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The fourteenth day of the war did not end when the sun went down. On the days before it the armies had drawn off to rest when the light failed. This time Jayadratha’s head had fallen, and the two armies stayed on the field and went on fighting, first in a darkness where men killed one another by shouting out names, then by the light of thousands of lamps set on chariots, elephants and horses, a light that turned the night into day. Somadatta and Bhuri fall in that night. Kritavarma cuts the armor off Yudhishthira’s body, Karna lets Sahadeva live, and Dhrishtadyumna fights his way to the front of Drona’s chariot. All of it turns on one decision. Krishna keeps Arjuna away from Karna and sends Bhima’s son Ghatotkacha in his place, because Karna still carries the dart Indra gave him, a weapon that kills one enemy and one only, and he has been keeping it for Arjuna. After that decision come Ghatotkacha’s hundred illusions, the severed head of Alayudha, a red cloud in the sky, and at the end the dart leaving Karna’s hand. Ghatotkacha’s enormous body crushes an akshauhini, a whole army division of Kaurava troops, as it falls. The Pandavas weep, Krishna dances, and Arjuna has to be told why: with the dart gone, Karna is already a dead man.
Ashvatthama’s answer: “You are greedy and suspicious, and I will still die for you”; then the night’s first duel with Dhrishtadyumna
Duryodhana had asked for the Panchalas dead, and before Ashvatthama gave the king what he wanted, he gave him something he had not asked for. Moments earlier Duryodhana, wild with anger at the rout of his army, had started toward Arjuna to fight him in person, and Ashvatthama had driven up to stop him. The king had turned on the man who stopped him. His plea came with an accusation folded inside it: that Drona and his son loved the Pandavas too well to fight them in earnest, and that this was why the war kept going wrong. Sanjaya, the charioteer to whom the sage Vyasa had granted sight of the whole battle, was telling it all to Dhritarashtra, Duryodhana’s blind father, and he told the old king plainly what his son heard in reply. Ashvatthama was Drona’s son, a Brahmin trained to arms in the same school as the princes on both sides of the field, and nobody had yet found a way to beat him. His mind was already fixed on the enemy’s destruction, the way Indra’s is fixed on the Daityas, the demon clans who are the gods’ old enemies, when he turned to Duryodhana and dealt with the charge first. “It is as you say,” he said. “The Pandavas have always been dear to me and to my father, and the two of us are dear to them. In battle it is otherwise. In battle we fight them with all the strength we have, without fear and without a thought for our lives. Karna, Shalya, Kripa, Kritavarma and I could destroy the Pandava army in a moment. The Pandavas could destroy the Kaurava army in a moment too, if we were not standing in it. We fight them with all our might and they fight us with all of theirs, and when force meets an equal force each cancels the other. As long as the sons of Pandu are alive, their army cannot be beaten. That is the truth. They are very strong, and they are fighting for what is their own. Why should they fail to kill your soldiers?” Then the deference went out of his voice. “You, though, are greedy beyond measure. You are deceitful. You are vain, and you suspect everything, which is why you suspect even us. I think you are a wicked man, sinful to the soul, sin itself given a body. Your mind is mean and your thoughts are evil, so you doubt us and you doubt everyone else. As for me, I fight for your sake with my whole will, and I am ready to lay down my life doing it. I am going into battle now, for you. I will fight the enemy and kill a great many of them. I will fight the Panchalas, the Somakas, the Kaikeyas and the Pandavas as well, because it will please you. Burned by my arrows today, the Chedis, the Panchalas and the Somakas will scatter in every direction like cattle with a lion among them. Dharma’s royal son and all his Somakas will see what I can do and think the whole world has filled up with Ashvatthamas. Yudhishthira will lose heart when he sees the Panchalas and the Somakas lying dead. I will kill every man who comes against me. Not one of them will get out from under my arms alive today.”
When he had finished, Ashvatthama drove into the fighting, and Sanjaya went on with what he did there. He broke every bowman who stood in his way, and all of it was labor for the sons of the king he had just insulted to his face. He did not look for easy prey. He called out to the Panchalas and the Kaikeyas, the hard core of the Pandava alliance, and invited the whole mass of them at once. “Great chariot fighters, all of you, aim at my body. Show me how light your hands are with your weapons, and fight me coolly.” They took him at his word. Every man within reach loosed at him, and weapons came down on Drona’s son like rain out of a full cloud. He broke the downpour apart in the air, and then, with Dhrishtadyumna and the sons of Pandu looking on, he picked ten brave men out of the press and killed them. That was enough for the Panchalas and the Somakas. They left him and ran in every direction. Dhrishtadyumna watched them go. He was Drupada’s son, prince of the Panchalas and commander of the whole Pandava army, and the men dying were his own people. He came on with a hundred chariot fighters around him, men who did not know how to turn back, in chariots worked with gold whose wheels rumbled like clouds heavy with rain, and when he was close enough to be heard he shouted across at Drona’s son. “You fool, you teacher’s son, what is the use of killing common soldiers? If you are a hero, fight me. I will kill you. Stand there a moment and do not run.” Arrows followed the words, keen and terrible, the kind that reach the vitals. They flew gold-winged and sharp-pointed in one unbroken line and sank into Ashvatthama’s body the way bees roaming after honey sink into a flowering tree. He swelled with rage like a snake that has been trodden on. Proud, unafraid, an arrow already in his hand, he answered. “Dhrishtadyumna, stay where you are a moment. Do not leave my sight. I will send you to the house of Yama, lord of the dead, soon enough with these arrows.” Then his hands went to work, so quickly that the Panchala prince vanished from every side at once under clouds of shafts.
From inside that cover Dhrishtadyumna said the thing that turned a duel into a promise. “Brahmin, you know nothing of where I come from, or of my vow. I have to kill Drona first, you evil-minded man, and so I will not kill you today, while Drona is still alive. When this night has passed and the fair dawn has come, I will kill your father in battle, and then I will send you after him to the land of spirits. That is my wish. Until then, stand in front of me and show me all the hatred you have for the sons of Pritha and all your devotion to the Kurus. You will not get away from me alive. A Brahmin who gives up a Brahmin’s way of life and takes up a Kshatriya’s may be killed by any Kshatriya, and that is what you are, you lowest of men.” It was a taunt at the whole house of Drona, priests by birth who had made their name with the bow, and it landed. Ashvatthama gathered up all his rage and gave back two words, “Wait! Wait!”, the challenge fighting men in this war throw at each other when they mean to finish something, and he stared at Drupada’s son as if the stare alone could set him on fire. Hissing like a snake, he buried him in arrows again. Dhrishtadyumna, with the whole Panchala force around him, did not tremble under them. He trusted his own strength and sent a great many arrows back. So the two of them sat down to a game of dice with life itself for the stake. Neither could bear the other, each checked the other’s volleys, and the shafts went out thick in all directions. Overhead the Siddhas and the Charanas, the perfected ones and the singers of heaven who gather wherever a great fight is on, praised them both aloud. Their arrows filled the sky and every quarter of it and made a darkness of their own inside the night, and within it the two fought on where none of the watchers could see them. When they could be seen they seemed to be dancing, the bows bent into circles, each straining to kill the other, both of them frightening to look at and both wonderfully quick and sure. Thousands of the best warriors on the field cheered them. The two armies watched them close like a pair of wild elephants in a forest and were delighted; men roared like lions, every fighter blew his conch, and instruments struck up by the hundred and the thousand.
For a short while the fight, a sight to deepen the fear of any timid man, stayed level. Then Ashvatthama rushed. In one pass he cut away Dhrishtadyumna’s bow, his standard, the royal umbrella over his head, the two drivers who rode at the sides of his chariot, his principal driver and all four of his horses. With the commander stranded, he turned his straight arrows on the Panchalas and sent them running in hundreds and thousands. It was the kind of work Indra does in battle, and the Pandava army, watching it, began to shake with fear. A hundred arrows killed a hundred Panchalas. Three sharp ones killed three of their leading men. He did it in plain sight of Drupada’s son and of Arjuna, and he went on to kill a great number of the Panchalas who still stood in front of him. The Panchalas and the Srinjayas broke then, and fled from him with their banners in tatters. Ashvatthama roared over the field he had won like a mass of thundercloud at the end of summer. With so many dead around him he shone like the fire that burns at the end of an age, when it has consumed every living creature. The Kauravas crowded in to praise the man who had beaten thousands, and Drona’s son stood among them radiant as the king of the gods after a victory over his enemies.
A key to reading this (Dhrishtadyumna’s vow): Dhrishtadyumna sprang from Drupada’s sacrificial fire for one purpose, the death of Drona, which is why he tells Ashvatthama that the father must die first and the son after him. Sanjaya calls him Prishata’s son after Drupada’s father, King Prishata. Ashvatthama is “the son of Gautama’s daughter” through his mother Kripi, the daughter of Sharadvat of the Gautama line and the twin sister of Kripa. Hridika’s son is Kritavarma, chief of the Bhojas, a Vrishni of Krishna’s own people who fights on the Kaurava side. All of it happens on the night of the fourteenth day, when the fighting did not stop at sunset after Jayadratha’s death and both armies went on killing in the dark. Pritha is another name of Kunti, so “the sons of Pritha” are the Pandavas. The Somakas, named again and again beside the Panchalas, are Drupada’s own people, the clan whose throne he holds.
The gist: Ashvatthama answers Duryodhana’s plea by telling the king to his face that he is greedy, deceitful and suspicious of everyone, and then goes out ready to die for him. He invites the Panchalas to aim at his body, kills ten of them, and meets Dhrishtadyumna, who announces that Drona must die first and Drona’s son after him. The duel ends with Dhrishtadyumna stripped of bow, standard, umbrella, drivers and horses, and with the Panchalas and Srinjayas running from the field under torn banners.
An army breaking in the dark, Somadatta’s death at Satyaki’s hands, and Krishna pulling Yudhishthira away from Drona
Ashvatthama’s triumph lasted as long as it took two brothers to reach him. King Yudhishthira and his brother Bhima closed on Drona’s son from every side, and the moment they did, Duryodhana came at the Pandavas with Drona beside him, the old Brahmin who had taught both sets of cousins the bow. The fight that opened there was of the kind that feeds the fears of timid men, and Sanjaya gave the blind king the nations in it as they died. Yudhishthira, in his anger, sent Ambashthas, Malavas, Vangas, Shibis and Trigartas to the land of the dead in great numbers, men of the many peoples who had marched to fight for Duryodhana. Bhima tore into the Abhishahas, the Shurasenas and other Kshatriyas who were hard to beat, and turned the ground to a mire of blood. Arjuna, the diadem-wearer behind his white horses, dispatched the Yaudheyas, the hill men, the Madrakas and the Malavas the same way. Elephants hit by fast arrows went down like hills with twin peaks. Their severed trunks still twitched where they lay, so that the earth seemed covered with crawling snakes, and the gold-worked umbrellas of fallen kings lay scattered across it until the field shone like the sky at the end of an age, crowded with suns and moons and stars. About then a fierce shouting rose near Drona’s chariot, and words could be picked out of it: “Kill!” “Strike without fear!” “Pierce them!” “Cut them to pieces!” Drona answered in a rage with the Vayavya, the weapon of the wind, and blew away the enemies around him as a great storm blows away gathering cloud. The Panchalas ran from him in fear, under the eyes of Bhima and Arjuna. The two brothers stopped the rout quickly and came at Drona’s huge division with a large force of chariots, Arjuna on its right and Bhima on its left, each pouring a dense stream of arrows on Drona, Bharadvaja’s son. The great chariot fighters of the Srinjayas and the Panchalas followed them in, with the Matsyas and the Somakas, and from the other side many of Duryodhana’s leading chariot warriors, hard hitters all, hurried toward Drona’s chariot with a large force to hold him up. Then the Kaurava army began to break. Arjuna was cutting it down, and the darkness had closed over it. Duryodhana himself tried to rally the men, and so did Drona, and neither could stop them. With the world wrapped in gloom and Arjuna’s arrows falling among them, that vast host ran in every direction, and many kings left behind the animals and the chariots they rode and fled, overwhelmed with fear.
