Mahabharata · Chapter 27 · Part 2 of 2 · The Narayana weapon, Ashvatthama against Arjuna, and Vyasa on Nara and Narayana

About 85 minutes

Rivers running backward as the Narayana weapon rises, and Arjuna’s answer, which is a sentence on the king

The first sign that Ashvatthama had done something no one on that field had seen before came from the weather. Sanjaya told it to the blind king in the order the senses received it. The moment the Narayana weapon was invoked, violent winds got up and rain fell in sheets, and thunder rolled across a sky in which there was no cloud. The earth shook. The seas heaved and churned. Rivers turned and ran back toward their sources. On every side, Bharata, the summits of mountains split. Animals of every kind began to cross the Pandavas from the left, the side of ill omen. Darkness came down and the sun went dim inside it, and the creatures that feed on the dead settled onto the field in a kind of joy. The gods, the Danavas, the Gandharvas, all were seized with fear, and seeing that convulsion in the nature of things they called out to one another, loudly, to ask what had caused it. The kings on both sides had a shorter answer available. They had seen the son of Drona invoke that fierce and terrible weapon, and they felt, every one of them, a great pain. Dhritarashtra, listening, wanted to know one thing: when the Pandavas saw the Kauravas coming back to the fight, rallied by a son who was burning with grief and could not bear his father’s slaughter, what plan did they make for keeping Dhrishtadyumna alive?

Sanjaya answered by describing Yudhishthira’s confusion, because that was the plan’s starting point: the king did not yet know what he was looking at. He had watched Dhritarashtra’s sons run. Now he saw them turned and formed again for furious battle, and he spoke to Arjuna about what he had seen an hour earlier, at length, the way a man talks when he is trying to make a fact hold still. When Dhrishtadyumna killed the preceptor, he said, the way the wielder of the thunderbolt killed the great Asura Vritra, the Kurus lost heart and gave up every hope of victory. They fled to save their lives. Some kings went on chariots that had lost their rear drivers and were running a crooked course, stripped of standards and banners and umbrellas, their yoke poles and boxes broken, all their gear thrown out of place. Some, out of their minds with panic, kicked at their own chariot horses with their feet to make them go faster. Some fled on chariots with broken yokes and wheels and axles. Some horsemen were carried off half out of their saddles. Some, thrown from their seats and pinned by arrows to the necks of elephants, were carried away by those animals. Some were trampled by elephants that had been maddened with arrows. Some, without weapons or armor, fell from their vehicles onto the ground. Some were cut by chariot wheels or crushed under horses and elephants. Some called aloud for their fathers and their sons and ran without recognizing anyone, all their strength gone into grief. Some could be seen lifting sons and fathers and friends and brothers onto vehicles, taking off their armor, and washing them with water. That was the condition of the Kuru army after Drona fell, Yudhishthira said. It ran headlong. So who has rallied it? Tell me if you know. He could hear the neighing of horses and the trumpeting of elephants under the clatter of wheels, sounds rising again and again out of the Kuru ocean and making his own troops shake. That uproar, he said, is the kind that makes the hair stand up; it sounds as if it means to swallow the three worlds with Indra at their head. I think the wielder of the thunderbolt himself is making it. Now that Drona is down, Vasava is coming against us for the Kauravas’ sake. Our hair is on end and our best chariot-warriors are sick with worry. Dhananjaya, who is that great warrior, like the lord of the gods, who has gathered this terrible, swelling host and is turning it back on us?

Arjuna’s answer began as an identification and became something else. The man whose energy the Kauravas are trusting, he said, as they blow their conches and hold their ground and set themselves to fierce deeds, the man you are wondering about, who has rallied Dhritarashtra’s sons after the disarmed preceptor fell and is roaring like that: he is modest, he is mighty-armed, he walks like an elephant in rut, his face is a tiger’s, he always does terrible things and he takes away the Kurus’ fear. When he was born, Drona gave a thousand cows to worthy Brahmins, and the one roaring now, king, is Ashvatthama. The moment he was born he neighed like Indra’s horse, and the three worlds shook at the sound, and an unseen being spoke out loud and gave him his name, the horse-voiced. That hero, son of Pandu, is roaring today. Prishata’s son did a very cruel thing when he laid hands on Drona and took his life as though there were no one to protect him. And there stands that Drona’s son. Since the Panchala prince seized my teacher by the hair, Ashvatthama, who trusts his own strength, will never forgive him. Then Arjuna turned, and the king he was speaking to became the accused. You told your preceptor a lie for the sake of a kingdom, monarch. You know what righteousness requires, and you did a deeply sinful thing anyway. Your bad name for the killing of Drona will last through the three worlds and everything that moves and does not move in them, the way Rama’s has lasted for the killing of Vali. Drona thought of you this way: Pandu’s son has every virtue, and besides that he is my pupil; he will never speak an untruth to me. On that thought he believed what you said. You added the word elephant when you spoke of Ashvatthama’s death, and even so your answer to the preceptor was a lie wearing the clothes of truth. On your word that powerful man laid down his weapons, and you saw what he became, indifferent to everything, shaken through, nearly out of his senses. And then a pupil who had thrown away all morality killed his own teacher, a teacher full of love for his son, a teacher in grief who did not want to fight. Having had a man killed unrighteously after he had put down his arms, protect Prishata’s son now if you can, with all your counselors. All of us together will not be able to protect him today from the preceptor’s son in his rage and grief. That more than human being, whose habit is friendship for every creature, will hear that his father was seized by the hair and will burn us all in battle. I shouted, again and again, as loud as I could, to spare the preceptor’s life. A pupil ignored me, abandoned morality, and took that life. We have lived the greater part of our lives, and the days that remain are few, and this act of extreme unrighteousness has stained what is left. He was a father to us in the love he bore us, and a father to us by the letter of the scriptures, and we killed him for a sovereignty that will not last. Dhritarashtra had given Bhishma and Drona the whole earth and, more than that, all his children. Honored like that by our enemy, enriched like that by him, the preceptor still loved us like his own sons. A man of unfading energy and prowess, and he died only because your words made him put his weapons down. While he fought, Indra himself could not have killed him. He was old in years and always working for our good, and we, unrighteous, stained with the lightness of our conduct, did not hesitate to hurt him. It was a cruel and monstrous sin, killing Drona because we wanted the pleasures of a throne. My teacher believed all along that for love of him I would give up everything, father, brother, children, wife, and life. And for the sake of a kingdom I did not step in when he was about to be killed. For that fault, king, lord, I have already gone down into hell, overcome with shame. I had a man killed for a kingdom who was a Brahmin, who was old, who was my teacher, who had laid down his weapons, and who at that moment was absorbed in yoga like a great ascetic. Death is better to me now than life.

A key to reading this (names and signs): The rear driver is the Parshni charioteer who sits behind the main driver; the yoke pole and axle are the chariot’s kuvara and aksha. Animals passing on the left were read as an omen of disaster. Indra’s horse is Uchchaihshravas, and Ashvatthama’s name is built from that first cry (ashva, horse; sthama, voice or strength). Prishata was Drupada’s father, and Ganguli’s text calls Dhrishtadyumna “Prishata’s son” throughout; the usage is kept. Rama’s killing of Vali from ambush is the episode Markandeya tells in chapter 14a. The lie about the elephant, and Drona laying down his weapons, belong to the first half of this chapter.

