells how Drona, with the Pandavas and Somakas all coming at him, kills the Kaikeyas and the sons of Dhrishtadyumna. King Shibi meets him, takes ten iron arrows, answers with thirty, and brings down Drona’s driver; Drona kills Shibi’s horses and driver and cuts off his head. Duryodhana sends a new driver at once, and Drona goes back to the attack.

Bhima’s terrible wrath: the slaying of the Kalinga prince, Dhruva, and Jayarata

Bhima’s hour came with a prince who had a father to avenge. The son of the king of the Kalingas, with the Kalinga troops behind him, rushed at Bhimasena in a rage, because Bhima had killed his father. He put five arrows into Bhima and then seven more. He hit Vishoka, the driver of Bhima’s chariot, with three, and Bhima’s standard with one. Bhima’s own rage rose to meet his. He leaped from his chariot onto his enemy’s and killed that angry Kalinga hero with his fists and nothing else. The prince’s bones, broken by the blows of Pandu’s powerful son, fell to the ground separated from one another.

Karna could not stomach what Bhima had done, and neither could the dead prince’s brother, nor the others near them. They all began to hit Bhimasena with sharp arrows that struck like venomous snakes. Bhima left the chariot he was standing on and crossed to the chariot of Dhruva, the brother, who had been shooting at him without pause, and crushed him with one blow of his fist. Dhruva fell where he stood. Having killed him, Bhima went on to the chariot of Jayarata, roaring like a lion again and again. He dragged Jayarata toward him with his left arm, still roaring, and killed him with a slap of his open palm while Karna looked on.

Then Karna flung a dart worked with gold at the son of Pandu. Bhima, smiling, caught it in his hand, and in the middle of that battle he hurled the same dart back at Karna. Shakuni cut it down in flight with an arrow that had been steeped in oil. With these feats done, Bhima of the astonishing strength went back to his own chariot and charged the Kaurava troops.

He came on killing like the Destroyer in a rage, and Dhritarashtra’s sons tried to stop him. Those great chariot fighters covered him with a thick shower of arrows. Bhima, smiling still, sent the driver and the horses of Durmada to the house of Yama with his shafts. Durmada jumped quickly onto the chariot of his brother Dushkarna. Riding together, the two rushed at Bhima at the front of the battle the way Varuna, lord of the waters, and Surya the sun once rushed at Taraka, chief of the Daityas, and both brothers shot him as they came.

What Bhima did next he did in front of Karna, Ashvatthama, Duryodhana, Kripa, Somadatta, and Bahlika. He stamped his foot on the chariot of Durmada and Dushkarna and drove it down into the earth. Then, filled with rage, he struck those two strong and brave sons of Dhritarashtra with his fists, crushed them, and roared aloud. Cries of “Oh!” and “Alas!” went up from the troops. The kings who saw Bhima said, “That is Rudra, fighting among the sons of Dhritarashtra in Bhima’s shape.” Having said it, they lost their heads and fled, whipping the animals they rode to their greatest speed, and no two of them could be seen running together.

When a great slaughter had been made in the Kaurava army that night, Bhima, his eyes as beautiful as full-blown lotuses, went to Yudhishthira with the praise of many kings following him and paid his respects. The twins Nakula and Sahadeva, and Drupada, Virata, the Kaikeyas, and Yudhishthira himself were filled with joy, and all of them honored him the way the gods honored Mahadeva after Andhaka had been killed. Then Dhritarashtra’s sons, each a match for the sons of Varuna, came on in anger with the teacher Drona and a great number of chariots, foot soldiers, and elephants, and ringed Bhima on every side, wanting a fight. On that terrible night, with everything wrapped in a darkness as thick as cloud, a dreadful battle began between them, one that delighted the wolves, the crows, and the vultures.

A sub-tale: Bhima uses no weapon of his own anywhere in this passage. He kills the Kalinga prince and Dhruva with his fists, Jayarata with an open palm, and Durmada and Dushkarna with his fists after stamping their chariot into the ground. The one weapon he throws is Karna’s own dart, caught in the air and sent back. The kings who watch it decide that Rudra himself is fighting in Bhima’s shape, and they scatter so widely that no two run together.

The gist: the son of the Kalinga king attacks Bhima to avenge his father, and Bhima jumps onto his chariot and kills him with his fists. He kills the prince’s brother Dhruva with one blow and Jayarata with a slap while Karna watches, catches Karna’s gold-worked dart and throws it back (Shakuni cuts it down), and stamps the chariot of Durmada and Dushkarna into the earth before crushing them both. The kings cry that Rudra is fighting in Bhima’s form and flee one by one. Yudhishthira and his allies honor Bhima, and the Kaurava princes, with Drona, surround him.

Ghatotkacha’s entry, and his first clash with Ashvatthama

In another part of the field Ashvatthama, Drona’s son, caught sight of Satyaki, the Satvata hero, grandson of Shini. Satyaki had killed Somadatta’s son Bhurishravas that day, and Ashvatthama, enraged by that killing, rushed furiously at him at the head of the fighting. One warrior saw him going for Satyaki’s chariot and moved to cut him off: Ghatotkacha, the son Bhimasena had fathered on Hidimba, a gigantic Rakshasa of enormous strength. He came on a huge and terrible chariot built of black iron and covered with bearskins, thirty nalvas high and thirty nalvas wide. It had engines of war mounted at their proper places, and it rattled like a great bank of storm clouds. No horses and no elephants were yoked to it. Creatures that looked like elephants pulled it. A prince of vultures perched on its tall standard with wings and feet spread wide and eyes staring, shrieking horribly. Red flags flew from it, the entrails of animals of many kinds were hung on it for decoration, and it ran on eight wheels.

Around Ghatotkacha as he rode came a full akshauhini of fierce-looking Rakshasas, a whole army corps of them, armed with lances, heavy clubs, rocks, and trees. He came with his bow lifted, like the Destroyer with his mace in the hour when the world dissolves, and the enemy kings were struck with fear at the sight. He looked like a mountain peak, terrible to see. His teeth were dreadful and his face fierce; his ears were shaped like arrows and his cheekbones stood high; his hair was stiff and rose straight up; his eyes were frightful and his belly sunken; his mouth blazed, wide as a chasm; he wore a diadem; his jaws gaped like the jaws of the Destroyer. He was radiant, he could strike fear into any creature and shake any enemy, and as he bore down on them Duryodhana’s army shook the way the current of the Ganga is broken into fierce eddies by the wind.

Ghatotkacha roared like a lion, and at the sound the elephants emptied their bladders and the kings began to tremble. Rakshasas grow stronger when night comes, and now a thick shower of stones thrown by them began to fall on the field. Iron wheels came down without pause, and bhushundis, darts, lances, spears, shataghnis, and axes. The kings saw that fierce and dreadful fight and fled in great distress; Dhritarashtra’s sons fled; Karna fled. Only Drona’s proud son, a man always ready to boast of what his weapons could do, stood where he was without fear, and he quickly scattered the illusion Ghatotkacha had made. Ghatotkacha, enraged at losing it, shot fierce arrows at Ashvatthama. They went into Drona’s son the way angry snakes go fast into an anthill, and having passed through his body, red with his blood, they went on into the earth.

Ashvatthama, quick of hand and now angry, hit Ghatotkacha with ten arrows. They struck deep into his vital parts, and Ghatotkacha, in great pain, took up a wheel with a thousand spokes. Its rim was as sharp as a razor. It shone like the rising sun and was set with gems and diamonds of many kinds. Bhimasena’s son hurled that wheel at Ashvatthama, meaning to kill him, and as it came spinning toward him Drona’s son cut it to fragments with his arrows. It dropped to the earth with its purpose undone, like a hope held by a man who has no luck.