Satyaki, meanwhile, had seen the man he wanted. Yuyudhana, as he was also called, was the grandson of Shini, a Vrishni of Krishna’s clan and Arjuna’s own pupil in arms, and earlier that day he had taken the head of Bhurishravas, Somadatta’s son. The father had sworn in return to kill Satyaki before the night was over. Now Somadatta stood in plain view, shaking his great bow, and Satyaki turned to his driver. “Take me to Somadatta. I tell you truly, I will not come back from this battle today until I have killed that enemy, that worst of the Kurus, Bahlika’s son.” The driver sent the horses forward. They were of the Sindhu breed, white as conch shell, fast as wind or thought and able to carry any weight of weapons, and they bore Yuyudhana into the fight the way Indra’s horses bore him when he went out long ago to crush the Danavas. Somadatta saw him coming at speed and turned to meet him without fear. He sent arrows down on Shini’s grandson as a cloud sends rain and hid him as clouds hide the sun, and Satyaki, just as fearless, hid the Kuru chief under arrows of his own. Somadatta put sixty shafts into Satyaki’s chest. Satyaki answered with many sharpened arrows. Torn open by each other, the two of them looked like a pair of kinshuka trees flowering red in spring. They glared at each other, both dyed in blood, the Kuru and the Vrishni, grim-faced, while their chariots wheeled in circles like two clouds pouring rain. Their bodies bristled with arrows like two porcupines. The gold-winged shafts standing in them shone like fireflies covering two tall trees, and where the arrowheads still blazed the two looked like a pair of angry elephants hung with burning torches.
Somadatta drew first blood in the contest of bows. A crescent-headed arrow cut Satyaki’s great bow in two, and in that instant, when speed counted for everything, he put twenty-five shafts into him and then ten more. Satyaki took up a tougher bow and quickly drove five arrows into Somadatta, and with a broad-headed one, smiling as he loosed it, he cut down the golden standard of Bahlika’s son. Somadatta watched his standard fall and, unshaken, answered with another twenty-five. Satyaki’s anger rose. A razor-faced arrow cut Somadatta’s bow, leaving him for the moment like a snake with its fangs pulled, and a hundred straight shafts with wings of gold went into him. Somadatta was a strong man. He took a second bow and covered Satyaki with arrows; Satyaki, burning, pierced him with many, and Somadatta’s volleys hurt him in return. Bhima came up then to fight at Satyaki’s side and struck Bahlika’s son with ten shafts, and Somadatta, with no sign of fear, struck Bhima back with many sharpened arrows. Satyaki, still furious, aimed at Somadatta’s chest and threw a parigha, an iron bar of a club, new and terrible, with a golden shaft and the hardness of a thunderbolt. Somadatta smiled and cut it in two as it flew at him. The two halves of that fearsome iron dropped like peaks split off a mountain by lightning. After that Satyaki took the man apart piece by piece. A broad-headed arrow cut his bow. Five arrows cut the leather guard that cased his fingers. Four more sent his four fine horses to Yama. One straight shaft, loosed with a smile, took the head of his driver from his shoulders. Then he aimed at Somadatta himself an arrow that glowed like fire, whetted on stone, steeped in oil and winged with gold. Shot by Shini’s grandson with all his strength, it came down on Somadatta’s chest like a hawk. It went deep, and the great Kuru chariot fighter fell from his chariot and died. He had outlived his son Bhurishravas by less than a day.
The Kaurava warriors saw Somadatta killed and rushed at Yuyudhana with a great throng of chariots. In the same moment Yudhishthira, with all the Prabhadrakas and a large force besides, rushed at Drona’s army. The king was angry, and he began to strike down and scatter the teacher’s troops while the teacher looked on. Drona’s eyes went red and he came at him in a fury. He pierced Yudhishthira with seven keen arrows. Yudhishthira pierced him with five. Drona, deeply hit, licked the corners of his mouth for a moment and then cut down both the king’s standard and his bow. Speed was everything now, and Yudhishthira, bowless, snatched up another bow, tough and hard enough for the work, and put a thousand arrows into Drona, his horses, his driver, his standard and his chariot together. To the men watching it seemed a wonder. Drona, hurt and in great pain, sat down for a while on the floor of his chariot. When his head cleared he was sighing like a snake and full of rage, and he called up the Vayavya weapon. Yudhishthira, bow in hand and unafraid, met it with the same weapon of his own and broke its force, and then cut the Brahmin’s great bow in two. Drona took up another bow. Yudhishthira cut that one as well with a volley of keen shafts. It was then that Krishna, Arjuna’s charioteer and the Pandavas’ counselor in everything, spoke to him. “Listen to what I say, Yudhishthira. Stop fighting Drona. Drona is always trying to seize you in battle, and I do not think it right that you should fight him. The man who was created for Drona’s destruction will kill him, without any doubt. Leave the teacher and go where King Duryodhana is. Kings should fight kings; they should not seek to fight those who are not kings. Take elephants and horses and chariots around you, and go to the place where Arjuna and I, with only a small force, and Bhima too, are fighting the Kurus.” There was weight in the warning. From his first days in command Drona had been pledged to Duryodhana to bring Yudhishthira in alive, and a captured king would have ended the war. Nor did Krishna need to name the man created to destroy Drona. Dhrishtadyumna had come out of his father’s sacrificial fire for that purpose. Yudhishthira the just heard Krishna out and thought for a moment. Then he drove to the part of the field where Bhima was killing Kaurava troops like the Destroyer himself with his mouth wide open. The rattle of the king’s chariot made the earth ring like thunderclouds at the end of summer as he took up his station on Bhima’s flank, and Bhima went on with the slaughter. Drona, that night, turned back to burning the Panchalas.
A key to reading this (Somadatta, and why Krishna interrupts): Somadatta is the son of Bahlika and the father of Bhurishravas. Earlier this same day (chapter 26) Satyaki cut off Bhurishravas’s head as he sat fasting to death with his arm already severed, and Somadatta swore to kill Satyaki before the night passed. The quarrel between the two houses is older still: Satyaki’s grandfather Shini once threw Somadatta to the ground and struck him with his foot before an assembly of kings. “Shini’s grandson” and “Yuyudhana” are both Satyaki. A parigha is a heavy iron club or bar, thrown or swung. Krishna gives Yudhishthira two reasons for leaving Drona. Drona had promised Duryodhana at the start of his command that he would take Yudhishthira alive, and Drona’s death is reserved for the man born from fire for it, Dhrishtadyumna. Yudhishthira is “Dharma’s son” because the god Dharma fathered him on Kunti.
The gist: In the dark, Yudhishthira, Bhima and Arjuna cut down whole contingents of the Kaurava allies, Drona scatters the Panchalas with the wind weapon, and still the Kaurava host breaks and runs from Arjuna. Satyaki hunts down Somadatta, strips him of bow, standard, finger guard, horses and driver, and kills him with a single oil-steeped arrow to the chest. Yudhishthira drives Drona down onto the floor of his chariot with a thousand arrows and twice cuts his bow, and Krishna sends him away to Bhima’s side, because Drona wants the king captured and Drona’s death belongs to someone else.
Armies fighting by name in the dark, and then the night that lamps turned into day
The dark, by now, was complete. Dust hung in it, raised by wheels and hooves, and Sanjaya told the blind king that the men standing on that field could no longer see one another. What was left to them was noise: wheels, bowstrings, the screaming of elephants, and voices. The Kshatriyas fought on by guesswork and by names. A man called out who he was, his own name and the name of his house, and whoever heard it knew whether to strike or to hold his hand. Through that slaughter of chariots and elephants, horses and men on foot, six fighters went on doing the most harm: Drona, Karna and Kripa on one side, Bhima, Dhrishtadyumna and Satyaki on the other, each wounding the others and tearing at the troops of both armies. Pressed from every side by those six in the hour of darkness, the soldiers of both hosts broke and ran wherever they could, with no heart left in them, and as they ran they were cut down in great numbers. Chariot fighters killed one another by the thousand in that battle. Unable to see anything at all, men lost their wits. “All of this,” Sanjaya told the king, “came of your son’s evil counsels.” At that hour, with the world sunk in darkness, panic took every creature on the field, the finest of the warriors among them, and their senses left them.
Dhritarashtra wanted to know how it had been for the men inside it. “What was the state of your minds,” he asked, “when the darkness had drained your strength and the Pandavas were shaking you so hard? And when everything was covered in darkness, Sanjaya, how did their troops and mine become visible again?” Sanjaya told him. What was left of the Kaurava army was drawn up again in close order at its leaders’ command. Drona took the front and Shalya the rear, Ashvatthama and Shakuni the right flank and the left, and Duryodhana himself went about that night seeing to the safety of all the troops. He put heart into the foot soldiers, and then he gave them an order. “Put down your great weapons, all of you, and take blazing lamps in your hands.” They did it gladly. A man who carries a lamp cannot carry a spear, and the king was spending weapons to buy light. Then the sky seemed to join them. Gods and rishis, Gandharvas and celestial seers, the tribes of Vidyadharas and Apsaras, Nagas and Yakshas, Uragas and Kinnaras, all standing in the air, took up blazing lamps of their own with the same gladness. Lamps filled with sweet-scented oil were seen coming down from the guardians of the four quarters and of the quarters between, and many, for Duryodhana’s sake, from the wandering seers Narada and Parvata in particular, and the darkness lit up. The Kaurava army in its close array shone that night with lamplight, with the costly ornaments its fighters wore, and with the celestial weapons that blazed as they were shot or thrown. Five lamps were set on every chariot and three on every elephant in rut. Every horse carried one large lamp. It was done quickly, and soon the whole army stood lit. With the foot soldiers holding their oil-fed lamps among the ranks, it had the beauty of clouds in a night sky when lightning runs through them.
Once the army was lit, Drona could be seen for what he was. He stood in golden armor, burning like a fire and scorching everything near him, bright as the sun at noon. The lamplight came back off gold ornaments, off polished breastplates and bows, off the tempered metal of weapons. Maces wound with cord, bright iron bars, chariots, arrows and darts flashed as they moved and made thousands of lamps out of the few. Umbrellas and yak-tail fans, the marks of kings, scimitars and burning brands and necklaces of gold caught the light whenever they were whirled or lifted, and were beautiful. The whole host blazed. Fine weapons, red with blood and swung by strong men, flared like lightning in the sky at the end of summer. The faces of warriors rushing in to strike, trembling with the heat of their own charge, looked like cloud masses driven by wind. On that terrible night the army’s glare was as fierce as the sun’s over a forest of burning trees. The Pandavas saw the Kaurava host lit up and did the same, fast, rousing the foot soldiers through their whole army. They set seven lamps on each elephant and ten on each chariot. They set two on the back of each horse, and many more on the flanks and rears of the chariots and on the standards. More lamps burned along the flanks of the army, at its rear and its front, all around it and inside it. Both armies were lit now. Everywhere the foot soldiers stood mixed among elephants and chariots and cavalry, and in Yudhishthira’s army other men besides the foot soldiers stood holding blazing torches. With all those lamps his host burned fiercely, like a great fire made twice as bright by the rays of the sun. The light of the two armies spread over the earth and the sky and to every quarter, and seemed to grow as it spread. By it, Sanjaya said, the king’s army and the enemy’s could each be seen plainly. It reached the heavens and woke them. Gods, Gandharvas, Yakshas, seers perfected by their austerities, and Apsaras all came to that place. With them thronging above it, and with the spirits of slain warriors on their way up to the celestial worlds, the battlefield looked like a second heaven. Crowded with chariots and horses and elephants, ablaze with lamps, full of angry fighting men and of horses dead or running wild, that vast array resembled the battle lines of the gods and the Asuras in the ancient days. Sanjaya made one storm of that night for the king. The rush of darts was its wind and the great chariots its clouds. The neighing of horses and the trumpeting of elephants made its thunder, arrows its rain, and the blood of men and animals its flood. In the midst of it Ashvatthama, the Brahmin warrior, burned the Pandavas as the noon sun burns the land when the rainy season ends.