The gist: Ashvatthama looses the Narayana weapon and nature turns inside out: thunder from a clear sky, rivers running backward, mountains splitting. Yudhishthira, who has just watched the Kuru army run, asks who has turned it around, and Arjuna names Ashvatthama and then keeps talking, straight at the king: the preceptor was lied to for a kingdom, killed after he had disarmed, and no one can save Dhrishtadyumna now. Arjuna ends by saying that after this sin he would rather be dead.

Bhima’s rebuke and Dhrishtadyumna’s defense: which of the six duties was Drona performing?

Nobody answered Arjuna. Sanjaya was precise about it: the great chariot-warriors standing there said not one word to Dhananjaya, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. A silence like that on a battlefield, with the Narayana weapon already in the sky, has to be broken by someone who is angry enough not to care how it sounds, and that was Bhima. He turned on his younger brother. You are preaching the truths of morality, he said, like a hermit living in the woods or a Brahmin of hard vows with his senses under control. A Kshatriya is called that because he saves others from wounds and injury, and being that, he must save himself from wounds and injury too. A Kshatriya who keeps forgiveness for the three who deserve it, the gods, the Brahmins, and his teacher, and who does his duty, quickly wins the earth, and merit and fame and prosperity along with it. You have every attribute of a Kshatriya, perpetuator of our line. It does not become you to talk like a man who knows nothing. Then Bhima did what he rarely did, which was to praise Arjuna at length, and the praise was the sharpest part of the rebuke. Your prowess, son of Kunti, is like Shakra’s, the lord of Sachi. You never cross the bounds of morality, the way the ocean never crosses its shores. Who would not worship you, seeing you seek virtue after putting aside the anger you nursed for thirteen years? By good luck, brother, your heart runs after virtue today. By good luck, you of unfading glory, your mind leans toward compassion. And while you are leaning toward virtue, your kingdom was snatched from you by the worst unrighteousness. Your wife Draupadi was dragged into the assembly and insulted by your enemies. All of us were exiled to the forest in bark and animal skins, and though we deserved none of it, our enemies made us endure it for thirteen years. Every one of those things demands anger, sinless one, and you have forgiven all of them. Bound to a Kshatriya’s duties, you bore them quietly. I came here with you remembering all those wrongs, to avenge them. If you are going to be this indifferent, I will kill those low wretches who robbed us of our kingdom myself. You said before that once we took up battle we would exert ourselves to the limit of our strength. Today you reproach us. Now you are seeking virtue. So what you said before was untrue. We are already afflicted with fear, and you, crusher of enemies, are cutting the core of our hearts with these words, like a man pouring acid onto the sores of the wounded. My heart is breaking under the darts of your speech. You are virtuous, but you do not know what righteousness really consists of, since you praise neither yourself nor us, though all of us deserve praise. With Keshava himself standing here, you praise Drona’s son, a warrior who does not come up to a sixteenth part of you. Confessing your own faults, Dhananjaya, do you feel no shame? I can split this earth in my rage, or shatter mountains by whirling this terrible heavy mace of mine with its gold. Like a storm I can bring down giant trees that look like hills. With my arrows I can rout the united gods with Indra at their head, and all the Rakshasas, Partha, and the Asuras, the serpents, and human beings. Knowing that your brother is such a man, bull among men, you of immeasurable prowess, you have no business being afraid of Drona’s son. Or stand here, Vibhatsu, with all these bulls among men, and I will beat him alone, with no one’s help, mace in hand, in a great fight.

When Bhima had finished, the son of the Panchala king spoke to Partha, and Sanjaya reached for a strange comparison for the way he did it: like Hiranyakashipu, leader of the Daityas, addressing an enraged and roaring Vishnu. Dhrishtadyumna did not apologize. He cross-examined. Vibhatsu, he said, the sages have laid down these as the duties of Brahmins: assisting at sacrifices, teaching, giving, performing sacrifices, receiving gifts, and study as the sixth. To which of those six was this Drona devoted, whom I have killed? Fallen from the duties of his own order, practicing those of the Kshatriya order, that doer of wicked deeds kept killing us with more than human weapons. Calling himself a Brahmin, he was in the habit of using an illusion that could not be resisted. By an illusion he has been killed today. What is improper in that, Partha? Drona has been punished by me, and if his son roars out loud in rage, what do you lose by it? I do not find it wonderful at all that Drona’s son will urge the Kauravas into battle and get them killed, since he will not be able to protect them himself. You know morality. Why do you call me the killer of my preceptor? It was for exactly this that I was born a son to the king of the Panchalas, rising out of the sacrificial fire. Dhananjaya, how can you call a man Brahmin or Kshatriya for whom, once he was fighting, all acts, proper and improper, were the same? Foremost of men, why should a man not be killed by any means in our power who, out of his senses with anger, used the Brahma weapons even on those who knew nothing of weapons? The righteous say that an unrighteous man is the equal of poison. You know the truths of morality; knowing that, Arjuna, why do you reproach me? That cruel chariot-warrior was seized and killed by me. I have done nothing that deserves reproach. Why then, Vibhatsu, do you not congratulate me? Partha, I have cut off Drona’s terrible head, which was like the blazing sun, or virulent poison, or the fire that ends an age. Why do you not applaud an act that deserves applause? In battle he killed only my kinsmen, no one else’s. And I tell you that having merely cut off his head, the fever in my heart has not gone down. What pierces the core of my heart is that I did not throw that head into the country of the Nishadas, like Jayadratha’s. It has been heard, Arjuna, that a man incurs sin by not killing his enemies. This is a Kshatriya’s duty: to kill or be killed. Drona was my enemy. I killed him righteously in battle, son of Pandu, exactly as you killed brave Bhagadatta, your friend. You killed your grandfather in battle and you regard that act as righteous. Why then do you regard it as unrighteous in me that I killed my wretched enemy? Because of our relationship, Partha, I cannot lift my head in your presence, and I am like an elephant lying down with a ladder against its body, so that small creatures can climb onto its back. So it does not become you to reproach me. I forgive all the faults of your speech, Arjuna, for Draupadi’s sake and for the sake of Draupadi’s children, and for no other reason. It is well known that my enmity with the preceptor has come down from father to son. Everyone in the world knows it. Sons of Pandu, do you not know it? The eldest son of Pandu has not spoken an untruth. I myself, Arjuna, am not sinful. The wretched Drona hated his own pupils. Fight now. Victory will be yours.

A key to reading this (words and references): Bhima’s etymology, a Kshatriya as one who saves from kshata, from wounds, is in Ganguli’s text itself. The six duties of a Brahmin are the spine of Dhrishtadyumna’s case: Drona, he argues, practiced none of them, only the art of weapons. The Hiranyakashipu and Vishnu comparison is Sanjaya’s own, as Ganguli prints it. Jayadratha’s head thrown into the Nishada country refers to chapter 26, where Arjuna’s arrow carries it into the lap of his father Vriddhakshatra. Bhagadatta, Indra’s friend and Arjuna’s, was killed by Arjuna on the twelfth day. Dhrishtadyumna’s birth from the fire, for the killing of Drona, is told in the Adi Parva. Bhima’s “thirteen years” are the years of exile and the year in hiding.