A key to reading this (lineage): Ghatotkacha is the son Bhimasena fathered on Hidimba. He is a Rakshasa and, by his own account a little further on, king of the Rakshasas. He is nephew to the other four Pandava brothers and calls himself a son of them all. His own son Anjanaparva, Bhima’s grandson, fights beside him tonight. The power of Rakshasas grows with the night, and this battle is being fought after sunset.

A key to reading this (numbers in modern terms): Ghatotkacha’s chariot is said to be thirty nalvas in height and in width. A nalva is an old measure of length, four hundred cubits. With the cubit taken as the length of a forearm, about a foot and a half, one nalva is roughly six hundred feet, and thirty nalvas come to more than three miles each way. No chariot could be that size, and the figure tells the listener that this is a Rakshasa’s vehicle, built outside human scale.

The gist: Ashvatthama rushes at Satyaki in anger over Bhurishravas, and Ghatotkacha rides between them on a black iron chariot with eight wheels, drawn by creatures that look like elephants, with a full akshauhini of Rakshasas around him. Stones and weapons rain on the field, and the kings, Dhritarashtra’s sons, and Karna all flee. Ashvatthama alone stands, breaks the illusion, takes Ghatotkacha’s arrows through his body, answers with ten of his own, and cuts the thousand-spoked wheel to pieces in the air.

The slaying of Anjanaparva, and the dialogue on father and son

With his wheel wasted, Ghatotkacha quickly covered Drona’s son with arrows, the way Rahu swallows the sun. Meanwhile his own son came forward, Anjanaparva, a radiant Rakshasa as dark as a heap of antimony, and stood in the path of Ashvatthama’s advance like Meru, king of mountains, standing in the path of the wind. The arrows of Bhimasena’s brave grandson poured over Ashvatthama until he looked like Meru itself taking a torrent of rain from a great cloud. Ashvatthama, who in battle was the equal of Rudra or of Upendra, grew angry. With one arrow he cut down Anjanaparva’s standard. With two he killed his two drivers, and with three he cut the trivenuka, the triple pole of his chariot. One arrow cut the Rakshasa’s bow, and four more killed his four horses.

Left without a chariot, Anjanaparva took up a scimitar decorated with golden stars, and Ashvatthama cut it in two in his hand with another sharp arrow. Hidimba’s grandson whirled a mace bound with gold and flung it quickly at Ashvatthama, who hit it with his arrows and brought it down to the ground. Then Anjanaparva rose into the sky and roared there like a cloud, and from the air he rained trees on his enemy. Ashvatthama’s arrows went up through that maker of illusions the way the sun’s rays go through a bank of cloud. The Rakshasa came down again onto his gold-decked chariot and stood there, tall and beautiful, like a hill of antimony on the face of the earth. He wore a coat of iron mail. Drona’s son killed him as Mahadeva once killed the Asura Andhaka.

Ghatotkacha saw his powerful son killed. He came up to Ashvatthama, the son of Drona and of Sharadvat’s daughter, who at that moment was burning through the Pandava troops like a forest fire out of control, and spoke to him without fear.

“Wait, son of Drona, wait!” Ghatotkacha said. “You will not get away from me alive. Today I will kill you as Agni’s son killed Krauncha.”

Ashvatthama answered, “Go, my son, and fight with others. You have the prowess of a god. It is not right, son of Hidimba, that a father should fight with his son. I hold no grudge against you. Yet when a man’s anger is roused, he may kill even his own self.”

Ghatotkacha was full of grief for his fallen son, and his eyes were red as copper with rage. He came close to Ashvatthama and said, “Am I some coward in battle, son of Drona, some common man, that you try to frighten me with words like these? What you say is out of place. I was fathered by Bhima in the celebrated line of the Kurus. I am a son of the Pandavas, heroes who never retreat from a fight. I am the king of the Rakshasas, and in strength I am the equal of ten-necked Ravana. Wait, son of Drona, wait! You will not get away from me alive. Today, on this field, I will cure you of your wish to fight.”

With that answer the mighty Rakshasa, eyes still copper-red, rushed furiously at Drona’s son like a lion at a lord of elephants. He rained arrows on him as a cloud pours rain, each shaft as long as the axle of a war chariot. Ashvatthama checked that shower with arrows of his own before it could reach him. For a while it seemed that a second battle was being fought overhead, shaft against shaft, and the night sky glittered with the sparks struck where the weapons met, as if it were full of fireflies.

A sub-tale: Ashvatthama calls Ghatotkacha “son” and speaks of himself as the father. The tie runs through Drona. The Pandavas were Drona’s pupils, as Ashvatthama was, and that made them like brothers to him; Bhima’s son is therefore his brother’s son. So the man who has just killed Ghatotkacha’s child asks him to go and fight someone else, says he bears him no grudge, and warns that anger can make a man destroy himself. Ghatotkacha, with his own son lying dead, takes the words as a slight on his courage and answers with his lineage: Bhima’s son, a son of the Pandavas, king of the Rakshasas.

The gist: Anjanaparva, Ghatotkacha’s son, blocks Ashvatthama, who strips him in turn of his standard, his two drivers, the triple pole of his chariot, his bow, and his four horses, then cuts his scimitar and knocks down his mace. Anjanaparva rains trees from the sky, comes down again, and is killed. Ghatotkacha challenges Ashvatthama in grief; Ashvatthama calls him son and asks him to fight elsewhere; Ghatotkacha refuses, and their arrows meet in the air in showers of sparks.

The war of illusion, and the answer of celestial weapons

Drona’s son had already broken one illusion of his, and Ghatotkacha, proud of what he could do in battle, made himself invisible again and raised another. He took the form of a high mountain crowded with cliffs and trees, and its springs ran with an unending stream of spears, lances, swords, and heavy clubs. Ashvatthama looked at that mountain, dark as a mass of antimony, with countless weapons falling from it, and was not shaken in the least. He called the Vajra weapon into being, the weapon that carries the force of the thunderbolt, and the prince of mountains, struck by it, was quickly destroyed. Then the Rakshasa became a bank of blue cloud in the sky with a rainbow across it, and from there he showered stones and rocks furiously on Drona’s son. Ashvatthama, who knew weapons as few men did, aimed the Vayavya, the weapon of the wind, and destroyed the blue cloud that had risen overhead.

Then he covered every quarter of the sky with his arrows and killed a hundred thousand chariot fighters. And he saw Ghatotkacha coming toward him again, fearless, bow bent, with a great company of Rakshasas around him who looked like lions or like powerful elephants in rut. Some rode elephants, some rode chariots, some rode horses. They were fierce followers, with frightful faces and heads and necks, Rakshasas of both kinds, Paulastyas and Yatudhanas. They were as strong as Indra. They carried weapons of every sort and wore armor of every sort, their faces were terrible, they swelled with rage, and they were very hard to beat in battle.

Duryodhana saw them and his spirits sank. Ashvatthama spoke to him. “Wait, Duryodhana. You have nothing to fear. Stand aside with these brave brothers of yours and with these kings, who are as strong as Indra. I will kill your enemies. You will not be defeated; I tell you this truly. In the meantime, steady your troops.” Duryodhana replied, “I do not find what you say at all surprising, because your heart is large. Ashvatthama, your regard for us is great.”