The field that had been all darkness and dust was bright now, and the fighting changed with it. Men who had been striking at voices looked one another in the face. Warriors carrying lances and swords and other weapons met and stared at each other in rage before they closed, each wanting the other’s life. Thousands of lamps burned on every side, and brighter than these burned the lamps of the gods and the Gandharvas, set on golden stands studded with jewels and fed with fragrant oil, until the battlefield glittered like the night sky full of stars. Hundreds upon hundreds of burning brands lit the ground, and the earth seemed to be on fire, as it will be when the world is destroyed. Every direction blazed like trees covered with fireflies on an evening in the rains. Fighters sought out their equals. Elephant met elephant, horseman met horseman, chariot met chariot, gladly, on that fierce night, at Duryodhana’s command, and when the two armies, each with its four arms of chariots, elephants, horse and foot, crashed together the sound was terrible. Then Arjuna began, with great speed, to destroy the Kaurava ranks, and every king in them felt his strength go. The blind king broke in there with a rush of questions. He already knew how this part of the war had ended. Sanjaya had come to him with the news that Drona was dead, and everything since had been the telling of how. “When Arjuna, whom no one can beat, lost patience and drove in anger into my son’s army, what was the state of your minds? What did the soldiers think when he came into their midst? What steps did Duryodhana think should be taken? Who went against him in that battle? When Arjuna of the white horses entered our army, who protected Drona? Who guarded the right wheel of Drona’s chariot, and who the left? Who covered his rear while he fought? When he pushed forward killing the enemy, who went ahead of him? That great bowman who could not be beaten, who went in among the Panchalas as if he were dancing along the track of his chariot and burned whole throngs of Panchala chariots with his arrows like a raging fire: alas, how did that Drona meet his death? You always speak of my enemies as cool and unbeaten and cheerful and swelling with strength. You never speak of mine in such words. Mine you describe as killed, or pale, or routed, and my chariot warriors, by your telling, lose their chariots in every battle they fight!”
Sanjaya answered with what Duryodhana did. Drona meant to fight, and the king understood as much. That night he spoke to his obedient brothers, Vikarna and Chitrasena, Suparshva, Durdharsha and Dirghabahu, and to all the men who followed them. “You are men of great courage. Fight with all your resolve, and guard Drona from behind, all of you. Kritavarma will guard his right and Shala his left.” Then he sent forward what remained of the brave Trigarta chariot fighters, placing them in front, and to them he laid out his whole reckoning of the war. “The teacher is merciful, and the Pandavas are fighting with great resolve. While he is killing the enemy, protect him well, all of you together. Drona is mighty in battle, with great lightness of hand and great courage. He can beat the gods themselves in a fight; what need to speak of the Pandavas and the Somakas? So stand together, strain with all your resolve in this terrible battle, and protect him from that one great chariot warrior, Dhrishtadyumna. I see no man among all the Pandava fighters who can defeat Drona in battle, except Dhrishtadyumna. That is why I think we must protect Bharadvaja’s son with our whole soul. Protected, he is sure to kill the Somakas and the Srinjayas, one after another. Once all the Srinjayas at the head of that army are dead, Drona’s son will without doubt kill Dhrishtadyumna. In the same way Karna will defeat Arjuna. Bhima and the others in their armor I will subdue myself. The rest of the Pandavas, with the strength gone out of them, our warriors will beat easily. Then my success will plainly last forever. For all these reasons, protect Drona.” With those words Duryodhana urged his troops on into that night of terrible darkness, and the two armies, each wanting victory, closed. Arjuna tore at the Kauravas and the Kauravas at Arjuna with weapons of every kind. Drona’s son buried the king of the Panchalas under straight arrows, and Drona himself buried the Srinjayas. As the Pandavas and Panchalas on one side and the Kauravas on the other went about killing each other, a furious din rose from the field. The battle of that night, Sanjaya said, was so fierce and so terrible that neither his own generation nor those gone before had ever witnessed one like it.
A key to reading this (the night and the names): This is the night of the fourteenth day. After Jayadratha’s death Duryodhana reproached Drona, and Drona, stung, swore to keep his armor on until the Panchalas were dead and warned that both armies would fight on through the night. Fighting “by names” is literal: in the dark a warrior’s own name and the name of his house, called aloud, were the only way to tell friend from enemy. Narada and Parvata are two celestial seers who wander together. Bharadvaja’s son is Drona. Duryodhana’s reckoning (Drona kills the Somakas and Srinjayas, Ashvatthama kills Dhrishtadyumna, Karna beats Arjuna, he himself subdues Bhima) rests entirely on keeping Drona alive, and chapter 27 tells Drona’s fall.
The gist: Darkness and dust turn the battle into a slaughter of the blind, in which men find one another by the names they call out. Duryodhana’s answer is lamps: five on each chariot, three on each elephant, one on each horse, and the gods and seers add theirs from the sky; the Pandavas reply with ten, seven and two. The lit field looks like a second heaven. Dhritarashtra asks who guarded Drona’s wheels, and Sanjaya gives him Duryodhana’s plan: five brothers behind Drona, Kritavarma and Shala at his right and left, the Trigartas in front, and every hope of the war resting on the teacher staying alive.
“Go for Drona alone”: Yudhishthira’s order, thirteen pairs of duelists, and the king’s armor cut from his body by Kritavarma
In the middle of that night’s blind killing Yudhishthira gave his army one target. He spoke to the Pandavas, the Panchalas and the Somakas, Sanjaya said, and the order he gave them, an order that would cost men and chariots and elephants in great numbers, was short. “Go against Drona, and Drona only. Kill him.” Drona had commanded the Kaurava army since Bhishma fell, and tonight he was the man doing the Panchalas the most harm. At the king’s word the Panchalas and the Somakas rushed at that one man with terrible shouts. The Kauravas roared back in anger and went to meet them with all the skill, courage and strength they had. Every Pandava captain was now trying to reach the same chariot, and a Kaurava captain stepped into the road of each. Sanjaya named them for the blind king pair by pair. Kritavarma, Hridika’s son, charged Yudhishthira as the king advanced on Drona, one maddened elephant against another. Satyaki came on scattering arrows in all directions, and the Kuru warrior Bhuri, a hard man in a fight and a son of the Somadatta whom Satyaki had just killed, rushed at him. Karna, son of Vikartana, blocked Sahadeva, the youngest of Pandu’s sons, as he made for Drona. King Duryodhana himself went at Bhima, who was coming on in his chariot like the Destroyer. Shakuni, Subala’s son and Duryodhana’s uncle, moved fast and barred the way to Nakula, a master of every kind of fighting. Kripa, Sharadvat’s son, stopped Shikhandi, a son of Drupada, as he drove forward in his chariot. Duhshasana, fighting hard, stopped Yudhishthira’s son Prativindhya, who came on with resolve behind horses the color of peacocks. Ashvatthama stopped Bhima’s son, the Rakshasa Ghatotkacha, who knew a hundred kinds of illusion. Karna’s son Vrishasena held back Drupada, who was advancing on Drona with his troops and his followers. Shalya, the ruler of the Madras, stopped Virata in anger as the old Matsya king came on fast to kill Drona. Chitrasena, one of the blind king’s own sons, shooting hard and often, stopped Nakula’s son Shatanika as he too advanced to kill Drona. Alambusha, a prince of the Rakshasas, went against Arjuna. And Dhrishtadyumna, prince of the Panchalas, gladly took on Drona himself while the great bowman went about his killing. The other chariot fighters of the Pandavas who pressed toward Drona were met with force by other chariot fighters of the king’s army. Around the thirteen pairs the rest of the night fought on. Elephant riders met elephant riders and ground each other down by the thousand. At dead of night the horses that charged each other looked like hills with wings. Horsemen with lances, darts and swords met horsemen, shouting. Men killed one another in heaps with maces, short clubs and every other kind of weapon.
Of all the pairs, the first to be decided was the king’s own, and it went against him. Kritavarma was a Vrishni, of the same people as Krishna and Satyaki, who had brought a whole army division to Duryodhana’s side; tonight he had been posted at Drona’s right. He stood in Yudhishthira’s path the way a shore stands against a rising sea. Yudhishthira hit him with five arrows, then with twenty, and called out, “Wait! Wait!” Kritavarma, angry, cut the king’s bow with a broad-headed shaft and put seven arrows into him. Yudhishthira took up another bow and drove ten into Kritavarma’s arms and chest. The Vrishni shook with rage and sent seven back. Then Yudhishthira cut away his enemy’s bow and the leather guards on his hands and loosed five keen arrows whetted on stone. They went through Kritavarma’s costly gold-worked armor and on into the ground, like snakes into an anthill. In an instant Kritavarma had another bow, and sixty arrows were in the king, and then ten more. Yudhishthira set his great bow down on the chariot and threw a dart that flew like a snake. Bright with gold, it passed through Kritavarma’s right arm and buried itself in the earth. The king had his bow up again at once and wrapped Hridika’s son in straight shafts. What Kritavarma did next was done faster than an eyelid closes. He killed the king’s horses, killed his driver and left him without a chariot. Yudhishthira picked up a sword and a shield. Kritavarma cut both to pieces. Yudhishthira picked up a fierce lance with a gold-worked shaft and threw it hard. Kritavarma smiled, and with a light, quick hand cut the lance in two as it flew at him. Then he covered Dharma’s son with a hundred arrows and, in his anger, shot the armor off his body. The king’s gold-studded mail, sliced through by those shafts, dropped from him like a cluster of stars falling out of the sky. Yudhishthira had no armor now and no chariot, and Kritavarma’s arrows were in him. The king for whose throne this war was being fought stood on foot in the dark with nothing between his body and the next shaft. He withdrew from the fight quickly. Kritavarma, having beaten the son of Dharma, went back to guarding the wheel of Drona’s chariot.
A key to reading this (the pairs): Yudhishthira’s single order, Drona only, produces the thirteen duels, since every Pandava warrior tries to reach one man and a Kaurava warrior steps in front of each. Prativindhya is Yudhishthira’s son by Draupadi and Shatanika is Nakula’s son by her; Vrishasena is Karna’s son. Kritavarma is the Bhoja chief, Hridika’s son, a Vrishni who fights for the Kauravas; when he returns to “the wheel of Drona’s chariot” he is returning to the post Duryodhana gave him in the previous scene. “Wait, wait” is the challenge of this epic, a call to stand and fight. The dart Yudhishthira throws is a hand weapon, hurled from the chariot once the bow has been set down.
The gist: One order, Drona only, sorts the night into pairs: Kritavarma on Yudhishthira, Bhuri on Satyaki, Karna on Sahadeva, Duryodhana on Bhima, Shakuni on Nakula, Kripa on Shikhandi, Duhshasana on Prativindhya, Ashvatthama on Ghatotkacha, Vrishasena on Drupada, Shalya on Virata, Chitrasena on Shatanika, Alambusha on Arjuna, and Dhrishtadyumna on Drona. The first duel to finish is the king’s own, and he loses it completely: horses, driver, chariot, sword and shield, lance, and finally his armor, which falls from him like a cluster of stars. He withdraws, and Kritavarma goes back to Drona’s wheel.