The gist: The assembly meets Arjuna’s outburst with silence, and then two men answer him. Bhima says this is no time to preach like a forest hermit, that thirteen years of insult are owed their anger, and that if Arjuna fears Ashvatthama, Bhima will settle him alone with a mace. Dhrishtadyumna argues the case: Drona performed none of a Brahmin’s six duties, fought by illusion and died by it, and was an enemy killed the way Arjuna killed Bhishma and Bhagadatta; Yudhishthira told no lie and he himself is no sinner. His last words: fight now, victory will be yours.

“Is there no Kshatriya here?”: Satyaki’s mace, Dhrishtadyumna’s answer, and Bhima digging in at the sixth step

The blind king could not let it go. Drona had studied every branch of the Veda; the whole science of arms had lived in him, and so had modesty, and the men who could still do what the gods could not manage with all their care had learned it from him. And that man, that son of a great rishi, had been seized by the hair and insulted in front of everyone by Dhrishtadyumna, whom Dhritarashtra now called by every name he had: low, wicked, mean-minded, sinful, the killer of his own teacher. Was there no Kshatriya on the field, he asked Sanjaya, who felt called to be angry? Fie on the Kshatriya order, he said, and fie on anger itself. Tell me what the sons of Pritha said to the prince of Panchala, and what every other royal bowman in the world said, when they heard that Drona was dead. Sanjaya’s answer began with silence. When Drupada’s son finished his crooked speech, no one in the Pandava ranks said anything at all. Arjuna looked at him sideways, with tears and long breaths, and the only word that came out of him was the one Dhritarashtra had just used: fie, fie. Yudhishthira and Bhima and the twins and Krishna and the rest stood there like men ashamed. It was Satyaki who broke it. Is there no one here, he said, who will kill this sinner without waiting another moment, this lowest of men who is saying such things? The Pandavas are condemning you for this act the way Brahmins condemn a Chandala. Having done something that vile, having earned the censure of every honest man alive, are you not ashamed to open your mouth in a gathering like this? When you were about to kill your own teacher, why did your tongue and your head not split into a hundred pieces? Why did the sin itself not strike you down? And now, having done it, you praise yourself in front of human beings, so that the Parthas censure you, and so do all the Andhakas and the Vrishnis. For this alone you deserve death at our hands. There is no use keeping you alive a single moment. Who but you, wretch, would have taken a virtuous preceptor by the hair and killed him? Because your line produced you, your ancestors for seven generations and your descendants for seven have lost their fame and sunk into hell.

Then Satyaki went after the other charge, the one Dhrishtadyumna had thrown at Arjuna. You accused Partha, that bull among men, of killing Bhishma. That illustrious man arranged his own death. If you want the truth, it was your own brother Shikhandi, the foremost of all sinners, who was the cause of it; there is no one in this world more sinful than the sons of the Panchala king. Your father made Shikhandi for the destruction of Bhishma. Arjuna only protected Shikhandi, and Shikhandi became the cause of Bhishma’s death. With you, whom every righteous man condemns, and with your brother among them, the Panchalas have fallen from righteousness, stained themselves with meanness, and become haters of friends and preceptors. If you say such words in my presence again I will break your head with this mace, which is as strong as the thunderbolt. Men who have looked at you, the killer of a Brahmin, have to look at the sun afterward to be purified, because what you are guilty of is nothing less than a Brahmin’s murder. Wretch of a Panchala, man of wicked conduct, speaking that way first of my teacher and then of my teacher’s teacher, have you no shame? Wait, wait. Take one blow of my mace. I will take many of yours. That was the rebuke of the Satvata hero, and Prishata’s son heard it with his face flushed with rage and, Sanjaya says, with a smile.

What Dhrishtadyumna said back was harsher than what he had been given, because it was built out of Satyaki’s own record. I have heard your words, son of Madhu’s race, and I have forgiven you. You, unrighteous and sinful yourself, want to rebuke people who are righteous and honest? Forgiveness is praised in the world, but sin does not deserve it, and the man of sinful soul takes the forgiving man for a weakling. You are a wretch in your conduct. You are of sinful soul. You are wedded to unrighteousness. You are blameworthy in every respect, from the tip of your toe to the ends of your hair, and you still want to speak ill of others? What could be more sinful than what you did to Bhurishravas, killing him while he sat in praya with no arm, and doing it with the help of celestial weapons? Drona had laid down his weapons and I killed him. Crooked heart, what was improper in that? How can a man blame such an act who himself killed a warrior sitting in praya like an ascetic, whose arm had been cut off by someone else? That valiant enemy of yours had shown his prowess, kicked you down, thrown you on the ground; why did you not kill him then, and show your manliness? It was after Partha had already beaten him that you, in the most unrighteous way, killed Somadatta’s brave son. When Drona was routing the Pandava forces, I went at him shooting arrows by the thousand. Having behaved like a Chandala yourself, having made yourself worthy of reproach, you want to reproach me in words like these? You are the doer of evil deeds, wretch of the Vrishni race, not I. You are the home of every sin. Do not blame me again. Be silent; that suits you. Say nothing more to me after this. This is the answer I give you with my lips; say nothing more. If out of folly you repeat such words, I will send you to Yama’s house with my arrows, in battle. And then he said the sentence the whole war had been waiting for someone to say out loud. Fool, righteousness alone does not defeat an enemy. Hear the unrighteous acts of the Kurus as well. Yudhishthira, Pandu’s son, was cheated by them unrighteously not long ago. Draupadi was persecuted by them unrighteously. The Pandavas, with Krishna among them, were exiled and robbed of everything they had, fool, in the most unrighteous way. By an unrighteous act the ruler of the Madras was taken away from us by the enemy. By an unrighteous act Subhadra’s son was killed. On our side, Bhishma, the grandsire of the Kurus, was killed by an unrighteous act. And Bhurishravas was killed unrighteously by you, who know righteousness so well. That is how the enemy has acted in this war, and how the Pandavas have acted. All of them, Satvata, brave men who know what morality is, have done it to win. High morality is hard to ascertain. Immorality is just as hard to grasp. Fight the Kauravas now, without going home to your fathers.