Then Duryodhana turned to Shakuni, the son of Subala and his own mother’s brother. “Arjuna is fighting with a hundred thousand brave chariot fighters around him,” he said. “Go against him with sixty thousand chariots. Karna will follow you, and Vrishasena, Kripa, Nila, the Northerners, Kritavarma, the sons of Purumitra, Duhshasana, Nikumbha, Kundabhedi, Puranjaya, Dridharatha, Hemakampana, Shalya, Aruni, Indrasena, Sanjaya, Vijaya, Jaya, Purakrathin, Jayavarma, and Sudarshana, with sixty thousand foot soldiers. Uncle, kill Bhima and the twins and King Yudhishthira the Just as the chief of the gods kills the Asuras. My hope of victory rests in you. Drona’s son has already put his arrows into them, and their limbs are badly mangled. Kill the sons of Kunti, uncle, as Kartikeya killed the Asuras.” Shakuni set out quickly to destroy the Pandavas, and the sight filled Duryodhana’s heart with delight.

A key to reading this (concept): Ghatotkacha fights by illusion, and Ashvatthama answers each illusion with a named weapon called into being for the purpose. Against the mountain whose springs pour weapons he invokes the Vajra, the weapon with the force of thunder, and the mountain is destroyed. Against the blue cloud that rains stones he aims the Vayavya, the weapon of the wind, and the cloud is destroyed in its turn. Earlier in the night he had scattered Ghatotkacha’s first illusion, the shower of stones and iron, and there no weapon is named.

The gist: Ghatotkacha becomes a mountain whose springs pour weapons and then a blue cloud that rains rocks; Ashvatthama destroys the first with the Vajra weapon and the second with the Vayavya, and kills a hundred thousand chariot fighters. When Ghatotkacha returns with a host of Paulastya and Yatudhana Rakshasas, Duryodhana loses heart, and Ashvatthama tells him to stand aside and steady the troops. Duryodhana sends Shakuni with sixty thousand chariots against Arjuna, names the champions and the sixty thousand foot soldiers who will follow, and asks his uncle to kill Bhima, the twins, and Yudhishthira.

The slaughter of the Rakshasa host, and the river of blood

Meanwhile the battle between the Rakshasas and Drona’s son that night grew as terrible as the one fought long ago between Shakra and Prahlada. Ghatotkacha, filled with rage, hit Ashvatthama in the chest with ten strong arrows as fierce as poison or fire. Struck deep, Ashvatthama shook on the platform of his chariot like a tall tree in a storm. Ghatotkacha followed with a broad-headed arrow that cut the bright bow in his hands. Drona’s son took up another bow, one made to bear great strain, and poured sharp arrows on his enemy as a cloud pours rain. Then Ashvatthama sent many gold-winged arrows, arrows that travel the sky and kill, at the Rakshasa who traveled the sky himself.

Under those shafts the vast force of broad-chested Rakshasas looked like a herd of maddened elephants set upon by lions. Ashvatthama burned them with his arrows, Rakshasas and horses and drivers and elephants together, and blazed like the god Agni consuming creatures at the end of an age. When he had burned a full akshauhini of Rakshasa troops he shone as the divine Maheshvara shone in heaven after burning Tripura, the triple city. Ghatotkacha, in a rage, urged the huge Rakshasa force forward with a single order: “Kill the son of Drona!” They obeyed him, those terrible Rakshasas with their bright teeth and broad faces, their frightful looks and gaping mouths, their long tongues and eyes blazing with anger. Filling the earth with loud roars, carrying weapons of every kind, they rushed at Ashvatthama to kill him.

Fearless, red-eyed with anger, and fierce in their strength, they flung weapons at Ashvatthama’s head by the hundred and by the thousand: darts and shataghnis, spiked maces and ashanis, long lances, axes, scimitars, maces, short arrows, heavy clubs, battle-axes, spears, swords, more lances, polished kampanas, kunapas and hulas, rockets and stones, vessels of boiling treacle, sthunas forged of black iron, and mallets, every one of them terrible in shape and made to destroy an enemy. The Kaurava warriors watched that thick shower fall on the head of Drona’s son and were sorely distressed. Ashvatthama was not afraid. With honed arrows that hit with the force of thunder he destroyed that frightful shower of weapons, which had hung over him like a risen cloud.

Then, with other weapons, gold-winged and charged with mantras, he quickly killed many Rakshasas. Again that vast, broad-chested force looked like a herd of maddened elephants harried by lions. The Rakshasas he had hurt were powerful, and their pain turned to fury, and they rushed at him. What Drona’s son did then was a marvel, a feat no other living creature could have managed: alone and with no one to support him, that master of the great weapons burned the Rakshasa army with his blazing arrows while the king of the Rakshasas looked on. As he consumed that force he shone like the Samvartaka fire, which burns all creatures when an age ends.

Among all those thousands of kings, and among the Pandavas themselves, no one was able even to look at Ashvatthama while he was burning their ranks with arrows like venomous snakes, except the mighty king of the Rakshasas, brave Ghatotkacha. His eyes rolled with anger. He struck his palms together, bit his lower lip, and said to his driver, “Take me to the son of Drona.” On that formidable chariot hung with banners of triumph he went once more against Ashvatthama, wanting single combat. With a loud lion’s roar the Rakshasa whirled and hurled at him a terrible ashani of celestial make, hung with eight bells. Ashvatthama left his bow on the chariot, jumped down, caught the ashani, and threw it back at Ghatotkacha. Ghatotkacha had already leaped clear of his chariot. That dreadful weapon, blazing with light, burned the Rakshasa’s chariot to ashes with its team, its drivers, and its standard, split the earth, and went into it. Every creature that saw Drona’s son jump down and seize that terrible ashani of celestial make praised the feat.

Ghatotkacha went to Dhrishtadyumna’s chariot. There he took up a terrible bow, one that looked like the great bow of Indra himself, and again shot many sharp arrows at Drona’s son. Dhrishtadyumna, unafraid, sent gold-winged shafts like venomous snakes at Ashvatthama’s chest. Ashvatthama shot arrows and long shafts by the thousand, and the two of them, Ghatotkacha and Dhrishtadyumna, struck them down with arrows whose touch was like fire. That fight, the pair of them on one side and Drona’s son on the other, grew fierce beyond measure, and every fighting man who saw it was glad. Then Bhimasena arrived at the place with a thousand chariots, three hundred elephants, and six thousand horse. Ashvatthama, who never tired, went on fighting Bhima’s heroic son and Dhrishtadyumna, with all the followers who backed them.

What he showed then was wonderful in the extreme, and Sanjaya said no other creature could have done it. Before an eyelid could close, his sharp arrows destroyed a full akshauhini of Rakshasa troops, with horses, drivers, chariots, and elephants, before the eyes of Bhimasena, of Hidimba’s son, of Dhrishtadyumna, of the twins, of Yudhishthira, of Arjuna, and of Krishna. Elephants, deeply struck by his straight-flying shafts, fell on top of other elephants like mountains that had lost their peaks. Their severed trunks lay everywhere, still twitching, and the earth looked as if it were covered with moving snakes. Golden staves and royal umbrellas lay scattered on it, and it shone like the sky at the end of an age, crowded with planets and stars and many moons and suns. And Drona’s son made a river of blood run there, with a fierce current.

The blood of elephants, horses, and fighting men was its water. Tall standards were its frogs, drums its great tortoises, umbrellas its lines of swans. Yak-tail fans floated on it in plenty; kankas and vultures were its crocodiles, weapons its fish, great elephants the stones and boulders along its banks. Elephants and horses were its sharks, chariots its broad and crumbling banks, banners its handsome rows of trees. Arrows were its small fish; lances, darts, and swords were its snakes; marrow and flesh were its mud, and headless bodies drifting on it were its rafts. Hair choked it like moss. It filled the timid with dejection and fear, and waves of blood could be seen moving on its surface. The foot soldiers it teemed with made it frightful, and the sea it flowed toward was the house of Yama.