Bhuri falls, Ashvatthama and Ghatotkacha knock each other senseless, and the mace that shatters Duryodhana’s chariot
Somadatta was dead, and the night came next for his son. Bhuri stood in Satyaki’s road, Sanjaya told the king, as Shini’s grandson bore down like an elephant making for a lake brimming with water. Satyaki was angry, and he opened with five keen arrows in Bhuri’s chest. The blood ran. Bhuri sent ten back just as fast, into the chest of a man who was hard to beat in any battle. Both drew their bows as far as bows will bend, both had eyes gone red with rage, and they set about tearing each other open. The arrows poured from the two of them like the rays of the sun, or like Death raining from two sides, and it was terrible to watch. Each shrouded the other in shafts and each held his ground in front of the other, and for a short while the fight was even. Then Satyaki, smiling through his rage, cut the Kuru’s bow, and at once put nine keen arrows into his chest and shouted, “Wait! Wait!” Bhuri, badly hurt, snatched up another bow and struck back. Three of his arrows found Satyaki, and then, with a smile of his own, he loosed a sharp, broad-headed shaft that cut Satyaki’s bow in his hands. Losing the bow sent Satyaki wild. He seized a dart and hurled it with all his force at the broad chest in front of him. It went in, and Bhuri fell from his fine chariot covered in blood, like the sun dropping out of the sky.
Ashvatthama saw him killed and came at Satyaki hard. “Wait! Wait!” he shouted, and his arrows came down on Shini’s grandson like rain on the crest of Meru, the golden mountain. Another fighter had seen Drona’s son turn toward Satyaki’s chariot. Ghatotkacha was Bhima’s son by the Rakshasa woman Hidimba, a giant of his mother’s people who fought for his father’s side. The Rakshasas were shape-changers, and their strength grew with the dark. He roared across the field. “Wait, Ashvatthama, wait! You will not get away from me alive. I am going to kill you now as six-faced Kartikeya killed the demon Mahisha. Today, on this field, I will clean your heart of every wish for battle.” His eyes were red as copper with rage, and he went at Ashvatthama like a lion going at a lord of elephants. The arrows he shot were as long as the axle of a chariot, and he poured them on Drona’s son like a cloudburst. Ashvatthama’s own arrows, deadly as poisonous snakes, broke up that shower in the air before it could reach him. Then he sent hundreds of keen, fast shafts into Ghatotkacha, every one able to reach the vitals, until the Rakshasa stood on the field bristling like a porcupine with its quills raised. Bhima’s son, enraged, tore at him in return with fierce arrows that whistled through the air with the roar of thunder, and then let fly a perfect storm of shafts of every make: some with heads like razors, some crescent-shaped, some with plain points, some frog-faced, some shaped like a boar’s ear, some barbed, and other kinds besides. That fall of weapons never slackened, it sounded like rolling thunder, and it was more than a man could bear. Ashvatthama’s senses stayed steady. With terrible arrows charged by mantras to the strength of celestial weapons he scattered it as wind scatters great banks of cloud. The weapons seemed to be fighting a second battle of their own up in the sky, a fearful thing for the warriors who watched, and the sparks struck out where shaft met shaft lit the dark as swarms of fireflies light an evening. Then Ashvatthama filled every quarter with his arrows and buried the Rakshasa under them, to please the king’s sons. So the two fought on in the thick darkness of that night, as Indra once fought Prahlada, chief of the Daityas.
Ghatotkacha landed the first blow that told. Ten arrows, each like the fire that ends an age, struck Ashvatthama in the chest. Drona’s son shook like a tall tree in a high wind, clutched at the flagstaff of his chariot to hold himself up, and fainted where he stood. A cry of “Oh!” and “Alas!” went up from the whole Kaurava army; every man in it took him for dead. The Panchalas and the Srinjayas saw him hanging there and roared like lions. Then Ashvatthama’s senses came back. He gripped the bow hard in his left hand, drew the string to his ear, and loosed one terrible arrow at Ghatotkacha, a thing like the rod of Yama himself. The gold-winged shaft went clean through the Rakshasa’s chest and into the ground. Ghatotkacha, for all his strength, sat down on the floor of his chariot. His driver saw that he had lost consciousness, took fright, and drove him quickly off the field and out of Ashvatthama’s reach. Drona’s son gave a great roar. The king’s sons and all the Kaurava warriors gathered to honor him, and his body, Sanjaya said, blazed like the sun at noon.
Bhima, all this while, had been fighting in front of Drona’s chariot, and King Duryodhana went for him in person. There was an oath between these two. Years before, in the gambling hall, Bhima had sworn to break Duryodhana’s thigh in battle. The king put a flight of sharpened arrows into him. Bhima gave back nine. Duryodhana answered with twenty, and the two of them, wrapped in each other’s shafts, looked like the sun and the moon behind clouds. Duryodhana struck again with five winged arrows and shouted, “Wait! Wait!” Bhima’s reply cut the king’s bow and his standard and then put ninety straight arrows into the king himself. Duryodhana, furious, took up a stronger bow and, at the head of the battle, with every bowman watching, hurt Bhima with a volley of sharpened shafts. Bhima knocked those arrows down and sent twenty-five short ones into him. Then Duryodhana cut Bhima’s bow with a razor-faced arrow and hit him with ten. Bhima took up another bow and got off seven keen shafts before the king, with a very quick hand, cut that bow too. The second bow Bhima picked up, the third, the fourth and the fifth all went the same way. Duryodhana was proud of his skill that night and hungry for the win, and he cut each bow the moment Bhima had it in his hands. Bhima gave up on bows. He threw a dart made entirely of iron, hard as a thunderbolt and blazing like a flame, a thing that might have been Death’s own sister. It crossed the dark sky bright as fire, drawing a line as straight as the parting in a woman’s hair, and Duryodhana, in front of all the warriors and under Bhima’s own eyes, cut it into three pieces. So Bhima took up his mace. It was heavy and it shone, and he whirled it and flung it with great force at Duryodhana’s chariot. The mace crushed the horses, the driver and the chariot together. Duryodhana, frightened of Bhima now, made himself as small as he could and climbed onto the chariot of Nandaka. In the darkness Bhima believed he had killed him. He let out a lion’s roar and called out his challenge to the Kauravas. The Kaurava warriors believed it too, and cried “Oh!” and “Alas!” Yudhishthira heard the frightened wailing on one side and his brother’s roaring on the other and concluded that Duryodhana was dead, and he hurried to the place where Bhima stood. The Panchalas, the Srinjayas, the Matsyas, the Kaikeyas and the Chedis went at Drona with all their strength, meaning to kill him. A dreadful battle was fought there between Drona and his enemies, and in the thick gloom the men of both sides struck and killed one another.
A key to reading this (who is who): Bhuri is a son of Somadatta and a brother of Bhurishravas, so Satyaki has now killed the father and two of his sons in a single day and night. Ghatotkacha is Bhima’s son by the Rakshasa woman Hidimba, and his fight with Ashvatthama sets Bhima’s son against Drona’s son. Six-faced Kartikeya killing Mahisha is Ghatotkacha’s own boast; Kartikeya, whom the epic also calls Skanda, is the general of the gods. Duryodhana’s climb onto Nandaka’s chariot is what any warrior does when his own is wrecked; in the darkness both armies take it for the king’s death, and the Pandava allies throw themselves at Drona.
The gist: The night’s first paired duels. Satyaki’s dart kills Bhuri; Ashvatthama and Ghatotkacha each knock the other senseless, and Ghatotkacha’s driver carries him off; and Duryodhana, after cutting bow after bow out of Bhima’s hands and splitting his iron dart into three in the air, loses horses, driver and chariot to Bhima’s mace and climbs onto Nandaka’s chariot, so that both armies believe him dead and the Pandava allies hurl themselves at Drona.
Karna lets Sahadeva live, Shalya kills Virata’s brother Shatanika, and Alambusha comes on a chariot drawn by horse-faced ghouls
Sahadeva wanted Drona, like every Pandava captain that night, and the man who stepped into his road was Karna. Sahadeva was the youngest of the five brothers, one of Madri’s twin sons, and he went straight at him. He hit Karna with nine arrows and then with nine more, straight ones. Karna answered with a hundred, and with a flick of his quick hand cut the strung bow out of Sahadeva’s grip. Madri’s son was brave. He took up another bow and put twenty arrows into Karna, and Sanjaya called that a wonder. Nothing went his way after it. Karna killed his horses with a run of straight shafts and sent his driver to Yama’s house with one broad-headed arrow. Sahadeva, on a chariot that could no longer move, took up sword and shield, and Karna, smiling, cut both away. A heavy mace came next, a terrible thing worked with gold, thrown hard at Karna’s chariot; Karna’s arrows cut it in the air and dropped it to the ground. Sahadeva saw the mace fall and quickly threw a dart. Karna cut the dart. Then Madri’s son jumped down from his chariot. The sight of Karna standing there in front of him set him blazing with rage, and he caught up a chariot wheel and flung it at the charioteer’s son. It came on like the raised wheel of Death, and Karna cut it apart with thousands of arrows. After the wheel Sahadeva threw whatever came to hand. He aimed the shafts of his own chariot at Karna, then the traces of his horses, the yokes, the severed limbs of elephants and horses, the bodies of dead men. Karna cut down every piece of it. At last Sahadeva saw that he had nothing left to fight with. Karna’s arrows had been striking him the whole time, and he turned and left the battle.
Karna drove after him a little way. He was smiling, and what he said, Sanjaya told the king, was cruel. “Do not fight men who are better than you, hero. Fight your equals, Sahadeva. Do not doubt what I tell you.” He reached out and touched Sahadeva with the horn of his bow, and spoke again. “Arjuna is over there, fighting the Kurus with all his resolve. Go to him. Or go home, if you like.” Then he turned his chariot, still smiling, and drove against the troops of the Panchala king. Karna was a great chariot fighter and a man who held to the truth, and Sanjaya gave the reason for what he had just done. He had cut every weapon out of Sahadeva’s hands and could have taken his life with the next arrow, and he did not kill him, because he remembered what he had said to Kunti. Kunti had borne him before her marriage, her first son, and he had been raised in a charioteer’s house; none of the five brothers knew it. Before the war she had come to him and told him so, and he had promised her that of all her sons he would fight to the death with Arjuna alone. Sahadeva knew nothing of that. He was heartsick and full of arrows, the words had gone into him deeper than the shafts, and he no longer cared whether he lived. He climbed quickly onto the chariot of Janamejaya, a prince of the Panchalas.
Virata’s road to Drona ran through Shalya. Virata was the old king of the Matsyas. The Pandavas had hidden in his city through the last year of their exile, and he was devoted to them. He was hurrying forward with his troops when the ruler of the Madras, the twins’ own maternal uncle, who fought for Duryodhana all the same, closed him in on every side with clouds of arrows, and the two great bowmen fought, Sanjaya said, as Indra once fought the demon Vala. Shalya moved fast and struck Virata, who commanded a large division, with a hundred straight shafts. Virata answered with nine keen arrows, then seventy-three, then a hundred more. Shalya killed the four horses of Virata’s chariot and with two more shafts brought down his royal umbrella and his standard. Virata jumped from the horseless chariot and stood on the ground, drawing his bow and shooting keen arrows. His brother Shatanika saw him without horses and drove up to him in full view of all the troops. Shalya put arrow after arrow into Shatanika as he came and sent him to Yama’s house. Virata climbed onto his dead brother’s chariot, with its standard still flying and its garlands still hanging. His eyes were wide open, and wrath had doubled his strength. He quickly covered Shalya’s chariot with winged arrows. Shalya, angry in his turn, drove a hundred straight shafts deep into Virata’s chest. The Matsya king sat down on the floor of the chariot and fainted, and his driver, seeing him torn by arrows, carried him away. That whole great force ran then, in the night, under Shalya’s arrows in their hundreds. Krishna and Arjuna saw the troops fleeing and drove quickly toward the place where Shalya stood.