Satyaki trembled from head to foot. His eyes went the color of copper. He laid his bow down on the chariot floor, took up his mace, and breathing like a snake he went for the prince of the Panchalas, saying only this: I will not speak harshly to you. I will kill you, since you deserve killing. He came on like Yama going after someone of his own kind, and it was Krishna who moved first, with a word to Bhima; Bhima jumped down from his chariot and wrapped both arms around him. Satyaki kept going. Furious, dragging the son of Pandu along with him while Bhima strained to hold him back, he covered several steps. At the sixth step Bhima planted his feet and the bull of Sini’s race stopped. Then Sahadeva was on the ground too, and while Bhima held the man, Sahadeva spoke to him. Tiger among men, son of Madhu’s race, we have no friends dearer to us than the Andhakas, the Vrishnis, and the Panchalas. The Andhakas and the Vrishnis, and Krishna especially, have no friends dearer than we are. And the Panchalas, if they searched the whole world to the edge of the sea, would find no friends dearer than the Pandavas and the Vrishnis. You are that kind of friend to this prince, and he is that kind of friend to you. All of you are to us what we are to you. You know every duty; remember now the duty you owe to friends, and hold back this anger that has the prince of the Panchalas for its object. Be calm, foremost of Sini’s line. Forgive Prishata’s son, and let Prishata’s son forgive you. We will practice forgiveness too. What is better than forgiveness? Dhrishtadyumna, watching this, smiled and made it worse. Let go of Sini’s grandson, Bhima, you who are so proud of your prowess. Let him come at me like the wind striking a mountain, until I quench his rage and his appetite for battle with my sharp arrows and take his life. The Kauravas are coming; after I have dealt with Satyaki I will do this great work of the Pandavas that stands in front of us. Or let Phalguna hold off every enemy on the field. As for me, I will take this man’s head with my arrows. He takes me for the armless Bhurishravas. Let him go. Either I kill him or he kills me. Held in Bhima’s grip, Satyaki shook and hissed, and the two of them, both immensely strong, both long-armed, bellowed at each other like a pair of bulls. It took Krishna and Yudhishthira together, and real effort, to bring the two great bowmen down from that, their eyes still red with blood. When it was done, every Kshatriya of the Pandava army turned and went out to meet the warriors of the enemy.

A key to reading this (the old wounds): Every charge in this quarrel comes from the war itself. Bhurishravas, Somadatta’s son, died on the fourteenth day: Arjuna cut off his arm while he had Satyaki down under his foot, he sat down in praya (a fast unto death) with his weapons laid aside, and Satyaki beheaded him anyway, over everyone’s protest. “My teacher’s teacher” is Bhishma, whom Satyaki treats as the preceptor’s own preceptor. “The ruler of the Madras taken away by an unrighteous act” is Shalya, tricked into the Kaurava camp by Duryodhana’s hospitality in the Udyoga Parva. Dhrishtadyumna’s line that righteousness alone does not defeat an enemy is the bitter ledger of the war reduced to one sentence: the dice, Draupadi’s humiliation, Abhimanyu’s death, and Bhishma’s fall set on a single scale.

The gist: With Drona dead, the Pandava side turns on itself. Dhritarashtra asks why no Kshatriya was angry, and Sanjaya answers that one was: Satyaki called Dhrishtadyumna a Brahmin-killer to his face and picked up his mace. Dhrishtadyumna answered with Bhurishravas and with a list of every unrighteous act on both sides, and the flat claim that righteousness alone wins nothing. Bhima stopped Satyaki at the sixth step, Sahadeva pleaded friendship and forgiveness, Dhrishtadyumna kept taunting, and in the end it took Krishna and Yudhishthira to hold the two men apart, because the Kauravas were coming again.

A mountain of the dead, a sky full of burning arrows, and the one man who would not put his weapon down: Bhima before the Narayana weapon

Drona’s son went into the Pandava host the way the Destroyer goes into the world at the end of an age. Sanjaya, who had to describe it to a father who wanted every detail, described the thing Ashvatthama built rather than the men he cut down, because by the time the broad-headed arrows had done their work there was a mountain on the field where there had been an army. Its trees were the standards of chariots. Its pointed summits were weapons. Its great rocks were the lifeless elephants, its Kimpurushas the dead horses, its creepers and plants the fallen bows. It had a population of birds, the carrion-eaters screaming over it, and it had its Yakshas too, the spirits that walked there. From the top of that mountain, roaring so that Duryodhana could hear him, Ashvatthama said his vow again. Because Kunti’s son Yudhishthira, wearing only the outward dress of virtue, made the preceptor lay down his weapons while he was fighting righteously, I will rout and destroy his army in front of his eyes. When I have torn all his troops apart I will kill the sinful prince of the Panchalas. I will kill all of them if they stand against me. I am telling you the truth; rally your troops. Duryodhana did. He shouted like a lion, and the fear went out of the Kaurava ranks, and the two armies came together again with the violence of two oceans at full tide, each side in a state that made it dangerous: the Kauravas because Drona’s son had taken their terror away, the Pandavas and Panchalas because Drona’s death had made them fierce. Cheerful, furious, and certain of victory on both sides, mountain against mountain, ocean against ocean, they struck, and the drums by the thousand and the joy in the shouting made a noise Sanjaya could compare only to the sea being churned by the gods and the Danavas.

Then Ashvatthama aimed at the whole host of the Pandavas and the Panchalas and invoked the weapon called Narayana. Thousands of arrows with blazing mouths appeared in the sky, snakes of fire, and came down on the Pandavas. In a moment they covered every point of the compass, the sky, and the troops, the way the sun’s rays cover everything at once. Iron balls without number appeared beside them, shining like stars in a clear firmament. Shataghnis came, some on four wheels and some on two, and maces without number, and discs with edges like razors and faces like the sun. The Pandavas, the Panchalas, and the Srinjayas looked up at a sky packed solid with weapons and lost their composure, and Sanjaya noted the quality that made this weapon what it was: wherever the great chariot warriors of the Pandava side fought hardest, there it grew strongest. Under it the Pandava army burned across the whole field like a conflagration, like a heap of dry grass in summer when the fire reaches it. Yudhishthira saw it filling every side, saw his men dying in numbers, saw the army in flight and out of its senses, saw the Parthas standing by and doing nothing, and he gave up. Dhrishtadyumna, he said, take your Panchalas and run. Satyaki, go, with the Vrishnis and the Andhakas around you. Vasudeva, whose soul is virtuous, will find the means of his own safety; he is fit to advise the whole world, so what is the use of telling him what to do? We should not fight any longer. I am saying this to all the troops. As for me, I will climb onto a funeral pyre with all my brothers. Having crossed the Bhishma ocean and the Drona ocean in this war, oceans the timid cannot cross, am I now to drown with all my followers in the puddle of a cow’s hoofprint that is Drona’s son? Let Duryodhana’s wishes come true today, since today I killed the preceptor who always loved us. And then, with the weapon still coming down, he turned the same speech into an indictment of the man he was grieving for. That preceptor, who let Subhadra’s son, a child who did not know war, be killed by a crowd of wicked warriors instead of protecting him. That preceptor, who sat there with his son and said nothing when Krishna, dragged into the assembly and about to be made a slave, asked him to speak the truth. That preceptor, who put invulnerable armor on Duryodhana when the other warriors were exhausted and Duryodhana wanted to kill Phalguna, and having armored him, set him to guard Jayadratha. That preceptor, who knew the Brahma weapon and did not scruple to wipe out the Panchalas under Satyajit who had exerted themselves for my victory. That preceptor, who, when we were being unrighteously driven from the kingdom, freely told us to go into the woods, though our friends had begged him to withhold his permission. Our great friend is dead. For his sake I will lay down my life with my friends.