A key to reading this (concept): the river of blood is built as one sustained figure. Each piece of the wreckage on the field is given a place in a river’s body: blood for water, standards for frogs, drums for tortoises, umbrellas for swans, weapons for fish, chariots for banks, banners for trees, flesh and marrow for mud, headless bodies for rafts, hair for moss. A river must run to a sea, and this one runs to the abode of Yama.

The gist: Ghatotkacha wounds Ashvatthama in the chest and cuts his bow, and Ashvatthama, with a second bow, burns a full akshauhini of Rakshasas. The Rakshasas hurl every kind of weapon at his head and he destroys the whole shower. Ghatotkacha throws a celestial ashani hung with eight bells; Ashvatthama jumps down, catches it, and throws it back, and it burns Ghatotkacha’s empty chariot to ashes. Ghatotkacha fights on from Dhrishtadyumna’s chariot, Bhima arrives with a thousand chariots, three hundred elephants, and six thousand horse, and Ashvatthama destroys an akshauhini of Rakshasas before them all and leaves a river of blood running toward the house of Yama.

Ashvatthama’s terrible arrow, and Ghatotkacha’s swoon

With the Rakshasas dead, Drona’s son turned his arrows on Hidimba’s son again. His anger had risen once more. He put shafts into the great chariot fighters around him, the sons of Pritha with Bhima among them and the sons of Prishata, and he killed Suratha, one of Drupada’s sons. He killed Suratha’s younger brother Shatrunjaya. He killed Balanika, and Jayanika, and Jaya. With one sharp arrow and a lion’s roar he killed Prishadhra, and after him proud Chandrasena. With ten arrows he killed the ten sons of Kuntibhoja. He sent Shrutayus to the house of Yama. And with three more sharp, well-feathered shafts he sent the mighty Shatrunjaya to the world of Shakra.

Then Ashvatthama, in a rage, set a fierce, straight arrow on his bowstring. He drew the string back to his ear and loosed that fine and terrible shaft, which looked like the rod of Death, at Ghatotkacha. The great arrow, beautifully feathered, went through the Rakshasa’s chest, came out, and drove into the earth. Ghatotkacha fell down on the chariot. Dhrishtadyumna saw him fall and believed he was dead, and that great chariot fighter carried him out of Ashvatthama’s presence and had him laid on another chariot. So the chariot force of Yudhishthira turned away from the fight. Drona’s heroic son had beaten his enemies, and he gave a loud roar, and all men, and all the sons of Dhritarashtra, did him honor.

The ground was covered with the bodies of dead Rakshasas, pierced and mangled by hundreds of arrows, until it was dreadful to look at and impossible to cross, as if mountain peaks had been strewn over it. The Siddhas and Gandharvas, the Pishachas and Nagas, the birds, the ancestors, the ravens, great crowds of man-eaters and of ghosts, the Apsaras and the gods all joined in loud praise of Drona’s son.

A sub-tale: Ghatotkacha survives this arrow. He falls on the chariot, Dhrishtadyumna takes him for dead and carries him away, and the passage leaves him there. His death comes later in this same night and this same sub-parva, when Karna throws at him the dart Indra had given in exchange for his earrings, a weapon Karna had kept and honored for years for the killing of Arjuna. Krishna alone greets that death with joy, because the dart that was meant for Arjuna has been spent.

The gist: Ashvatthama kills Drupada’s son Suratha and his brother Shatrunjaya, then Balanika, Jayanika, Jaya, Prishadhra, Chandrasena, the ten sons of Kuntibhoja, and Shrutayus. He draws one straight arrow to his ear and puts it through Ghatotkacha’s chest; the Rakshasa falls, Dhrishtadyumna believes him dead and carries him to another chariot, and Yudhishthira’s chariot force turns away. Men, gods, and spirits praise Drona’s son.

Somadatta struck down, the end of Bahlika, and Yudhishthira’s fury

Another quarrel was alive on the field that night, and it had begun before Ghatotkacha’s chariot ever rolled out. Somadatta’s son Bhurishravas had been killed by Satyaki while he sat in praya, the vow of fasting to death, with his arm already cut off by Arjuna. Somadatta, filled with rage, had faced the killer. “Why, Satvata, have you thrown away the Kshatriya duties that the gods ordained and taken up the practices of robbers?” he said. “What wise man who keeps the Kshatriya code strikes in battle one who is turning from the fight, or is helpless, or has laid aside his weapons, or begs for quarter? Two men among the Vrishnis are known as great chariot fighters, mighty Pradyumna and you. How could you be so cruel and sinful to a man who sat in praya with his arm cut off? I swear by my two sons, by what is dear to me, and by all my good deeds: if I do not kill you before this night has passed, you who are so proud of your heroism, with your sons and your younger brothers, unless Arjuna protects you, then let me sink into a terrible hell.” He blew his conch loudly and roared like a lion. Satyaki, lotus-eyed and lion-toothed and as angry as Somadatta, answered that he felt no fear in fighting Somadatta or anyone else, even if the whole army stood guard over him, and that a man who had always kept the Kshatriya code could not be frightened by words that insult the good. If Somadatta wanted a fight, let him be cruel and strike with sharp arrows, and Satyaki would strike back. Bhurishravas was dead, he said, and Shala had been crushed as well; Somadatta was a dead man already, undone by the virtue of King Yudhishthira, and would perish with Karna and Shakuni. “I swear by Krishna’s feet and by all my good deeds that I will kill you in battle with my arrows, you and your sons. If you run from the battle, you may be safe.” Their eyes red with anger, they began to shoot at each other. Duryodhana ringed Somadatta with a thousand chariots and ten thousand horse, and Shakuni came up in a rage, armed with every weapon, with his sons, his grandsons, and brothers who were a match for Indra, and with a hundred thousand of the finest horse; Dhrishtadyumna, enraged, brought a great force to Satyaki’s side, and the noise of the two hosts was like many oceans whipped by a hurricane. Somadatta hit Satyaki with nine arrows and Satyaki hit him with nine. Somadatta sank down senseless on the platform of his chariot, and his driver carried him out of the battle at speed. Drona rushed in to kill Satyaki, and the Pandava warriors, with Yudhishthira at their head, closed around the Yadu hero to save him, and the battle that followed was like the one Bali fought with the gods for the rule of the three worlds. Drona put ten arrows into Satyaki, twenty into Dhrishtadyumna, nine into Bhima, five into Nakula, eight into Sahadeva, a hundred into Shikhandi, five into each of Draupadi’s five sons, eight into Virata, ten into Drupada, three into Yudhamanyu, and six into Uttamaujas, and he burned the Pandava army as fire burns a heap of cotton. It broke before him twice, until Arjuna had Krishna drive his horses, white as silver or milk or the kunda flower or the moon, at Drona’s chariot, and Bhima told Vishoka to follow. The great chariot fighters of the Panchalas, the Srinjayas, the Matsyas, the Chedis, the Karushas, the Kosalas, and the Kaikeyas went after the two brothers. Arjuna struck the Kaurava host on the right and Bhima in front, with Dhrishtadyumna and Satyaki rushing in behind them. That was the hour in which Ashvatthama had gone for Satyaki and Ghatotkacha had come between them. Now Yudhishthira, Bhimasena, Dhrishtadyumna, and Satyaki looked at the sons of Drupada and the sons of Kuntibhoja lying dead, and at the Rakshasas killed in their thousands by Drona’s son, and together they set their hearts firmly on battle.