They did not reach him unopposed. A prince of the Rakshasas named Alambusha came out against them, and Sanjaya described the chariot he rode piece by piece. Eight creatures drew it, fearsome Pishachas, ghouls with the faces of horses. Blood-red banners flew from it, and it was hung with flower garlands made of black iron and covered with bearskins. On its tall standard perched a vulture with spotted wings and wide staring eyes, fierce and terrible, that never stopped shrieking. The Rakshasa himself looked like a loose heap of black antimony. He stood against the advancing Arjuna as Mount Meru stands against a storm, and rained arrows on Arjuna’s head. The fight between the Rakshasa and the man was a fierce one. The onlookers were filled with wonder, and the vultures and crows, ravens and owls, kankas and jackals, eaters of the dead, were filled with joy. Arjuna struck Alambusha with six arrows and cut down his standard with ten sharp ones. A few more killed his driver, and a few more cut the triple pole of his chariot. One cut his bow, and four killed his four horses. Alambusha strung another bow, and Arjuna cut that one in two. Then four keen arrows went into the Rakshasa prince himself, and he fled in fear. Having beaten him, Arjuna drove on quickly toward Drona, shooting as he went at men, elephants and horses. The fighters he hit fell to the ground like trees flattened by a storm, and the rest ran from him like a frightened herd of deer.
A key to reading this (two Shatanikas, and Kunti’s words): The Shatanika killed here is Virata’s brother, a prince of the Matsyas. Nakula’s son Shatanika, born of Draupadi, fights Chitrasena in the next scene and comes out of it alive. The “words of Kunti” are Karna’s promise to her before the war: Yudhishthira, Bhima and the twins would not be killed by him even when he had them in his power, and he would fight Arjuna alone. Sanjaya calls this Alambusha only a prince of the Rakshasas. The Alambusha who was Rishyashringa’s son was killed by Ghatotkacha earlier this same day, and the Alambusha who comes forward later tonight is the son of Jatasura. Karna is “the charioteer’s son” after Adhiratha, the charioteer who raised him. The Janamejaya whose chariot Sahadeva mounts is a Panchala prince, a different man from the King Janamejaya to whom the whole epic is recited.
The gist: Karna strips Sahadeva of bow, horses, driver, sword, mace, dart and finally a chariot wheel, then spares him, touches him with the tip of his bow and tells him to go home, and Sahadeva climbs onto Janamejaya’s chariot no longer caring whether he lives. Shalya kills Virata’s horses, kills his brother Shatanika, knocks Virata senseless and sends the Matsya force running. And Alambusha, on a chariot drawn by horse-faced Pishachas under a shrieking vulture, loses standard, driver, bow and horses to Arjuna in a few volleys and flees.
Nakula’s son strips Chitrasena of his armor, Vrishasena’s arrow drops Drupada, Nakula pins Shakuni through the thigh, and by lamplight fathers kill their sons
Chitrasena, one of Dhritarashtra’s hundred sons, stood against the next generation. Nakula’s son Shatanika had been burning his way through the Kaurava ranks with keen arrows when the prince stopped him. Shatanika hit him with five. Chitrasena gave back ten sharpened shafts and then nine more, keen ones, in the chest. Then Nakula’s son did a thing the watchers thought a wonder: with a run of straight arrows he cut the armor off Chitrasena’s body. The prince stood there with his mail gone, handsome, Sanjaya said, as a snake that has shed its skin in the proper season. He struggled on, and Shatanika’s keen arrows cut down his standard and then his bow. Chitrasena, bowless and unarmored, took up another bow, one that could pierce any enemy, and quickly sent a volley of straight arrows into Nakula’s son. Shatanika, strong and angry, killed his four horses and then his driver. Chitrasena jumped down from the chariot and from the ground hit him with twenty-five arrows, and while he was still shooting, a crescent-headed arrow cut the gold-worked bow in his hands. He had no bow now, no chariot, no horses and no driver, and he climbed quickly onto the chariot of Kritavarma.
Drupada was advancing on Drona at the head of his troops when Karna’s son Vrishasena rushed him at speed, scattering arrows by the hundred. The Panchala king, whom men also called Yajnasena, was the father of Dhrishtadyumna, Shikhandi and Draupadi, and he met Karna’s son with sixty arrows in the arms and chest. Vrishasena, enraged, quickly drove many shafts into the center of the king’s chest as he stood on his chariot. Torn by arrows, with the shafts still standing in them, the two looked like a pair of porcupines with their quills raised. The straight, keen-pointed, gold-winged arrows had bathed them both in blood, and in that dreadful fight they were beautiful, like two shining wishing-trees of heaven, or two kinshukas loaded with flowers. Vrishasena pierced Drupada with nine arrows, then with seventy, then with three more. He was shooting by the thousand now, and looked like a cloud pouring rain. Drupada’s anger flared, and with a sharp, well-tempered, broad-headed arrow he cut Vrishasena’s bow in two. Karna’s son took up another bow, new and strong and worked with gold. He drew from his quiver a single broad-headed arrow, strong, whetted, well-tempered and sharp, set it on the string, aimed it at Drupada with care, and loosed it with great force, and every Somaka who saw it felt fear. The arrow went through Drupada’s chest and dropped to the earth beyond him. The king fainted. His driver, remembering his duty, carried him from the field. With the great Panchala chariot fighter gone, the Kaurava army, on that terrible night, rushed furiously at Drupada’s troops, whose armor the enemy’s arrows had already cut from their bodies. The fighting men let their blazing lamps fall, and the lamps lay burning all over the ground, so that the earth looked like a cloudless night sky strewn with planets and stars. The armlets of the fallen glittered on it like lightning in a mass of monsoon cloud. The Panchalas fled in every direction for fear of Karna’s son, as the Danavas fled from Indra in the great war of the gods and the Asuras long ago. Sanjaya found the Panchalas and Somakas beautiful even then, harried by Vrishasena, running in the lamplight. Vrishasena, having beaten them, shone like the sun at its height. Among all the thousands of kings on both sides he seemed, in that hour, the one blazing light. When he had defeated many heroes and all the great chariot fighters of the Somakas, he drove quickly to the place where King Yudhishthira stood.
Duhshasana, the king’s brother, went against Prativindhya, who was advancing on Drona and scorching the enemy as he came. Prativindhya was Yudhishthira’s son by Draupadi, and Duhshasana was the man who had once dragged Draupadi by her hair into the gambling hall. The meeting of the two, Sanjaya said, was as fine a sight as Mercury and Venus together in a cloudless sky. Duhshasana opened with three arrows in Prativindhya’s forehead, and the young warrior, deeply pierced, stood there looking like a hill with a crest. He answered with three arrows and then with seven. Then Duhshasana did something very hard to do. He brought down Prativindhya’s horses with a volley of arrows, his driver with a single broad-headed one, and his standard after that, and he went on to cut the chariot itself into a thousand pieces around the bowman who stood in it. In his rage he did not stop there. His straight shafts cut the banner, the quivers, the bowstrings and the traces into more pieces than could be counted. Prativindhya, a man of virtue, stood on the ground with no chariot under him and his bow in his hand, and fought on, sending out arrows without number. Duhshasana, with a quick hand, cut the bow, and then hit the bowless man with ten shafts. His brothers saw him in that state. They were great chariot fighters, all of them, and they rushed to the spot with a large force. Prativindhya climbed onto the shining chariot of Sutasoma, took up another bow, and went on piercing Duhshasana. Then many warriors of the king’s side, with a large force of their own, rushed in and ringed Duhshasana to bring him off. A fierce battle between the two bodies of troops began there, at that dreadful hour of midnight, and the population of Yama’s kingdom grew.
Nakula was cutting down Kaurava troops when Shakuni came for him in a rage, shouting, “Wait! Wait!” Subala’s son was the brother of Queen Gandhari and the uncle of all her sons, the man whose dice had sent the Pandavas into exile, and Sanjaya called Nakula his mortal enemy. Each was furious at the other and each wanted the other dead. They drew their bows to the full and shot, and Shakuni, Sanjaya said, showed exactly the skill Nakula showed. Both were soon stuck all over with arrows, like two porcupines with their quills up. Straight shafts with golden wings cut the armor from each of them, and both were bathed in blood, so that in that dreadful fight they looked like two bright wishing-trees, or two kinshukas in flower, or two shalmali trees bristling with thorns. They looked at each other sidelong, eyes wide with rage and red at the corners, as if each meant to burn the other with a glance. Then Shakuni, angry and smiling, put a keen barbed arrow into Nakula’s chest. Nakula sat down on the floor of his chariot and fainted. Shakuni saw his proud enemy brought to that and roared like the clouds at the end of summer. Nakula came to, and he came back at Subala’s son like the Destroyer with his mouth wide open. Burning with rage, he pierced Shakuni with sixty arrows and then drove a hundred long shafts into the center of his chest. He cut Shakuni’s bow in two at the grip, with an arrow still fixed on it. He cut down his standard in a moment and dropped it on the ground. Then he sent keen, sharp, well-tempered shafts through Shakuni’s thigh, and Shakuni went down on the floor of his chariot with his arms around the flagstaff, like a lover clasping his mistress. His driver saw him lying there senseless and carried him quickly out of the front line. The Pandavas and all their followers gave a great shout. Nakula, the victor, turned to his driver and said, “Take me to the army Drona commands,” and the driver took him to where Drona stood.
Kripa came against Shikhandi with great force as Drupada’s other son drove toward Drona. He was a Brahmin, the first teacher of arms the Kuru princes had known, Ashvatthama’s uncle, and a steady friend to the king’s sons. Shikhandi smiled and pierced him with nine arrows as he came. Kripa pierced Shikhandi with five and then with twenty. The fight between them was a dreadful one, like the fight between the demon Shambara and the king of the gods in the old war of gods and Asuras. Neither of these two could be beaten easily, and their arrows covered the sky as clouds cover it when summer ends. The night was terrible in itself, and for the men fighting in it it grew more terrible still, full of every kind of fear, until it seemed the night of death for all creatures. Then Shikhandi cut Kripa’s great bow with a crescent-headed arrow and shot many sharpened shafts at him. Kripa, in a fury, threw a fierce dart with a golden shaft and a keen point, polished by the smith’s hands. Shikhandi cut it with ten arrows as it flew, and the dart, bright with gold, fell to the ground. Kripa took up another bow and covered Shikhandi with sharpened shafts in great number. Under that weight of arrows Shikhandi sank down on the floor of his chariot. Kripa saw him weaken and struck him with many more, meaning to kill him, and Shikhandi’s driver carried him away. The Panchalas and the Somakas saw Drupada’s son leaving the fight and closed around him on every side to protect him. The king’s sons, with a large force, closed around Kripa in the same way. Then the chariot fighters went at one another again. The noise of horsemen and elephants charging and bringing each other down was like the roar of thunderclouds, and the field was a fearful sight. The earth shook under the feet of the running infantry, Sanjaya said, like a woman trembling with fear. Chariot fighters rushed at their equals by the thousand, as crows snatch winged insects out of the air. Great elephants streaming with the juice of rut chased down other elephants and met them in fury. Horsemen fell on horsemen, and foot soldiers angrily on foot soldiers. At dead of night the sound of troops falling back, charging, and coming on again was deafening.
The lamps shone on all of it. Blazing on chariots and elephants and horses, they looked, Sanjaya said, like great meteors falling from the sky. Lit by them, that night on the battlefield was like day. As the sun meets thick darkness and destroys it entirely, so those blazing lamps destroyed the thick darkness of the battle. The sky, the earth and every quarter of the compass, which dust and darkness had swallowed, shone again in their light, and it was strong enough to dim the glitter of weapons, of mail, and of the jewels the great fighters wore. Yet in the fury of that night battle no man could tell the warriors of his own side. A father killed his son, and a son, not knowing him, his father. Friend killed friend. Kinsmen killed kinsmen, and maternal uncles their sisters’ sons. Men cut down fighters of their own army, and the enemy cut down their own as well. Through that dreadful night all of them fought in a frenzy, and none had any regard left for another.