Krishna did not answer the speech. He answered the weapon. Raising his arms to stop the troops from running, he gave an order that ran against every instinct on the field. Lay down your weapons, all of you, quickly, and get down from your vehicles. This is the means the illustrious one himself, Narayana, ordained for baffling this weapon. Come down to the earth from your elephants and horses and chariots. If you stand on the ground without weapons, this weapon will not kill you. Wherever you fight to quell its force, there the Kauravas will grow stronger than you. Those who throw down their weapons and get off their vehicles will not be killed by it in this battle. Those who fight it even in imagination will all be killed, though they hide deep under the earth. The Pandava warriors heard him, and one by one they threw down their weapons and drove the wish to fight out of their hearts. And Bhima, watching an army disarm itself, said no. Let no one lay down a weapon here. I will oppose this weapon of Drona’s son with my arrows. With this heavy mace of mine, decked with gold, I will go through this battle like the Destroyer himself and quell it. There is no man here who equals me in prowess, as there is no light in the sky that equals the sun. Look at these two arms of mine, like the trunks of two mighty elephants, able to pull down the mountain of Himavat. I am the one man here with the strength of a thousand elephants. I am without peer, as Shakra is known to be among the celestials in heaven. Let people see today what these two arms of mine, of this broad-chested self, can do against the bright and blazing weapon of Drona’s son. If there is no one else able to stand against the Narayana weapon, I will stand against it today in the sight of all the Kurus and the Pandavas. And he turned to his brother. Arjuna, Vibhatsu, do not put Gandiva aside. A stain will attach to you like the stain on the moon. Arjuna’s answer was short and closed the matter. Bhima, this is my great vow: Gandiva shall not be used against the Narayana weapon, against cows, or against Brahmins.

So Bhima went alone. His chariot, bright as the sun, rattling like thunderclouds, went straight at Drona’s son, and with the quickness of hand that was the Kaunteya’s gift he had Ashvatthama covered in a shower of weapons within the blink of an eye. Ashvatthama smiled at the charge. He said what was proper to say to a man coming at him like that, and then he buried Bhima under arrows charged with mantras and tipped with fire. Wrapped in shafts that vomited flame like snakes with blazing mouths, dusted with what looked like sparks of gold, Bhima on the field looked like a mountain at evening with a fire moving across it. And the weapon fed on him. Directed at Bhimasena it grew in energy and might the way a forest fire grows when the wind gets behind it, and everyone in the Pandava army who saw it growing felt the panic go into his heart, everyone except Bhima. Whatever weapons had still been in hands went down onto the earth. Whoever was still mounted got down from chariot and horse. And when they had all thrown down their arms and dismounted, that weapon of tremendous energy, with nothing else left to feed on, fell on Bhima’s head. Every creature that could see it cried out, and the Pandavas loudest of all, watching Bhimasena disappear under the power of the Narayana weapon.

A key to reading this (words and references): A shataghni is a weapon that kills a hundred at once; the wheels mentioned here mark it as an engine rather than a hand weapon. “The puddle of a cow’s hoofprint” is Yudhishthira’s own bitter image: having crossed the oceans that were Bhishma and Drona, he says he is about to drown in a hoofprint. The charges he lays against Drona are events of this war and of the dice hall: Abhimanyu left alone inside the circular array, Drona’s silence when Draupadi asked the elders for a ruling in the assembly, the armor put on Duryodhana on the fourteenth day so that he could face Arjuna and guard Jayadratha, and the killing of Satyajit and the Panchalas on Drona’s first day as commander. The stain on the moon is Bhima’s warning that Arjuna’s fame will be marked if Gandiva is set down. Arjuna’s vow that Gandiva will never be used against the Narayana weapon, cows, or Brahmins belongs to the nature of the weapon itself, whose story Ashvatthama told in the previous scene.

The gist: Ashvatthama piles the dead into a mountain, repeats his vow, and looses the Narayana weapon. The sky fills with burning arrows, iron balls, shataghnis, and discs, and the Pandava army burns like dry grass. Yudhishthira gives up, tells everyone to flee, says he will climb a pyre, and in the same breath lists every grievance he has against the teacher he has just had killed. Krishna gives the only answer that works: lay down your weapons and get off your vehicles, because this weapon does not kill the unarmed. Everyone obeys except Bhima, who tells Arjuna to keep Gandiva in his hands; Arjuna has a vow against that. Bhima charges alone, and the weapon, growing like a fire in the wind, comes down on his head.

The Varuna shield and Nara and Narayana dragging Bhima down; then, with the weapon quenched, Ashvatthama’s rampage: Satyaki’s armor pierced and three princes killed

Arjuna saw his brother disappearing into fire and did the only thing left that was not a weapon. He covered Bhima with the Varuna weapon, the water weapon, to eat the heat of the other. His hands were so fast, and the fire around Bhima so bright, that no one on the field could see it happen. Bhima, his horses, his driver, and his chariot were wrapped in the Narayana weapon like a flame burning inside another flame, and nobody could look straight at them. As the stars all run toward the western hill at the end of a night, so every burning arrow of Ashvatthama’s weapon streamed toward Bhima’s chariot, and the whole of that force, the way the fire of the end of an age swallows the moving and the unmoving world and then goes into the mouth of the Creator, began to enter Bhima’s body. Fire that has gone into the sun cannot be seen, and the sun that has gone into fire cannot be seen, and no one saw the energy that went into Bhima. Arjuna and Krishna saw two things at once: the weapon closing on Bhima with Ashvatthama swelling behind it, unopposed now, and the entire Pandava army with its weapons on the ground and Yudhishthira’s chariots turned away from the enemy. The two of them jumped from their chariot and ran. They went into that energy born of Ashvatthama’s weapon on foot, and they went in by their own power of illusion. The fire did not burn them, Sanjaya says, for three reasons: they had put down their weapons, the Varuna weapon was working, and they carried an energy of their own. Then Nara and Narayana, for the pacifying of the Narayana weapon, took hold of Bhima and of all his weapons and pulled. Bhima roared. The roar fed the weapon, and the terrible, invincible thing grew.

Krishna spoke to him inside the fire. Son of Pandu, how is it that we forbade you and you, son of Kunti, still do not stop fighting? If the Kurus could be beaten in battle right now, we would be fighting, and so would every one of these great men. Look, every warrior of your army has come down from his chariot. So come down from yours, son of Kunti. And with that Krishna brought Bhima down off his chariot. Bhima’s eyes were red as blood and he was hissing like a snake. But once he was on the ground and his weapons had been taken out of his hands, the Narayana weapon, that scorcher of enemies, went quiet. The change was immediate and total. The directions cleared, the cardinal and the intermediate. Sweet breezes blew. Birds and animals went still. Horses and elephants brightened, and so did the men. Bhima, freed of the fire, stood there shining like the morning sun. The remnant of the Pandava host, seeing the weapon stilled, took up its positions again to finish Dhritarashtra’s sons. Duryodhana, watching the enemy re-form, turned to Ashvatthama and said: use that weapon again, quickly, the Panchalas are arrayed and want victory. Ashvatthama sighed, and there was no cheer in it. That weapon cannot be recalled, king. It cannot be used twice. If it is brought back it will certainly kill the man who calls it. Vasudeva has baffled it by the means you saw. That is why the enemy is not destroyed. But defeat and death are the same thing; in fact defeat is worse than death. Look at the enemy, beaten, forced to lay down his arms; he looks like a man with the life gone out of him. Duryodhana had an answer for that as well. Son of my preceptor, if it is so, if this weapon cannot be used twice, then kill the killers of their teacher with other weapons, you who know weapons better than anyone alive. Every celestial weapon that the three-eyed god of immeasurable energy possesses is in you. If you do not choose to spare him, even Indra in his rage cannot escape you. And here Dhritarashtra, listening in Hastinapura, asked the question the whole field was asking: with Drona killed by fraud and the Narayana weapon baffled, and the Parthas free of it and back in front of their divisions, what did Drona’s son do?