Somadatta saw Satyaki in that battle, and his rage came back. He covered him with a dense shower of arrows, and a fight began between the Kaurava warriors and their enemies, each side hungry for victory, that was fierce and marvelous to watch. Bhima, fighting on Satyaki’s side, hit the Kaurava hero with ten shafts, and Somadatta answered him with a hundred. Then Satyaki, in a rage, struck the old warrior with ten sharp arrows that hit with the force of thunder. He struck a man sick with grief for his dead son, a man who had every virtue worth praising, as Yayati the son of Nahusha had. Satyaki drove those ten in hard and then hit him again with seven.

Bhimasena, still fighting for Satyaki, hurled at Somadatta’s head a parigha, an iron bar that was new and hard and terrible. Satyaki at the same moment, full of anger, shot at Somadatta’s chest a fine sharp arrow, well feathered and bright as fire. The bar and the arrow, both dreadful, landed on the body of the heroic Somadatta together, and that great chariot fighter fell.

Bahlika saw his son Somadatta drop in a swoon and rushed at Satyaki, scattering showers of arrows like a rain cloud in its season. Bhima, for Satyaki’s sake, hit Bahlika with nine shafts at the head of the battle. Then Bahlika, the son of Pratipa, in a great fury hurled a dart at Bhima’s chest the way Indra hurls the thunderbolt. It struck, and Bhima shook on his chariot and fainted. When his senses came back he flung a mace at his opponent. The mace, thrown by the son of Pandu, took off Bahlika’s head, and he fell lifeless to the earth like a tree brought down by lightning.

With Bahlika dead, ten of Dhritarashtra’s sons, each a match in battle for Rama the son of Dasharatha, began to press Bhima hard. Sanjaya named them: Nagadatta, Dridharatha, Virabahu, Ayobhuja, Dridha, Suhasta, Viraja, Pramatha, and Ugrayayin. Bhima looked at them and his anger rose. He took up a set of arrows, each one made to bear great strain, aimed at the princes one after another, and shot, hitting each in a vital part. They fell from their chariots with strength and life gone out of them, like tall trees on a mountain cliff snapped by a storm. With ten shafts he had killed those ten princes, and he turned next on Karna’s favorite son and buried him under showers of arrows.

Karna’s brother, the celebrated Vrikaratha, put many arrows into Bhima, and the powerful Pandava quickly made an end of him. Next Bhima killed seven chariot fighters from among Dhritarashtra’s brothers-in-law with his shafts, and he pressed Shatachandra down into the earth. Shatachandra’s death was more than Shakuni’s brothers could bear. Five of them, the brave Gavaksha, Sharabha, Vibhu, Subhaga, and Bhanudatta, great chariot fighters all, rushed at Bhimasena and attacked him with sharp arrows. He took their shafts as a mountain takes torrents of rain, and with five arrows of his own he killed those five mighty kings. Many great kings saw those heroes dead and began to waver.

Then Yudhishthira, filled with anger, began to destroy the Kaurava ranks under the eyes of Drona, the teacher born from a jar, and of Dhritarashtra’s sons. His arrows sent the Ambashthas, the Malavas, the brave Trigartas, and the Shibis toward the country of Yama. He cut down the Abhishahas, the Shurasenas, the Bahlikas, and the Vasatis, and made the ground a mire of flesh and blood. In a moment more his many shafts had dispatched the Yaudheyas, the Malavas, and great numbers of the Madrakas to the same place. A loud uproar rose around Yudhishthira’s chariot, and through it came the shouts: “Kill!” “Seize!” “Capture!” “Pierce!” “Cut them to pieces!”

A key to reading this (lineage): three generations of one branch of the Kuru house are on the field tonight. Bahlika is the son of Pratipa and a brother of Shantanu, which makes him an uncle of Bhishma. Somadatta is Bahlika’s son, and Bhurishravas, whom Satyaki killed earlier in the day, was Somadatta’s son. In this passage the grandfather dies and the father falls senseless: Bhima’s mace takes off Bahlika’s head, while Somadatta, struck by the iron bar and the arrow together, drops in a swoon. Somadatta’s own death at Satyaki’s hands comes later in the same night.

The gist: Somadatta, who had sworn to kill Satyaki before the night was over, attacks him again. Bhima and Satyaki fight side by side, and an iron bar thrown by Bhima and an arrow shot by Satyaki strike Somadatta together and drop him in a swoon. His father Bahlika charges, knocks Bhima senseless with a dart, and loses his head to Bhima’s mace. Bhima then kills ten of Dhritarashtra’s sons with ten arrows, Karna’s brother Vrikaratha, seven of Dhritarashtra’s brothers-in-law, Shatachandra, and five brothers of Shakuni, while Yudhishthira destroys the Ambashthas, Malavas, Trigartas, Shibis, Madrakas, and other peoples.

The celestial-weapon duel of Drona and Yudhishthira

Drona watched Yudhishthira killing and routing the Kaurava troops, and Duryodhana urged him on, and he covered Yudhishthira with showers of arrows. Then, in great anger, he struck at him with the Vayavya, the weapon of the wind. The son of Pandu turned that celestial weapon aside with a like weapon of his own. Drona saw it fail. In greater anger still, and wanting the son of Pandu dead, he sent celestial weapons of many kinds at Yudhishthira: the Varuna, the Yamya, the Agneya, the Tvashtra, and the Savitra. Yudhishthira, a man who knew what was right and was not afraid, turned every one of them aside, those already loosed and those still in the act of being loosed.

The jar-born teacher was striving to make good his vow, and for the sake of Dhritarashtra’s son he wanted to kill the son of Dharma. He called into being the Aindra and the Prajapatya weapons. Yudhishthira walked like an elephant or a lion; he was broad in the chest, with large red eyes, and his energy was scarcely less than Drona’s own. He called up the Mahendra weapon and with it undid what Drona had sent. Every weapon Drona had used had now failed. Filled with wrath and set on Yudhishthira’s destruction, he invoked the Brahma weapon. Sanjaya told the king that a thick gloom wrapped them all at that moment and they could not see what passed; every creature was filled with great fear. Yudhishthira, the son of Kunti, saw the Brahma weapon raised and stopped it with a Brahma weapon of his own.

The leading warriors praised the two of them, Drona and Yudhishthira, great bowmen who knew every way of making war. Drona left Yudhishthira then, and with eyes red as copper in his rage began to burn up Drupada’s division with the Vayavya weapon. The Panchalas, crushed by him, fled in fear while Bhimasena and Arjuna looked on. Those two stopped the flight of their troops and came suddenly against the Kaurava force with two great masses of chariots, Arjuna striking on the right and Bhima on the left, so that the son of Bharadvaja was met by two mighty showers of arrows at once. The Kaikeyas, the Srinjayas, and the vigorous Panchalas followed the two brothers, and the Matsyas and the Satvatas came with them. Then the Bharata host, cut down by Arjuna and overcome by sleep and by darkness, began to break. Drona tried to rally it, and Duryodhana himself tried, and the fighting men could not be stopped in their flight.

A key to reading this (concept): the weapons in this duel are celestial weapons, called into being by the one who has mastered them, and most carry the name of a god: the Vayavya of Vayu the wind, the Varuna of Varuna, the Yamya of Yama, the Agneya of Agni, the Tvashtra of Tvashtri, the Savitra of Savitri, the Aindra and the Mahendra of Indra, the Prajapatya of Prajapati, and last the weapon of Brahma. Drona uses nine. Yudhishthira meets the Vayavya with a weapon like it, turns aside the next five, stops the Aindra and the Prajapatya with the Mahendra, and answers the Brahma weapon with a Brahma weapon of his own.