A key to reading this (names and relations): This Shatanika is the son of Nakula and Draupadi, a different man from Virata’s brother Shatanika who died in the previous scene. Prativindhya is Yudhishthira’s son by Draupadi and Sutasoma is Bhima’s; “his brothers” are the other sons of Draupadi. Vrishasena is Karna’s son. Yajnasena is another name of Drupada, which is why Shikhandi is called Yajnasena’s son. Shakuni is the brother of Dhritarashtra’s queen Gandhari, so Sanjaya calls him the king’s brother-in-law. Kripa is the son of Gautama because his father is Sharadvat of the Gautama line. The lamps mark this night: Duryodhana had them set on chariots, elephants and horses so that the fighting could go on, and by that same light fathers killed sons they failed to recognize.
The gist: The second round of paired duels. Nakula’s son Shatanika strips Chitrasena of armor, standard, bow, horses and driver; Karna’s son Vrishasena puts an arrow through Drupada and routs the Panchalas; Duhshasana cuts Prativindhya’s chariot to pieces and Draupadi’s sons run to their brother; Nakula pierces Shakuni through the thigh and leaves him clutching his flagstaff; Kripa’s arrows drop Shikhandi to the floor of his chariot. Then, in a night made bright as day by lamps, the fighting men lose the ability to tell friend from enemy and begin killing their own fathers, sons and nephews.
Dhrishtadyumna at Drona’s chariot, a ring of seven bowmen, and Satyaki’s night: the duel with Karna, Duryodhana’s flight, and a Vaitarani of blood
The man born to kill Drona had reached him at last. In the thick of that fierce night, Sanjaya told the king, Dhrishtadyumna drove at Drona’s gold-plated chariot with his great bow in his hand, drawing the string again and again as he came. He meant to finish the teacher, and the Panchalas and the Pandavas closed around him as he advanced. The king’s sons saw Drona under attack and, fighting hard, ringed him on every side to protect him. The two armies crashed together in the night like two terrible seas whipped up by a storm, with every living thing inside them thrown into turmoil. Dhrishtadyumna struck quickly. He put five arrows into Drona’s chest and roared like a lion. Drona hit him back with twenty-five, and with one more, broad-headed, cut the bright bow out of his hands. The Panchala prince was badly hurt. He threw the broken bow aside at once and bit his lip in rage, and then, with Drona’s death in his mind, took up another bow, a formidable one. He drew it all the way to his ear and loosed a terrible arrow, one made to take Drona’s life. As it flew through that fierce and dreadful fight it lit the whole army like the rising sun. The gods, the Gandharvas and the Danavas saw that arrow and said, “May it go well with Drona!” Karna’s hand was quicker than the arrow. He cut it into a dozen pieces while it was still on its way to the teacher’s chariot, and the pieces dropped to the ground like a snake with no poison left in it.
Having cut the Panchala’s arrows out of the air with his own straight ones, Karna turned on the Panchala himself and pierced him with many sharp shafts. The others joined in. Ashvatthama hit him with five arrows and Drona with five, Shalya with nine and Duhshasana with three, Duryodhana with twenty and Shakuni with five. So seven great chariot fighters, all straining to save Drona, shot together at one man. Dhrishtadyumna shot back at every one of them, three arrows apiece, and quickly, in that dreadful press, pierced Drona himself, and Karna, and Drona’s son, and Duryodhana. The seven closed up and pierced him again, roaring as they did it. A warrior named Drumasena, his temper up, put a winged arrow into the prince and then quickly three more, and shouted, “Wait! Wait!” Dhrishtadyumna answered with three straight arrows, gold-winged and steeped in oil, the kind that take the life of the man they are sent at. Then a broad-headed shaft cut Drumasena’s head from his body. It fell with its bright gold earrings still on and the lip still bitten in rage, like a ripe palmyra fruit that a strong wind has torn from its stalk. The prince pierced all his attackers once more with keen arrows, and with a few broad-headed ones he cut the bow of Karna, who knew every way of fighting there was. Karna could no more bear the cutting of his bow than a fierce lion can bear the cutting of its tail. He took up another, his eyes red with rage and his breath coming hard, and covered Dhrishtadyumna with clouds of arrows. The other six saw Karna’s fury and quickly closed around the Panchala prince, meaning to kill him. Every man in the Kaurava army looked at Dhrishtadyumna standing in front of those six and counted him already between the jaws of the Destroyer.
Satyaki came in then, scattering arrows as he drove toward the place where Dhrishtadyumna was fighting. Karna saw the Satvata warrior coming, a man no one had beaten, and met him with ten arrows. Satyaki gave him ten back in front of all those captains and called out, “Do not run. Stay where you are, in front of me.” What followed between the strong Satyaki and the tireless Karna was like the meeting of the demon king Bali and Indra in ancient days. The rattle of Satyaki’s chariot frightened every Kshatriya who heard it, and his arrows found the lotus-eyed Karna. Karna, the charioteer’s son, made the earth shake with the twang of his bow and fought back hard. He drove hundreds of arrows into Shini’s grandson: long ones, barbed ones, pointed ones, arrows with tall teeth, razor-headed ones, and other kinds as well. Satyaki covered Karna with arrows in the same way, and for a time the fight was even. Then the king’s sons put Karna at their head and all of them together pierced Satyaki from every side with keen shafts. He beat off their weapons and Karna’s with his own, and in the middle of it he quickly put an arrow into the center of Vrishasena’s chest. Karna’s son, bright and brave as he was, dropped his bow and fell on the floor of his chariot. Karna believed him killed. Grief for his son burned him, and he bore down on Satyaki with great force. Satyaki, hard pressed, answered at speed and pierced Karna again and again. He put ten more arrows into Karna and five into Vrishasena, and cut the leather guards and the bows of both father and son. The two of them strung fresh bows, weapons to frighten any enemy, and began piercing Yuyudhana from every side with keen arrows.
Over that fight, so deadly to brave men, rose a sound louder than every other sound: the twang of Gandiva, Arjuna’s bow. Karna heard it, and with it the rattle of Arjuna’s chariot, and he spoke to Duryodhana. “Arjuna is slaughtering our whole army, our leading fighters and many great Kaurava bowmen, and he is twanging his bow loudly as he does it. You can hear his chariot too, rumbling like thunder. He is plainly doing work worthy of himself. This son of Pritha will grind our great host to nothing. Many of our troops are already breaking, and no one is standing his ground. Our army is being scattered like a mass of cloud by the wind. It breaks on Arjuna like a boat on the ocean. You can hear the loud wailing of our warriors as they run from the field or fall under the arrows of Gandiva. Listen to the drums and cymbals near his chariot in the dead of night, like deep thunder rolling in the sky. Listen to the cries of the wounded there, and the great lion roars, and all the other noises around Arjuna’s chariot. But here, among us, stands Satyaki of the Satvata race. If we can strike down this man we are aiming at, we can beat all our enemies. Drupada’s son, likewise, is fighting Drona, with many of our finest chariot warriors all around him. If we can kill Satyaki and Dhrishtadyumna, the victory is ours beyond any doubt. Let us surround these two great chariot fighters, as we surrounded Subhadra’s son, and do all we can to kill them, this Vrishni and this son of Prishata. Arjuna is in front of us now, coming toward Drona’s division, because he knows that Satyaki is fighting many of the Kuru chiefs here. Send a large number of our best chariot warriors that way, so that Arjuna cannot come to the rescue of Satyaki while so many of us have him surrounded. And let these great fighters shoot clouds of arrows with all their force, so that Satyaki of the Madhu line is sent quickly to Yama’s house.” Subhadra’s son was Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s boy, and the Kaurava captains had killed him in just that way, closing a ring of chariots around one fighter until his chariot, his weapons and his armor were gone. Duryodhana saw that this was Karna’s judgment, and he turned to Shakuni, Sanjaya said, as Indra might turn to Vishnu in a battle. “Take ten thousand elephants that do not retreat, and ten thousand chariots, and go against Arjuna. Duhshasana, Durvishaha, Subahu and Dushpradharshana will follow you with a great many foot soldiers. Uncle, kill those great bowmen, the two Krishnas, and Yudhishthira, and Nakula and Sahadeva, and Bhima. My hope of victory rests on you, as the hope of the gods rests on their chief, Indra. Kill the son of Kunti, uncle, as Kartikeya killed the Asuras.” So urged, Shakuni put on his mail and went against the Pandavas with a large force and with the king’s brothers, meaning to burn them up, and a great battle began between the Kaurava warriors and the enemy. While Shakuni went that way, Karna advanced quickly on Satyaki with a large force, shooting arrows by the hundred, and the Kaurava warriors together closed the ring around the Satvata. Drona, for his part, drove at Dhrishtadyumna’s chariot, and at dead of night he fought a wonderful and fierce battle with the brave Dhrishtadyumna and the Panchalas.
The kings of the Kaurava army could not stomach what Satyaki had been doing, and they went for Yuyudhana’s chariot in anger. They were men who did not lose easily. They rode well-equipped chariots decked with gold and jewels, and they brought cavalry and elephants with them, and they hemmed the Satvata in on every side, shouting challenges and roaring like lions. All of them wanted the man of Madhu’s line dead, and their keen arrows poured in on him. Satyaki saw them rushing at him and took up his arrows and shot. With fierce, straight shafts the great bowman cut off many heads. With razor-faced arrows he cut off the trunks of many elephants, the necks of many horses, and the arms of many warriors with the armlets still on them. Fallen yak-tail fans and white umbrellas nearly covered the ground, until the field looked like the night sky with its stars. The wailing of the troops he was killing rose as loud as the shrieking of ghosts, the earth was filled with that noise, and the night grew fiercer and more terrible. Duryodhana saw his army breaking under Yuyudhana’s arrows and heard that hair-raising uproar in the dead of night, and he told his driver again and again, “Drive the horses to the place that noise is coming from.” Then the king, a steady bowman who knew every way of fighting, rushed at Satyaki. Satyaki drew his bow to its full stretch and pierced him first, with twelve blood-drinking arrows. Duryodhana, angered by the wounds, pierced him in return with ten. All around them, meanwhile, the battle between the Panchalas and the whole of the Kaurava force was a wonder to see. Satyaki’s rage rose, and he put eighty arrows into the king’s chest. With more arrows he sent Duryodhana’s horses to Yama’s house, and he quickly knocked the driver off the chariot. Duryodhana stayed on the horseless chariot and shot keen arrows at Satyaki’s own. Satyaki, with a quick hand, cut down all fifty of them. Then, suddenly, a broad-headed shaft cut the king’s formidable bow at the grip. With no chariot and no bow, the king climbed quickly onto the bright chariot of Kritavarma, which had already carried his brother Chitrasena out of one lost fight that night. When Duryodhana had withdrawn, Shini’s grandson struck at the king’s army and routed it in the dead of night.
Shakuni, meanwhile, had surrounded Arjuna on every side with many thousands of chariots, several thousand elephants and many thousands of horses, and the fight he made of it was desperate. Many of his men threw celestial weapons of great power at Arjuna. Those Kshatriyas fought knowing that death was certain. Arjuna, in a rage, held off all those thousands of chariots and elephants and horses, and in the end turned them back. Shakuni’s eyes went red as copper. He drove twenty arrows deep into Arjuna, and with a hundred more he stopped the advance of that great chariot. Arjuna pierced Shakuni with twenty in return, and each of the great bowmen with him with three. He checked them all with his arrows, and then he killed the king’s warriors with shafts that struck with the force of thunderbolts. The ground was strewn with cut arrows and with bodies by the thousand, as if flowers had been scattered over it. The heads of Kshatriyas lay on it too, heads with diadems and fine noses and beautiful earrings, with lips bitten in rage and eyes wide open, heads that had worn collars and gems and, while there was life in them, had spoken sweet words. With those lying on it the earth shone like a range of small hills covered in champaka flowers. After that fierce piece of work Arjuna pierced Shakuni once more and then put an arrow into Uluka, Shakuni’s son, with his father looking on, and gave a roar that filled the earth. Then Arjuna, Indra’s son, cut Shakuni’s bow and sent his four horses to Yama’s house. Shakuni jumped down from his chariot and quickly climbed onto Uluka’s. The two great chariot fighters, father and son, rode the same chariot now and showered their arrows on Arjuna like two risen clouds raining on a mountain. Arjuna pierced them both with keen shafts and hit the king’s troops so hard that they ran in hundreds and thousands. That army was blown apart in every direction like a mass of cloud scattered by the wind. Cut down in the night, the host fled every way in fear, under the eyes of its own leaders. Many left behind the animals they rode. Others whipped theirs to their best speed. All of them turned from the battle in terror, in that fierce hour of darkness. Krishna and Arjuna, having beaten the king’s warriors, blew their conches in good cheer.