He remembered his father, Sanjaya said, and went for the man who had killed him. Under his banner with the lion’s tail, casting off every fear, Ashvatthama charged Dhrishtadyumna and pierced him with twenty-five small arrows. Dhrishtadyumna answered with sixty-four, put twenty gold-winged, stone-whetted arrows into Ashvatthama’s driver and four into his horses, and roared until the earth shook, as if he meant to take the life of every creature in the world. With death itself for his goal, sure of aim, he went at Drona’s son alone and poured arrows onto his head. Ashvatthama covered him in winged shafts, pierced him ten times more with his father in his mind, cut down his standard and his bow with two razor-headed arrows, and then ground him with the rest, until Dhrishtadyumna had no horses, no driver, and no chariot, and his followers were buried in arrows. The Panchala troops broke and ran. Satyaki saw them turning and saw Dhrishtadyumna in that state and drove straight at Ashvatthama. Eight keen arrows, then twenty of different kinds, then the driver, then the four horses with four shafts; then, with great deliberation and a lightness of hand that made men stare, he cut Ashvatthama’s bow and standard, broke his gold-decked chariot into pieces along with its horses, and put thirty arrows into his chest. Ashvatthama, wrapped in arrows, no longer knew what to do. Duryodhana saw the preceptor’s son in that condition and came at Satyaki with Kripa and Karna and the rest, and they all shot at once from every side: Duryodhana with twenty arrows, Kripa with three, Kritavarma with ten, Karna with fifty, Duhshasana with a hundred, Vrishasena with seven. Satyaki stripped every one of those great chariot-warriors of his chariot and drove them off the field. Ashvatthama came back to his senses, sighing in sorrow, and thought about what to do; he mounted another chariot and shot hundreds of arrows to hold Satyaki, and Satyaki made him careless again and turned him back again. The Pandavas blew their conches at the sight and roared. And having unhorsed Drona’s son, Satyaki of the unbaffled prowess killed three thousand chariot-warriors of Vrishasena’s division, fifteen thousand elephants of Kripa’s force, and fifty thousand horses of Shakuni’s.

Ashvatthama came a third time, on a third chariot, and this time he came to kill. Satyaki cut him worse than before, with sharper arrows of every shape. And Drona’s son, pierced, smiled at him and made a promise. Grandson of Shini, I know your partiality for Dhrishtadyumna, the killer of his teacher, but you will not be able to save him or yourself when I attack you. I swear to you by truth and by my austerities that I will know no peace until I have killed all the Panchalas. Join the forces of the Pandavas with the Vrishnis; I will still kill the Somakas. Then he shot one arrow, straight and excellent and bright as the sun, the way Indra once hurled his thunderbolt at Vritra. It went through Satyaki’s armor, through his body, and into the earth like a hissing snake going into its hole. Satyaki, his armor breached, was bathed in blood like an elephant struck deep by the goad; the bow with the arrow still on its string slipped out of his grasp and he sat down on the floor of his chariot without strength, and his driver carried him quickly out of Ashvatthama’s reach. With another straight, well-feathered arrow Ashvatthama struck Dhrishtadyumna between the eyebrows. The Panchala prince had already been pierced many times; this one left him so weak that he held himself up by his flagstaff. Five chariot-warriors of the Pandava army saw him afflicted that way, like an elephant in rut under a lion, and rushed at Ashvatthama: Arjuna, Bhima, Brihatkshatra of the line of Puru, the young prince of the Chedis, and Sudarshana the chief of the Malavas. They came crying out, bows in hand, and ringed him. Twenty paces in, all five loosed twenty-five arrows each at the same moment, and Ashvatthama cut all of those arrows down almost at the same moment with twenty-five arrows like poisonous snakes. He struck the Paurava prince with seven sharp shafts, the Malava chief with three, Arjuna with one, Bhima with six. They pierced him together and separately with gold-winged arrows, the young Chedi twenty times, Arjuna three. He gave Arjuna six, Vasudeva six, Bhima five, the Malava and the Paurava two each, put six into Bhima’s driver, cut Bhima’s bow and standard with two, showered Arjuna again, and roared like a lion. Earth, sky, and every quarter, before him and behind him, were shrouded by his tempered arrows. Then, with three shafts almost together, he took off Sudarshana’s two arms, arms like Indra’s poles, and his head, as the man sat on his chariot. He drove a dart into the Paurava, broke his chariot into fragments with arrows, lopped off his two sandal-smeared arms and then his head with a broad-headed shaft. And the young, strong prince of the Chedis, dark as the blue lotus, he pierced with arrows like flames and sent to Yama’s house together with his driver and his horses.

A key to reading this (Nara and Narayana, and the rule of the weapon): Sanjaya calls Arjuna and Krishna Nara and Narayana here, and Vyasa will explain in the last scene of this chapter what the names mean. The rule of the Narayana weapon was stated by Ashvatthama himself earlier in this chapter: it does not strike a man who has laid down his weapons or come down from his chariot, which is why Krishna dismounts the whole army and pulls Bhima off his chariot by force; Ashvatthama’s warning that a recalled weapon kills the man who recalls it is the other edge of the same rule. “Prishata’s son” is Ganguli’s usage for Dhrishtadyumna (Prishata was Drupada’s father). Grandson of Shini and the Satvata hero are Satyaki. Brihatkshatra the Paurava, the young Chedi prince, and Sudarshana of the Malavas are three kings on the Pandava side who die in this scene.

The gist: Arjuna shields Bhima with the Varuna weapon and then walks into the fire with Krishna, unarmed, to drag him down; the moment Bhima is off his chariot the Narayana weapon goes quiet. Duryodhana wants it thrown again and learns it cannot be used twice. Ashvatthama turns to ordinary weapons and does terrible work with them: he strips Dhrishtadyumna, is beaten twice by Satyaki and comes back to put an arrow through Satyaki’s armor, hits Dhrishtadyumna between the eyebrows, and kills three of the five men who ring him: Sudarshana of the Malavas, Brihatkshatra the Paurava, and the young prince of the Chedis.