The gist: Drona, urged on by Duryodhana, tries to kill Yudhishthira with celestial weapons: the Vayavya, then the Varuna, Yamya, Agneya, Tvashtra, and Savitra, then the Aindra and Prajapatya, and at last the Brahma weapon. Yudhishthira defeats them all, the last with a Brahma weapon of his own. Drona turns the Vayavya on Drupada’s division and the Panchalas run; Arjuna and Bhima rally them and attack from right and left, and the Kaurava army, worn down by sleep and darkness, breaks in spite of Drona and Duryodhana.

Karna’s vow, and Kripa’s bitter retort

Duryodhana looked at the vast Pandava host, swollen with rage, and judged that nothing could hold it. He turned to Karna and said, “You who are devoted to your friends, the hour has come when your friends need you most. Karna, save all my warriors in this battle. Our fighting men are surrounded on every side by the Panchalas, the Kaikeyas, the Matsyas, and the great chariot fighters of the Pandavas, all of them full of rage and hissing like snakes. Over there the Pandavas, eager for victory, are roaring for joy. The huge chariot force of the Panchalas has the strength of Shakra himself.”

Karna replied, “If Indra himself came here to save Arjuna, I would beat him quickly and then kill that son of Pandu. I tell you this truly. Take heart. I will kill the son of Pandu and all the assembled Panchalas, and I will give you victory as Agni’s son gave victory to Indra. In this battle that has begun I will do what pleases you. Of all the sons of Pritha, Arjuna is the strongest. At him I will throw the deadly dart of Indra’s own making. Once that great bowman is dead, his brothers will either surrender to you or go back to the forest. While I am alive, never give way to grief. I will beat all the Pandavas together in battle, and all the Panchalas, Kaikeyas, and Vrishnis gathered with them. I will stick them so full of arrows that they look like porcupines, and I will give you the earth.”

While Karna was still speaking, Kripa, the son of Sharadvat, smiled and spoke to him. “Fine words, Karna. If words alone could win, then with you to protect him this prince of the Kurus would be as well protected as a man can be. You boast a great deal in front of the Kuru chief. Your prowess is seldom seen, and neither is any result of your boasting. We have watched you meet the sons of Pandu in battle many times, and every single time, charioteer’s son, the Pandavas have beaten you.

“When the Gandharvas were carrying off Dhritarashtra’s son as their prisoner, the whole army fought that day except you alone, and you were the first to run. In Virata’s city all the Kauravas together, you and your younger brother among them, were beaten in battle by Arjuna. You are no match on the field for even one of the sons of Pandu, for Arjuna by himself. How can you dream of beating all of them with Krishna at their head? You brag too much, charioteer’s son. Go into battle and say nothing. Good men put out their strength without boasting of it. You are forever roaring like the dry clouds of autumn, Karna, and showing that there is nothing in you. The king, though, does not understand it.

“You roar, son of Radha, for as long as you do not see the son of Pritha. The roaring stops when you see him close. You roar for as long as you are outside the range of Arjuna’s arrows, and when his arrows are in you the roaring is over. Kshatriyas prove what they are with their arms, Brahmins with their speech, Arjuna with his bow, and Karna with the castles he builds in the air. Who is going to stand against the man who satisfied Rudra himself in battle?”

A sub-tale: Kripa’s last question points back to Arjuna’s years in the forest. Shiva, whom the epic also calls Rudra and Mahadeva, came down onto the Himalaya in the form of a Kirata, a mountain hunter, to test him. Both shot the same boar at the same instant, and the two fought, and Arjuna did not know until afterward whom he had been fighting. Shiva, pleased with him, gave him the great weapon called Pashupata. Ashvatthama throws the same episode at Karna a little later, when he speaks of the man who once fought Mahadeva himself.

The gist: Duryodhana begs Karna to save the army. Karna promises to beat Indra himself if he comes to Arjuna’s aid, to kill Arjuna with the dart Indra made, and to hand Duryodhana the earth. Kripa, smiling, answers that Karna has lost to the Pandavas every time they met: he was the first to run when the Gandharvas took Duryodhana prisoner, and he was beaten by Arjuna at Virata’s city with all the Kauravas. Karna, he says, roars like a dry autumn cloud until Arjuna comes within bowshot.

Karna’s reply, Ashvatthama’s wrath, and the quarrel in the Kuru camp

Karna was a hard hitter, and Kripa’s mockery had landed. He answered, “Heroes roar like the clouds of the rainy season, and like seed put into the soil they quickly bear fruit. I see no fault in heroes who take great burdens on their shoulders and speak boastfully on the field of battle. When a man resolves in his mind to carry a burden, Destiny itself helps him carry it. I want in my heart to carry a great one, and I always find the resolve for it. If I roar like this when I kill the sons of Pandu in battle, with Krishna and the Satvatas, what is that to you, Brahmin? Heroes never roar for nothing, like the clouds of autumn. The wise know their own strength, and that is why they roar.

“I have made up my mind that today I will beat Krishna and Arjuna in battle, the two of them together and fighting as hard as they can. That is why I roar. Watch for the fruit of this roaring, Brahmin. I will kill the sons of Pandu in battle with all their followers, and Krishna and the Satvatas, and I will give Duryodhana the whole earth without a thorn left in it.”

Kripa said, “Charioteer’s son, I set very little store by these ravings of yours. They show your thoughts and no deeds. You are always running down the two Krishnas, Krishna and Arjuna, and King Yudhishthira the Just. Karna, the side that has those two heroes, skilled as they are in battle, is certain of victory. Krishna and Arjuna cannot be defeated by the gods, the Gandharvas, the Yakshas, human beings, the Nagas, or the birds, even if all of them came in armor. Yudhishthira, the son of Dharma, is devoted to the Brahmins. He speaks the truth and governs himself. He reveres the ancestors and the gods. He is given to the practice of truth and righteousness, and he is skilled in weapons besides. He is highly intelligent, and he is grateful. His brothers all have great strength and long practice in every weapon. They are devoted to the service of their elders; they have wisdom and fame, and their conduct is righteous. Their kinsmen and relatives are as strong as Indra, strike hard, and are deeply devoted to the Pandavas.

“Dhrishtadyumna and Shikhandi are fighting for them, and Janamejaya the son of Durmuksha, and Chandrasena, and Madrasena, and Kritavarma, Dhruva, Dhara, Vasuchandra, and Sutejana, the sons of Drupada, and Drupada himself, a master of the great weapons. The king of the Matsyas is fighting for them with his younger brothers, all of them straining for the Pandavas’ sake, and Gajanika, Virabhadra, Sudarshana, Shrutadhvaja, Balanika, Jayanika, Jayapriya, Vijaya, Labhalaksha, Jayashva, Kamaratha, and the handsome brothers of Virata, and the twins, and the five sons of Draupadi, and the Rakshasa Ghatotkacha. So the sons of Pandu will not be destroyed. These hosts and many others stand with them. Bhima and Arjuna, by the power of their weapons alone, could wipe out the whole universe, with the gods, the Asuras, and humankind, with every tribe of Yaksha and Rakshasa, with all the elephants and snakes and every other creature. Yudhishthira could burn the whole world with nothing more than an angry look. Karna, how do you dare think of beating in battle the men for whose sake Krishna of immeasurable might has put on armor? It is great folly in you, charioteer’s son, always to be seeking a fight with Krishna himself.”