Dhrishtadyumna, at Drona’s chariot, pierced the teacher with three arrows and quickly cut his bowstring with one sharp shaft more. Drona threw that bow to the ground and took up another, very tough and strong. He put five arrows into Dhrishtadyumna and five into his driver. The Panchala prince held Drona off with his arrows and began to destroy the Kaurava host, as Indra once destroyed the army of the Asuras. So many of Duryodhana’s men were killed there that a terrible river began to flow, Sanjaya said, with blood for its current. It ran between the two armies and carried men and horses and elephants along with it, and it was like the Vaitarani, the river that flows toward the realm of Yama. Dhrishtadyumna shook and routed the king’s army, and he blazed in his strength like Indra among the gods. Then he and Shikhandi blew their great conches. The twins Nakula and Sahadeva blew theirs, and so did Bhima. In this way those fierce warriors beat thousands of strong kings on Duryodhana’s side, while Duryodhana, Karna, Drona and Drona’s son looked on.
A key to reading this (names and stakes): Dhrishtadyumna was born from Drupada’s sacrificial fire for one purpose, the death of Drona, which is why the gods themselves cry out for Drona when his arrow flies and why Karna’s cut matters so much. Drumasena is named only as he joins the ring and dies. Vrishasena is Karna’s son; his father takes him for dead here, but he fights on, and Arjuna kills him later in the war. Subhadra’s son is Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s boy, whom the Kaurava chariot fighters surrounded and killed; Karna proposes the same end for Satyaki and Dhrishtadyumna. “The two Krishnas” are Krishna and Arjuna. Shakuni and Uluka are father and son, and they end this scene sharing a single chariot against Arjuna. The Vaitarani is the river that flows toward Yama’s realm. Satvata, Vrishni and Madhu are all names for the clan to which both Satyaki and Krishna belong, so “the man of Madhu’s line” is Satyaki in one scene and Krishna in another.
The gist: Three fights run at once. Dhrishtadyumna reaches Drona and looses an arrow meant to kill him, and Karna cuts it into a dozen pieces; seven bowmen ring the prince until Satyaki breaks in and, dueling Karna, drops Karna’s son. Hearing Gandiva, Karna tells Duryodhana that the war can still be won by killing Satyaki and Dhrishtadyumna, and Shakuni is sent with ten thousand elephants and ten thousand chariots to keep Arjuna away. Satyaki strips Duryodhana of horses, driver and bow and drives him onto Kritavarma’s chariot; Arjuna leaves Shakuni and Uluka sharing one chariot; and under Dhrishtadyumna’s slaughter a river of blood runs between the two armies.
Duryodhana’s goad: “you two began this battle”; Drona’s slaughter of the Panchalas, the thrown torches, and armies fighting by name in the dark
Duryodhana saw his army routed and cut down by those famous fighters, and he drove quickly to Karna and to Drona. He was a man who knew how to use words, and he was angry. “You two began this battle, in your rage, when you saw Arjuna kill Jayadratha, the king of the Sindhus. Now you look on as if it were nothing to you while the Pandava forces slaughter my army, though the two of you are fully able to beat those forces. If you mean to abandon me now, you should have told me so at the start. ‘We two will defeat the sons of Pandu in battle.’ Those were your words to me then. I heard them, and I gave my consent to all of this. Had you spoken otherwise I would never have provoked this war with the sons of Pritha, a war that is destroying so many brave fighters. If I have not deserved to be abandoned by you, then fight with the true measure of your prowess, strong as you both are.” He was speaking to the commander of his army and to his closest friend. The words went into them like a goad. Drona and Karna turned back to the battle like two snakes that have been prodded with sticks. They were the two leading chariot fighters on the field and the finest bowmen in the world, and they rushed at the Pandava warriors, at Satyaki and the men around him. The Pandavas drew together and came on with all their troops against the two, who were roaring again and again. Drona, in his rage, struck first, and quickly put ten arrows into Satyaki. Karna pierced him with ten, Duryodhana with seven, Vrishasena with ten and Shakuni with seven. A wall of Kauravas had formed around Shini’s grandson, with no gap in it, and these five took their places in that wall too.
The Somakas saw Drona slaughtering the Pandava army and quickly pierced him from every side with showers of arrows. It did not save them. Drona began taking the lives of Kshatriyas, Sanjaya said, as the sun takes away the darkness around it with its rays. A great uproar was heard among the Panchalas then. They were calling to one another as Drona killed them. Some left their sons behind, some their fathers, some their brothers, their uncles, their sisters’ sons, their kinsmen and friends, and ran hard to save their own lives. Others lost their senses and ran straight at Drona. Many fighters of the Pandava army were sent to the other world there. Harried by him, the Pandava host fled that night, and as it fled it threw down its blazing torches on every side. It ran under the very eyes of Bhima and Arjuna and Krishna, of the twins and Yudhishthira and Dhrishtadyumna. Darkness covered the world again, and nothing could be seen. Only the light that still burned among the Kaurava troops showed that the enemy was in flight. Drona and Karna went after the fleeing host and shot arrows into it without number.
Krishna saw the Panchalas slaughtered and routed, and his cheer left him. He said to Arjuna, “Dhrishtadyumna and Satyaki went with the Panchalas against those great bowmen, Drona and Karna, shooting many arrows. Now this large army of ours has been broken and routed by their showers of shafts. Men are trying to check its flight, Arjuna, and still it cannot be rallied.” Then he called to the fleeing troops. “Pandava warriors, you see the army running in fear. Put your own fear away! The two of us are bringing up all the forces in good order, and with our weapons raised we are going, now, against Drona and the charioteer’s son, to stand against them.” At that moment he saw Bhima advancing, and he spoke to Arjuna once more, as if to lift his heart. “There is Bhima, who loves a battle, coming with the Somakas and the Pandavas around him against Drona and Karna. With him to support you, and many of the great Pandava chariot fighters as well, fight now, and give all your troops their confidence back.” Then the two of them, Pandu’s son and the man of Madhu’s line, drove up to Drona and Karna and took their station at the head of the battle.
Yudhishthira’s great army came back to the fight then. It returned to the place where Drona and Karna were grinding down their enemies, and at dead of night the two hosts met like two oceans swelling at moonrise. This time the Kaurava warriors threw away the blazing lamps they had been holding, and they fought the Pandavas madly and without fear. The night was terrible. Gloom and dust wrapped the world, and the fighters had only the names they called out to guide them. The names of the kings who fought there could be heard across the field, Sanjaya said, as the names of kings are heard at a svayamvara, when a princess chooses her husband from among them. Suddenly a silence spread over the battlefield and lasted a moment. Then a great noise rose again from the angry fighters, the winning and the losing together. Wherever a blazing lamp could still be seen, men rushed toward it like insects toward a flame. And as the Pandavas and the Kauravas fought on, the darkness of the night grew thicker around them.
A key to reading this (the goad and the lamps): Duryodhana’s charge has a history. After Arjuna killed Jayadratha, king of the Sindhus, Drona swore that he would not take off his armor until the Panchalas were dead, and the armies fought on into the night; the king now holds Drona and Karna to the promise he says they made him, that the two of them would defeat the sons of Pandu. The lamps and torches set this night’s fighting apart. Earlier in the night both armies had set lamps on chariots, elephants and horses so that the field could be seen. Now the fleeing Pandavas throw their torches down, and their flight can be made out only by the Kaurava lights; then the Kauravas throw their lamps down too, and the field goes dark. A svayamvara is the ceremony at which a princess chooses her husband from an assembly of kings, and the names of the suitors are called out there one after another.
The gist: Watching his army break, Duryodhana stings Drona and Karna with the charge that they began this night’s battle in their rage and now look on while it is lost. Goaded like snakes with sticks, the two go back in; Drona’s slaughter of the Panchalas is so complete that the Pandava army throws away its torches and runs. Krishna, his cheer gone, tells Arjuna the host cannot be rallied, and when Bhima arrives the two Krishnas plant themselves at the head of the battle. The army returns, the Kauravas throw down their own lamps to fight, and in a darkness of gloom and dust the warriors find each other only by the names they shout.
The Panchalas break before Karna, and Krishna decides: tonight Ghatotkacha will face Karna, and Arjuna will wait
Karna found Dhrishtadyumna in that dark and struck first, with ten arrows in the chest, shafts made to go through to the vitals. The Panchala prince answered quickly with five and shouted, “Wait! Wait!” They shrouded each other in arrows, and then each pierced the other again with keen shafts from bows drawn to the full. Then Karna stripped him. He killed the four horses of the Panchala commander’s chariot. He cut his best bow with keen arrows, and with a broad-headed shaft he knocked the driver dead from his seat. Dhrishtadyumna had no chariot now, no horses and no driver. He jumped down and took up a mace. Karna’s straight arrows struck him all the way, and still he came up to Karna’s chariot and killed Karna’s four horses. Then he turned and ran back at great speed and climbed onto Arjuna’s chariot. From there he wanted to go straight at Karna again. Yudhishthira told him to stop. Karna stood on a chariot whose horses lay dead in the traces, and he was full of fight. He gave lion roars, twanged his bow loudly through them, and blew his conch with great force. The Panchalas and the Somakas had seen Drupada’s son beaten. Rage took them. They snatched up weapons of every kind and went at Karna to kill him, with death itself for their goal.
By then Karna’s driver had yoked fresh horses to his chariot, white as conch shell, very fast, of the Sindhu breed and well broken. Karna did not miss what he aimed at. He set to work, and his arrows fell on the great Panchala chariot fighters like rain from a cloud on a mountainside. The Panchala host fled from him like a doe that has been frightened by a lion. Everywhere horsemen could be seen dropping from their horses, elephant riders from their elephants, chariot fighters from their chariots. With razor-faced arrows Karna cut off the arms of men as they ran, and heads with the earrings still on them. He cut the thighs of others where they sat on elephants or on horseback, or stood on the ground. Many great chariot fighters, running, did not feel that a limb was gone or that the animal under them was hurt. The Panchalas and the Srinjayas, with those terrible arrows killing them, came to such a pitch of fear that if a straw moved they took it for Karna. They had lost their wits. They mistook their own friends, running beside them, for Karna, and fled from them in terror. Karna followed the broken army as it fell back and shot his arrows in all directions, and the retreating men, out of their senses, were cut down by his great weapons. Other troops ran in every direction when Drona did no more than look at them.
King Yudhishthira saw his army in flight and judged that it would be wise to fall back. He spoke to Arjuna. “Look at Karna, that great bowman, standing there like Rudra himself with his bow in his hand. Look at him, at this fierce hour, in the dead of night, scorching everything around him like the blazing sun. You can hear the crying, Arjuna. It never stops. Those are your friends, helpless, torn by Karna’s arrows. He aims and looses so fast that no gap can be seen between the one act and the other. He will destroy every friend we have. Whatever, in your judgment, ought to be done next for the killing of Karna, whatever the time has come for, do it now, Dhananjaya.” Arjuna turned to Krishna. “Dharma’s royal son is frightened today by Karna’s prowess. Karna’s division has done this to us again and again, so take quickly whatever course ought to be taken now. Our army is running. Our troops have been broken and torn by Drona’s arrows and terrified by Karna, and they cannot make a stand. I can see Karna riding about without fear. Our leading chariot fighters are in flight, and he is sending his keen arrows after them. I cannot bear to watch him ranging at the head of the battle in front of my eyes, any more than a snake can bear a man’s foot on its body. So drive to the place where Karna is. I will kill him, Krishna, or he will kill me.”