Bhima’s arrow duel with Ashvatthama, Arjuna’s bitter words, and the Agneya weapon: an akshauhini burned to ash, and the two Krishnas untouched

Three kings had died in front of Bhima in the space of a few breaths, the Malava chief, Brihatkshatra of the Purus, and the young ruler of the Chedis, and the sight of it filled him with a rage that had a target. He covered Drona’s son with hundreds of keen arrows like angry poisonous snakes. Ashvatthama broke that shower and pierced him back. Bhima cut Ashvatthama’s bow with a broad-headed arrow and drove a powerful shaft into the man himself; Ashvatthama threw the broken bow away, took another, and pierced Bhima with winged arrows. Then the two of them, both of enormous strength, rained on each other like two clouds heavy with water. Gold-winged arrows, whetted on stone and engraved with Bhima’s name, shrouded Drona’s son the way gathering clouds shroud the sun, and hundreds and thousands of strong arrows from Ashvatthama’s bow shrouded Bhima the same way. What Sanjaya found remarkable was that Bhima, wrapped in the arrows of so skilled a bowman, showed no pain at all. He sent ten gold-decked arrows, sharp as the darts of Yama, that struck Ashvatthama on the shoulders and went into him like snakes into an anthill, and Drona’s son closed his eyes and held himself up by his flagstaff. Within a moment he recovered, bathed in blood, and gathered all his anger, and rushed at Bhima’s chariot, and from a bow drawn to its full stretch he sent a hundred arrows like snakes of virulent poison. Bhima, proud of his own prowess and indifferent to Ashvatthama’s energy, showered him back. Ashvatthama cut Bhima’s bow and struck him in the chest with many keen shafts; Bhima, who could not stand that, took up another bow and pierced him five times. They covered each other completely, eyes red as copper, two clouds at the end of summer, frightening each other with the terrible slapping of their palms, each undoing what the other did.

Then Ashvatthama bent his gold-adorned bow and looked steadily at Bhima while Bhima shot at him, and in that moment he looked like the midday sun of an autumn day. He shot so fast that no one could see him take the arrow from the quiver, or set it on the string, or draw, or release; the bow seemed to be drawn continuously into a circle of fire, and the arrows, in hundreds of thousands, went through the sky like a flight of locusts, gold-decked and terrible, all of them toward Bhima’s chariot. And Bhima’s prowess, might, energy, and spirit in that hour were a wonder to see, Sanjaya says, because he treated that cloud-thick downpour falling around him as a light rain at summer’s end, and poured back his own like a cloud in the rainy season, his great gold-backed bow drawn without pause until it shone like a second bow of Indra. The two showers were so dense that the wind could not find a way between them. Ashvatthama, wanting Bhima dead, shot keen gold-decked arrows steeped in oil, and Bhima, showing his superiority, cut every one of them into three pieces before it reached him. Wait, wait, said the son of Pandu, and shot a terrible volley of fierce arrows. Ashvatthama destroyed it by the illusion of his own weapons, cut Bhima’s bow, and pierced him with countless shafts. With his bow gone Bhima whirled a dart and hurled it at Ashvatthama’s chariot; Ashvatthama, showing the lightness of his hand, cut it out of the air as it came at him bright as a burning brand. Bhima took up a very strong bow and, smiling, began to pierce Drona’s son with many arrows. And then Ashvatthama did the thing that ended the duel. With one straight arrow he pierced the forehead of Bhima’s driver. The man fainted and let go of the reins, and the horses bolted with all the bowmen watching, and Bhima was carried off the field by his own team. Ashvatthama, unbeaten, joyfully blew his huge conch. The Panchalas, seeing Bhima borne away, abandoned Dhrishtadyumna’s chariot in fear and fled on every side, and Drona’s son, shooting fiercely, pursued those broken troops and made a great slaughter among them, and the Kshatriyas ran in every direction from fear of one man.

Arjuna saw the army breaking and went for Ashvatthama with the intention of killing him. Govinda and Arjuna, with effort, rallied the troops and held them on the field, and Arjuna alone, with the Somakas and Matsyas behind him, checked the Kaurava onset with his arrows. Then he drew close to the great bowman under the lion-tail banner and said something that no one had ever heard him say to that man. Show me now the might you have, and the energy, the knowledge, and the manliness, and your love for the Dhartarashtras and your hatred of us, and the high mettle you are capable of. Prishata’s son, the killer of Drona, will humble your pride today. Come and meet the Panchala prince, who is like the fire of the age’s end and like the Destroyer himself, with Govinda beside him. You have shown your pride in battle. I will break it. Dhritarashtra, hearing this, stopped Sanjaya. The preceptor’s son is a mighty man and a man deserving respect; he loves Dhananjaya and the high-souled Dhananjaya loves him back. Vibhatsu has never spoken to Drona’s son this way before. Why did Kunti’s son address his friend in such words? Sanjaya gave the reasons in order. The young prince of the Chedis, Brihatkshatra of Puru’s line, and Sudarshana of the Malavas, an accomplished master of arms, had fallen; Dhrishtadyumna and Satyaki and Bhima had been beaten; Arjuna was in great pain and touched to the quick by those words of Yudhishthira; and he was remembering his old griefs. Out of that grief there rose in him a wrath he had never felt before, and it was because of that wrath that, like a vulgar man, he spoke to the preceptor’s son, who deserved every respect, in language unworthy, indecent, bitter, and harsh. And Ashvatthama, addressed in cruel words by Partha, became very angry with Partha, and angrier still with Krishna. Standing firm on his chariot, he touched water and invoked the Agneya weapon, the weapon of fire, which the gods themselves cannot resist. Aiming at every foe he could see and every foe he could not, he charged a blazing shaft with mantras until it shone like a smokeless fire, and in his rage he let it go on every side.

Dense showers of arrows came out of it into the sky, arrows trailing flame, and they wrapped Arjuna round. Meteors fell. A thick gloom came down over the Pandava host and swallowed every direction. Rakshasas and Pishachas crowded together and screamed. Ill winds blew. The sun stopped giving heat. Ravens croaked on every side. Clouds roared and rained blood. Birds, beasts, cattle, and sages of high vows with their souls under control were all made wretched. The elements themselves seemed disturbed; the sun seemed to turn; the universe, scorched, seemed to be in fever. Elephants and the other creatures of the land ran breathing hard, looking for shelter from that force; the waters heated and the creatures in them seemed to burn. From every quarter, from the sky and from the earth, sharp fierce arrows fell and issued with the speed of Garuda or the wind, and the enemy warriors, struck and burned by shafts with the impetus of thunder, went down like trees in a forest fire. Huge elephants fell burning with cries like thunder; others ran roaring in terror as if caught in a burning wood; horses and chariots looked like the tops of trees in a forest blaze, and chariots fell by the thousand. It seemed, Sanjaya says, that the lord Agni himself was burning the Pandava host, the way the Samvarta fire consumes everything at the end of an age. Duryodhana’s soldiers watched the Pandava army burn and roared with joy and blew thousands of trumpets. In that darkness the whole Pandava army, Arjuna included, could not be seen, and Sanjaya admits he had never heard of or seen the like of the weapon that Drona’s son created in his anger that day. Then Arjuna invoked the Brahma weapon, which is ordained by the lotus-born Brahma himself to baffle every other weapon. Within a moment the darkness was gone, cool winds blew, and the directions were clear and bright, and what they saw then was a wonder of a different kind: a full akshauhini of the Pandava troops laid low, burned so thoroughly by the energy of Ashvatthama’s weapon that the forms of the dead could not be told apart. And out of that cleared field two heroes were seen together, like the sun and the moon in one sky, Keshava and Arjuna, both unwounded, and their chariot with its banners and standards and horses, the anukarsha unloosened, every great weapon stored on it uninjured, shining on the field it had terrified. Sounds of life came up from the Pandava troops, mixed with conches and drums. Both armies had believed that Keshava and Arjuna were dead, so the Pandavas were full of joy at the sight and the Kauravas full of wonder; and the two of them, unhurt and cheerful, blew their excellent conches, and Duryodhana’s soldiers, seeing Partha so glad, sank into gloom.