Karna, the son of Radha, smiled as he answered the teacher Kripa. “Everything you have said about the Pandavas is true, Brahmin. These virtues and many others are to be seen in the sons of Pandu. It is true as well that the sons of Pritha cannot be beaten by the gods with Indra at their head, or by the Daityas, the Yakshas, and the Rakshasas. For all that, I will beat them, with the help of the dart Indra gave me. You know that dart cannot be turned aside. With it I will kill Arjuna in battle. Once Arjuna has fallen, Krishna and Arjuna’s own brothers will never be able to enjoy the earth without him, and so all of them will perish. Then this earth with her seas will lie under the chief of the Kurus, and it will cost him no effort. Everything in this world can be gained by policy. I know that, and that is why I roar.

“As for you, you are old, you are a Brahmin by birth, and you have no skill in war. You love the Pandavas dearly, and that is why you insult me like this. Say such words to me once more, Brahmin, and I will draw my scimitar and cut out your tongue, you wretch. You want to praise the Pandavas so as to frighten our troops and the Kauravas. Then listen to this as well. Duryodhana, Drona, Shakuni, Durmukha, Jaya, Duhshasana, Vrishasena, the king of the Madras, you yourself, Somadatta, Drona’s son, and Vivimshati are all here in armor, heroes skilled in battle. What enemy, even one with the prowess of Indra, could beat these men? They are skilled in weapons, strong, eager for heaven, schooled in what is right, and they could kill the gods themselves in a fight. They will take their places on the field in armor to kill the Pandavas for Duryodhana, who wants victory. Yet victory, I hold, rests with destiny even for the mightiest. Bhishma himself lies pierced by a hundred arrows. Vikarna lies dead, and Jayadratha, Bhurishravas, Jaya, Jalasandha, Sudakshina, Shala, that great chariot fighter, and Bhagadatta, and many others whom the gods themselves could not easily have beaten, all of them heroes and stronger than the Pandavas. When such men lie on the field killed by the Pandavas, what can you call it, you wretch among men, except the work of destiny? And the enemies of Duryodhana whom you adore, Brahmin, have lost brave warriors too, by the hundred and the thousand. The armies of the Kurus and of the Pandavas are both shrinking, and I see no prowess of the Pandavas in that. You always think them so mighty, lowest of men. I will fight them with all the strength I have, for Duryodhana’s good. As for victory, that depends on destiny.”

Ashvatthama heard his uncle spoken to in those harsh and insulting words by the charioteer’s son. He lifted his scimitar and rushed furiously at Karna, under the eyes of the Kuru king, like a lion going for an elephant in rut.

“Lowest of men!” Ashvatthama said. “Kripa was speaking of virtues Arjuna truly has, and you, with your crooked mind, abuse my brave uncle out of malice. You are full of pride and insolence. You brag of your prowess today as if no other bowman in the world counted for anything in battle. Where was your prowess, and where were your weapons, when the wielder of Gandiva beat you in battle and killed Jayadratha in front of your eyes? Wretch of a Suta, you feed your mind on an empty hope, the hope of beating a man who once fought Mahadeva himself. The gods and the Asuras together, with Indra to lead them, failed to beat Arjuna when he had Krishna alone for an ally. How do you hope to beat that unconquered hero, the first fighter in the world, with the help of these kings? Look at what I do to you today, Karna, you man of wicked soul. This moment I am going to cut your head from your body.”

He made a furious rush at Karna. Duryodhana himself and Kripa caught him and held him fast. Karna said, “This wretch of a Brahmin has a crooked mind, thinks himself brave, and boasts of what he can do in battle. Let him go, chief of the Kurus. Let him feel what my strength is.” Ashvatthama said, “Charioteer’s son, fool that you are, we forgive you this offense. Arjuna, though, will bring down this swollen pride of yours.”

Duryodhana said, “Ashvatthama, put out your anger. You are a man who gives honor to others, and it is for you to forgive. You should not be angry with the charioteer’s son. A great burden rests on you and Karna and Kripa and Drona and the king of the Madras and the son of Subala. Drive your anger away. Look, the whole Pandava army is coming this way, wanting to fight the son of Radha. They are coming, Brahmin, and challenging every one of us.” Duryodhana’s words calmed him. Drona’s son, whose rage had been roused, mastered it and forgave Karna. Then the teacher Kripa, a man of noble heart and a quiet, mild temper, came back to Karna soon afterward and said, “Charioteer’s son, wicked as your heart is, we forgive you this offense. Arjuna, though, will bring down this swollen pride of yours.”

A key to reading this (lineage and kinship): Kripa is the son of Sharadvat, and Ashvatthama is the son of Sharadvat’s daughter Kripi, Kripa’s twin sister and Drona’s wife. Kripa is therefore Ashvatthama’s mother’s brother, which is why the nephew goes for Karna with a lifted scimitar when the uncle is threatened. Karna is called the Suta’s son throughout, a charioteer’s son, and both Kripa and Ashvatthama use the name as a taunt. Duryodhana, who needs all three of them, has to hold one back by force and plead with him while the Pandava army comes on.

The gist: Karna answers that heroes roar like rain clouds and then bear fruit, and that with Indra’s dart he will kill Arjuna and give Duryodhana the earth. Kripa names the virtues of Yudhishthira and the long list of those who fight for the Pandavas, and calls it folly to challenge Krishna. Karna threatens to cut out the old Brahmin’s tongue, counts the Kaurava champions still standing, and puts the deaths of Bhishma and the rest down to destiny. Ashvatthama lifts his scimitar and rushes at Karna for insulting his uncle; Duryodhana and Kripa hold him, Duryodhana talks him down, and both nephew and uncle tell Karna that Arjuna will humble him.

Karna’s battle with the Pandava host, and his duel with Arjuna

The Pandavas and the Panchalas, famous fighters all, came on together in their thousands, shouting. Karna, with many of the leading Kuru warriors around him, looked like Shakra among the gods as he waited for them with his bow drawn, trusting to the strength of his own arms. The battle that began between Karna and the Pandavas was dreadful, and full of loud roaring. When the Pandavas and Panchalas caught sight of him they shouted, “There is Karna!” and “Where is Karna in this fierce battle?” and “You with the crooked mind, lowest of men, fight with us!” Others, eyes wide with anger at the sight of Radha’s son, said, “Let the allied kings kill this arrogant wretch, this small-minded son of a Suta. He has no business being alive. This sinful man has always hated the sons of Pritha. He does whatever Duryodhana advises, and he is the root of these evils. Kill him!”

With such words great Kshatriya chariot fighters, urged on by the son of Pandu, rushed at him and covered him with a dense shower of arrows, meaning to kill him. Karna saw all those mighty Pandava fighters coming and did not tremble or feel any fear. That ocean of troops was a wonder to see, and it looked like Death. Karna, the benefactor of Dhritarashtra’s sons, strong and quick of hand and never yet beaten in battle, began to hold the whole force off on every side with clouds of shafts. The Pandavas fought back with showers of their own. They shook their bows by the hundred and the thousand and fought Radha’s son as the Daityas of old fought Shakra. Karna answered with a dense shower that swept away the downpour those kings had loosed on him from all sides. Each side undid what the other had just done, and the battle between them was like the meeting of Shakra and the Danavas in the great war the gods once fought with the Asuras.

The lightness of Karna’s hand that Sanjaya saw then was wonderful in the extreme, for all his enemies, fighting with resolve, could not land a blow on him. He checked the clouds of arrows the kings shot, and he sent terrible arrows marked with his own name at their yokes and chariot poles, their umbrellas, their chariots, and their horses. The kings, hurt by him, lost their composure and began to wander over the field like a herd of cattle suffering from cold. Horses and elephants and chariot fighters in great numbers were seen to drop there, struck by Karna and robbed of life. The whole field was strewn with the fallen heads and arms of heroes who would not turn back. With its dead and its dying and its wailing men, the battlefield took on the look of Yama’s own domain.