Krishna answered him. “I see Karna, Arjuna. He is a warrior whose prowess is more than human, and he is ranging through the battle like the king of the gods himself. No one can go against him in a fight except you, Dhananjaya, and the Rakshasa Ghatotkacha. But I do not think the time has come for you to meet the charioteer’s son in battle. He still has with him the blazing dart that Indra gave him, the one that looks like a great meteor. He has kept it carefully, and he has kept it for you. He is holding that dart now, and he has taken on a terrible aspect. As for Ghatotkacha, he is always devoted to you and your brothers and wants your good. Let the mighty Ghatotkacha go against Radha’s son. Bhima is his father, and he has the prowess of a god. He has celestial weapons, and the weapons the Rakshasas use as well.” The dart was the price Indra had paid Karna for the armor and earrings he was born with, and it would kill the one enemy it was thrown at, whoever he was. Ghatotkacha was standing in front of Krishna soon after, in his armor, with sword, arrows and bow. He saluted Krishna, and Arjuna too, and said proudly, “Here I am. Command me.” Hidimba’s son had a mouth that blazed, eyes like fire and a body the color of rain clouds. Krishna looked at him and began to speak.
“Listen, Ghatotkacha, and mark what I say. The time has come for you to show your prowess, you and no one else. The Pandavas are sinking in this battle. Be their raft. You have weapons of many kinds and many Rakshasa illusions. Look, Ghatotkacha: Karna is driving the Pandava army across the field as a herdsman drives cattle. He is a great bowman, intelligent and steady, and he is scorching the leading Kshatriyas in every Pandava division. He shoots great arrows in showers, and our warriors, burned by them, cannot stand in front of him. It is the dead of night, and the Panchalas are running from his arrows like a herd of deer from a lion. While he fights like this there is no one who can stand against him but you, with your terrible strength. So do now, with your energy and your might, what is worthy of yourself, of your mother’s people, and of your fathers. This is why men wish for children: to be rescued in times of trouble. Rescue your kinsmen now. Fathers want sons, Ghatotkacha, to gain their own ends. Children are a source of good, and they are expected to rescue their fathers in this world and the next. Your name is great. Your strength in battle is terrible and has no rival, and when you fight no one is your equal. The Pandavas have been routed tonight by Karna’s arrows and are going under in the ocean of Dhritarashtra’s sons. Be the means by which they reach the shore. Remember, too, that at night the Rakshasas’ prowess has no limit, and their strength and courage grow great. At this hour they are fighters of great valor and cannot be defeated. Kill Karna in battle, in the dead of this night, with your illusions to help you. The sons of Pritha and Dhrishtadyumna will deal with Drona.”
Arjuna spoke next. “Ghatotkacha, you, the long-armed Satyaki and Bhima are, in my judgment, the three finest of all our warriors. Go and meet Karna in single combat tonight. Satyaki will guard your back. With the Satvata to help you, kill brave Karna in battle, as Indra killed the Asura Taraka long ago with Skanda, the general of the gods, to help him.” Ghatotkacha answered, “I am a match for Karna, and for Drona, and for any Kshatriya however famous or skilled with weapons. Tonight I will fight the charioteer’s son such a battle that men will talk of it as long as the world lasts. Tonight I will spare no one: the brave, the timid, even those who join their hands and beg for mercy. I will follow the way of the Rakshasas and kill them all.” With that, Hidimba’s son rushed at Karna through that dreadful fight, and the king’s troops were terrified at the sight of him. He came on in anger, his mouth blazing and his hair blazing, and Karna received him with a smile. The two of them roared at each other and closed, and what followed, Sanjaya said, was like the old war of Indra with Prahlada.
A key to reading this (the dart): The dart is the weapon Indra gave Karna in exchange for the armor and earrings Karna was born with (chapter 14b tells that exchange). It can kill one enemy and no more, and Karna is saving it for Arjuna. That is the whole reason Krishna will not let Arjuna go against Karna tonight and sends Bhima’s son in his place; the second part of this chapter tells what the decision costs and what it buys. Karna is “Radha’s son” after the charioteer’s wife who raised him, and “the charioteer’s son” for the same reason. Dhananjaya is Arjuna. The dart is named for its giver: Vasava is Indra, and the weapon is the Vasavi dart. Hidimba’s son is Ghatotkacha, born to Bhima and the Rakshasa woman Hidimba, which is why Krishna speaks to him of his mother’s people and his fathers.
The gist: Karna strips Dhrishtadyumna of horses, bow and driver and scatters the Panchalas so completely that running men mistake a moving straw for him. Yudhishthira asks Arjuna to deal with Karna now; Arjuna tells Krishna to drive at him; Krishna refuses, because Karna still carries Indra’s dart and is keeping it for Arjuna. He turns to Bhima’s son Ghatotkacha, tells him that the night belongs to the Rakshasas and that sons are born to rescue their fathers, and Arjuna gives him Satyaki to guard his back. Ghatotkacha swears to spare no one and goes, and Karna receives him smiling.
Alambusha, son of Jatasura: a duel of a hundred illusions, and a head thrown onto Duryodhana’s chariot
Duryodhana saw Ghatotkacha making for Karna’s chariot to kill him, and he turned to his brother Duhshasana. “That Rakshasa has seen what Karna can do in battle, and he is going at him fast. Stop him. Take a strong force and go to the place where Karna is fighting the Rakshasa. Put troops around Karna, exert yourself to the utmost, and protect him. We must not let that terrible Rakshasa kill Karna through any carelessness of ours.” Just then a Rakshasa of the king’s own side came up to him, the son of Jatasura, a powerful creature and a great striker of blows. “Duryodhana,” he said, “give me the word, and I will kill your famous enemies the Pandavas, who are so hard to beat in battle, and all their followers with them. My father was the mighty Jatasura, the greatest of the Rakshasas. The contemptible sons of Pritha once performed some Rakshasa-killing rites and killed him. I want to worship my dead father with the blood of his enemies and with their flesh. You must give me leave.” Jatasura had lived among the Pandavas in their forest years in the guise of a Brahmin, had carried off three of the brothers and Draupadi, and had died at Bhima’s hands. The king was delighted with the son’s offer, and told him so again and again. “With Drona and Karna and the others to help me I am well able to beat my enemies. But go at my command, Rakshasa, and kill Ghatotkacha in this fight. He is a Rakshasa of fierce deeds, born of a human father, and always devoted to the Pandavas’ cause. He is always killing our elephants and horses and chariot fighters, and all the while he keeps to the sky himself. Send him to Yama’s house.”
“So be it,” said Jatasura’s son. He called Ghatotkacha out to fight and covered Bhima’s son with weapons of every kind. Ghatotkacha stood alone, with no one to support him, and he began to grind down Alambusha and Karna and the whole vast Kuru army at once, as a storm wind crushes a bank of cloud. Alambusha saw the power of that illusion and answered with showers of arrows of many kinds. He pierced Bhima’s son with a great number of shafts and then, losing no time, turned his arrows on the Pandava army. The Pandava troops, struck in the dead of night, broke and ran like clouds scattered by a gale. The Kaurava army fared no better. Torn by Ghatotkacha’s arrows, it too fled through the dark by the thousand, throwing down its torches. Alambusha, in a great rage, struck Bhima’s son with many arrows in that dreadful fight, as a driver strikes an elephant with the goad. Ghatotkacha cut his enemy’s chariot, his driver and every one of his weapons into small pieces, and laughed a frightful laugh. Then he poured arrows on Karna, on Alambusha and on all the Kurus, as clouds pour rain on the slopes of Mount Meru. The Kuru army reeled under the Rakshasa’s attack. Its four arms, the chariots, the elephants, the horsemen and the foot, began to press against one another and trample one another down.
Jatasura’s son had no chariot now and no driver. In his fury he struck Ghatotkacha with his fists. Ghatotkacha shook under the blows like a mountain in an earthquake, with all its trees and creepers and grass. Then Bhima’s son, mad with rage, raised his own arm, a killer’s arm that was like a spiked mace, and brought it down hard on Jatasura’s son. He crushed him in his anger, threw him quickly to the ground, caught him in both arms and pressed him against the earth with great force. Jatasura’s son worked himself free of that grip, got up and flew at Ghatotkacha. Now Alambusha was the one who dragged his enemy down and ground him in rage against the earth. The two giants roared as they fought, and the fight grew fierce enough to make the hair stand on end. Each tried to get the better of the other by his powers of illusion. They were proud, both of them, and full of strength, and they fought as Indra fought Bali, the son of Virochana. They became fire and ocean. They became Garuda and Takshaka, the great bird and the serpent king. They became a cloud and a storm wind, then a thunderbolt and a great mountain, then an elephant, then Rahu and the sun he swallows. In this way they showed a hundred different illusions, each bent on destroying the other. It was wonderful to see. They struck at each other with spiked clubs and maces, with lances, mallets and axes, with short clubs and with crags torn from mountains. They fought on horseback and on elephants, on foot and from chariots, two Rakshasa lords with great powers of illusion.
Ghatotkacha meant to end it. He rose up roaring in his rage and then came down at great speed, like a hawk. He seized the giant prince of the Rakshasas, who was still struggling against him, and pressed him down on the earth, as Vishnu once pressed down the Asura Maya in battle. Then he drew a scimitar, a wonderful thing to look at, and cut the head from his enemy’s body. It was a terrible head, and it was still roaring awfully as it came away. Ghatotkacha caught it up by the hair, wet with blood as it was, and went quickly toward Duryodhana’s chariot. When he reached the Kuru king he smiled and threw the head, with its frightful face and hair, onto the chariot. Then he roared, as deep as the clouds in the season of rains, and spoke to Duryodhana. “Here is your ally, killed, the one whose prowess you were watching. You will see Karna killed in the same way, and then yourself. A man who keeps to the three aims of life, virtue, profit and pleasure, should never go empty-handed into the presence of a king, a Brahmin or a woman. Live in good cheer until I have killed Karna.” The head lying on the king’s chariot was the gift he meant. Then he turned toward Karna and came on shooting keen arrows at Karna’s head by the hundred. The battle that began then between the man and the Rakshasa, Sanjaya said, was fierce and terrible, and a great wonder to see.
A key to reading this (two Alambushas, one Jatasura): This Alambusha is the son of Jatasura, the Rakshasa who one day, while Bhima was away, carried off Yudhishthira, the twins and Draupadi, until Bhima caught him and killed him (chapter 13a tells it). The son comes to honor his dead father with the blood of the men who killed him, and dies at the hands of Bhima’s own son. Another Rakshasa of the same name, Alambusha the son of Rishyashringa, was killed by Ghatotkacha earlier this same day, lifted off his own chariot, whirled and dashed to pieces on the ground. Ghatotkacha’s remark about never coming empty-handed before a king is the etiquette of gift-giving turned to his own use: the head is his tribute.
The gist: Duryodhana sends Duhshasana with a force to shield Karna, and Jatasura’s son Alambusha asks leave to avenge his father and is sent against Ghatotkacha. Their duel runs from arrows through fists to a hundred illusions, fire and ocean, Garuda and Takshaka, Rahu and the sun, and ends with Ghatotkacha dropping on him like a hawk and taking his roaring head off with a scimitar. He carries the head by the hair to Duryodhana’s chariot, throws it aboard as his tribute, promises the king that Karna’s death comes next and the king’s own after that, and turns back toward Karna shooting.
Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Drona Parva. This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, Sections 159 to 183; its first part tells Sections 159 to 174. The Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters differently. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. About the sources.
Based on: The Mahabharata, Vyasa (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)