Duryodhana saw what Karna could do and went to Ashvatthama. “Look,” he said, “Karna in his armor is fighting all the enemy kings. Look at their army, cut up by Karna’s arrows and running like the Asura army when the energy of Kartikeya overwhelmed it. Arjuna has seen his army beaten in battle by that intelligent man, and there he comes, wanting to kill the charioteer’s son. Let steps be taken so that the son of Pandu cannot kill that great chariot fighter in front of us all.” At this Drona’s son, Kripa, Shalya, and the great chariot fighter Kritavarma, the son of Hridika, saw Arjuna coming on like Shakra coming on the Daitya host, and all four advanced against him to rescue Karna. Arjuna, meanwhile, with the Panchalas around him, advanced on Karna as Indra once went against the Asura Vritra.

Dhritarashtra asked, “Sanjaya, when Karna, the son of Vikartana, saw Arjuna roused to fury and looking like the Destroyer as he appears at the end of an age, what did he do next? That great chariot fighter had always challenged Arjuna. He had always said he was able to beat the terrible Arjuna. What did he do when he suddenly came face to face with the man who had always been his deadly enemy?”

Sanjaya said that Karna saw the son of Pandu rushing at him like an elephant at a rival elephant, and went to meet him without fear. Arjuna quickly covered the hard-charging Karna with showers of straight, gold-winged shafts. Karna covered Arjuna with his own, and the son of Pandu buried him again under clouds of arrows. Then Karna, in a rage, hit Arjuna with three shafts. Arjuna saw the lightness of Karna’s hand and could not tolerate it. He shot thirty straight arrows at the charioteer’s son, sharpened on stone, their points blazing, and then in his anger, strong as he was, he put one more long arrow through the wrist of Karna’s left arm, smiling as he did it. Karna’s bow dropped from the arm that had been so forcefully pierced.

Karna had the bow back in his hand in an instant and covered Arjuna with clouds of shafts again, showing how quick his hands were. Arjuna, smiling, stopped that shower with arrows of his own. The two great bowmen closed with each other, each wanting to undo the other’s feats, and went on covering one another with showers of shafts. The fight between Karna and the son of Pandu became a wonder to watch, like the fight of two wild elephants over a female in her season.

Then Arjuna, that mighty archer, having seen what Karna could do, quickly cut his bow in two at the grip. With a number of broad-headed shafts he sent Karna’s four horses to the house of Yama, and he struck the head of Karna’s driver from his body. With four more shafts the son of Pandu and Pritha hit Karna, who now had no bow, no horses, and no driver. Karna, hurt by those arrows, jumped down from his horseless chariot and climbed quickly onto the chariot of Kripa, the man whose tongue he had threatened to cut out. The Kaurava warriors saw Radha’s son beaten and fled in every direction.

King Duryodhana himself stopped them as they ran. “Heroes, do not run,” he said. “Stay in the battle, you who are the pride of the Kshatriyas. I am going out now myself to kill Arjuna. I will kill him myself, with the assembled Panchalas. When I fight the wielder of Gandiva today, Arjuna will see that my prowess is like that of the Destroyer at the end of an age. Today the sons of Pritha will see my arrows fly in thousands like flights of locusts. The fighting men will see me today, bow in hand, loosing dense showers of shafts like the torrents the clouds pour down at the end of summer. Today I will beat Arjuna with my straight shafts. Stay in the battle, heroes, and put away your fear of him. When he meets my strength he will not be able to bear it, any more than the ocean, the home of the makaras, can overrun the land.” Having said this, the king set out toward Arjuna in a rage, his eyes red, with a large force around him.

Kripa saw Duryodhana going and went up to Ashvatthama. “There goes Duryodhana,” he said. “Anger has taken his senses, and he wants to fight Arjuna like an insect that wants to fly into a blazing fire. Stop him before he throws his life away in front of us in this battle with Arjuna. The Kuru king can stay alive in battle only for as long as he keeps out of range of Arjuna’s arrows, which are like snakes fresh from their sloughs. Let the king be stopped before those terrible arrows burn him to ashes. While we are here, it is wholly improper that the king should go to fight in person, as if he had no one to fight for him. If he engages Arjuna, the life of this descendant of Kuru will be in as much danger as an elephant’s that fights a tiger.”

So urged by his mother’s brother, Drona’s son, a master of every weapon, went quickly to Duryodhana and said, “Son of Gandhari, while I am alive you ought not to go into battle yourself and pass me over, when I have always wished you well. You need have no anxiety about beating Arjuna. I will hold Arjuna. Stay here, Duryodhana.”

Duryodhana said, “The teacher Drona always protects the sons of Pandu as if they were his own sons. You too never lift a hand against those enemies of mine. Or perhaps it is my bad luck that your prowess never turns fierce in battle. Or perhaps it comes from your affection for Yudhishthira, or for Draupadi. I do not know the true reason myself. Shame on my greedy self, for whose sake all my friends, wanting only to make me happy, are beaten and sunk in grief.

“Who is there except you, a master of weapons and a warrior equal to Mahadeva in battle, who has the power to destroy the enemy and would hold it back? Ashvatthama, be gracious to me and destroy my enemies. Neither the gods nor the Danavas can stay within range of your weapons. Kill the Panchalas and the Somakas with all their followers. The rest we will kill ourselves, with you to protect us. Look, Brahmin: the Somakas and the Panchalas, men of great renown, are running through my troops like a forest fire. Check them, and the Kaikeyas too, or with Arjuna to protect them they will wipe us all out. Go there quickly, Ashvatthama. Whether you do it now or later, this is a deed you must do. You were born for the destruction of the Panchalas. Put out your strength and you will empty the world of them. The reverend ones crowned with ascetic success have said so, and it will be as they said. So kill the Panchalas with all their followers. The gods themselves, with Indra at their head, cannot stay within range of your weapons; what need I say of the sons of Pritha and the Panchalas? What I say is true: the Pandavas and the Somakas together are no match for you in battle. Go! Let there be no delay. Look, our army is breaking and running under Arjuna’s arrows. With the celestial energy that is yours, you are able to crush the Pandavas and the Panchalas.”

A sub-tale: Arjuna cuts Karna’s bow, kills his four horses and his driver, and puts four more arrows into him, and Karna leaves the fight alive on Kripa’s chariot. Through the whole duel the dart Karna had sworn to throw at Arjuna stays unused. He throws it later this same night, at Ghatotkacha, and Krishna then tells Arjuna that Karna, with his dart spent, is already as good as slain.

The gist: the Pandavas and Panchalas come at Karna shouting for his death, and he holds all of them off, shooting arrows marked with his name into their yokes, poles, umbrellas, chariots, and horses. Duryodhana sends Ashvatthama, Kripa, Shalya, and Kritavarma to shield him from Arjuna. Arjuna pierces Karna’s left wrist, cuts his bow at the grip, kills his four horses and his driver, and Karna escapes onto Kripa’s chariot. The Kaurava troops run; Duryodhana rallies them and sets out to fight Arjuna himself; Kripa sends Ashvatthama to stop him. Duryodhana answers that Drona and Ashvatthama both spare the Pandavas, and begs Ashvatthama to destroy the Panchalas.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Drona Parva, the close of the Jayadratha-vadha sub-parva and the opening of the Ghatotkacha-vadha sub-parva, Sections 123 to 158. The Sanskrit e-text, the Gita Press Hindi edition, and Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s complete English translation were used to verify names, sequence, and principal events. Where the recensions differ, this English retelling follows Ganguli, and the Hindi edition follows Gita Press.