A key to reading this (names and weapons): Vibhatsu, Savyasachi, Kiritin, Partha, and Dhananjaya are all names of Arjuna; Vrikodara is Bhima. “Those words of Yudhishthira” are the king’s remark after Drona’s death, earlier in this chapter, which cut Arjuna deeply. The Agneya weapon belongs to Agni, the fire; the Brahma weapon is Brahma’s own ordinance, the one that cancels other weapons. The anukarsha is the timber under the chariot on which the axle rests; Sanjaya’s point is that after all that fire not a joint of the chariot had come loose. An akshauhini is the largest division of an army; its arithmetic is given in chapter 20.

The gist: Enraged by the three deaths, Bhima fights Ashvatthama to a standstill and puts him on his flagstaff with ten arrows, until one shaft in the driver’s forehead sends Bhima’s horses bolting off the field with him. Arjuna, in a grief that turns to a rage he has never known, says the harshest words of his life to his friend, and Ashvatthama answers with the weapon of fire: darkness, blood-rain, boiling water, and an entire Pandava akshauhini reduced to unrecognizable ash. Arjuna’s Brahma weapon clears the dark, and the two men both armies had given up for dead are standing on an unscorched chariot, blowing their conches.

“Everything is untrue”: Ashvatthama walks off the field, meets Vyasa on the road, and hears of Narayana’s austerities, Rudra’s boons, and the birth of Nara

Ashvatthama looked at the two men his weapon should have killed, standing whole in the cleared light, and something in him gave way. For a moment he reflected on what had happened, and the reflection filled him with anxiety and grief; he breathed long, hot sighs; and then he laid down his bow, got down from his chariot, and said, out loud, fie, fie, everything is untrue. And he ran from the fight. On the road he met Vyasa, the abode of Sarasvati, the compiler of the Vedas, the dwelling place of the scriptures, unstained by sin, dark as a rain cloud. Ashvatthama saw the perpetuator of the Kuru race standing in his way and saluted him, and his voice, when it came, was choked with grief. Sire, sire, he said. Is this an illusion, or is it some caprice of the weapon? I do not know what it is. Why has my weapon borne no fruit? What breach was there in the invocation? Or is this something outside nature, or a victory over nature that the two Krishnas have won, since they are still alive? It seems that Time cannot be resisted. No Asura, no Gandharva, no Pishacha, no Rakshasa, no serpent, no Yaksha, no bird, no human being can venture to baffle that weapon when I shoot it. And yet this fiery weapon has been pacified after killing a single akshauhini. The weapon I shot is fierce enough to kill every creature there is. For what reason could it not kill Keshava and Arjuna, who are both endowed with the attributes of humanity? I ask you, holy one; answer me truly. I want to hear all of it in detail, great sage.

What you ask in your surprise, Vyasa said, is a matter of great significance, and I will tell you all of it; listen with attention. He who is called Narayana is older than the oldest. For the accomplishing of some purpose, that creator of the universe took birth as the son of Dharma. On the mountain Himavat he undertook the severest austerities. Endowed with mighty energy, shining like fire or the sun, he stood there with his arms raised. Lotus-eyed, he wasted himself in that place for sixty-six thousand years, living on air alone, and then for twice that span he undertook austerities of another kind, until the space between earth and heaven was filled with his energy. And when by those austerities he had become like Brahma, he beheld the Master, the Origin, and the Guardian of the universe, the lord of all the gods, the supreme deity who is exceedingly hard to look upon, who is smaller than the smallest and larger than the largest, who is called Rudra, who is the lord of all the superior ones, who is called Hara and Shambhu, who wears matted locks, who breathes life into every form, who is the first cause of all things moving and unmoving, irresistible and of frightful aspect, of fierce wrath and great soul, the destroyer of all and of large heart; who carries the celestial bow and two quivers, who wears golden armor, whose energy is infinite, who holds the Pinaka and is armed with the thunderbolt, a blazing trident, a battle axe, a mace, and a great sword; whose brows are fair and whose locks are matted, who wields the heavy short club, who has the moon on his forehead, who is clad in tiger skin and armed with the bludgeon; who is decked with beautiful armlets, whose sacred thread is a snake, who is surrounded by the diverse creatures of the universe and by hosts of ghosts and spirits; who is the One, the abode of austerity, adored by the venerable; who is Water, Heaven, Sky, Earth, Sun, Moon, Wind, and Fire, and who is the measure of the duration of the universe. People of wicked conduct can never obtain a sight of that unborn one, the slayer of all who hate Brahmins, the giver of liberation; only Brahmins of righteous conduct, cleansed of sin and freed from the grip of grief, behold him with the eye of the mind. By his austerities Narayana obtained the sight of that unfading one, that embodiment of righteousness, that adorable being who has the universe for his form. Beholding that supreme abode of every kind of splendor, that god with a garland of aksha beads at his throat, Vasudeva was filled with a delight he tried to express with speech, heart, understanding, and body. He worshiped that divine lord, the first cause of the universe, the giver of boons, who sports with the fair-limbed Parvati, surrounded by his hosts of ghosts and spirits, the unborn one, the supreme lord, the embodiment of the unmanifest, the essence of all causes, the one whose power does not fade. And having saluted Rudra, the destroyer of the Asura Andhaka, lotus-eyed Narayana, his heart full, began to praise the three-eyed one.

Vyasa gave Ashvatthama the hymn as Narayana had spoken it. Adorable one, first of all the gods, the creators of everything, the Prajapatis who are the regents of the world and who entered the earth, your first work, and protected it before, have all sprung from you. Gods, Asuras, Nagas, Rakshasas, Pishachas, human beings, birds, Gandharvas, Yakshas, and the other creatures, with the whole universe, have sprung from you; we know it. Everything done to propitiate Indra, Yama, Varuna, Kubera, the Pitris, Tvashtri, and Soma is really offered to you. Form and light, sound and sky, wind and touch, taste and water, scent and earth, time, Brahma himself, the Vedas, the Brahmins, and all these moving things have sprung from you. Vapors rise from the many bodies of water and become drops of rain, which fall to earth separated from one another; when the time of universal dissolution comes, those separated drops unite again and make the earth one vast expanse of water. He who is learned, observing in this way the origin and the destruction of all things, understands your oneness. Two birds, four ashvattha trees with their wordy branches, seven guardians, and ten others that hold this city have all been created by you, and you are separate from them and independent of them. The past, the future, and the present, over which no one has sway, are from you, and so are the seven worlds and this universe. I am your devoted worshiper; be gracious to me. Do not injure me by letting evil thoughts into my heart. You are the soul of souls, who cannot be known. He who knows you as the seed of the universe attains to Brahma. Wanting to pay you respect, I praise you, trying to ascertain your real nature, you whom the gods themselves cannot understand. Adored by me, grant me the boons I desire, which are hard to win. Do not hide yourself in your illusion.

Then the blue-throated god of inconceivable soul, the wielder of the Pinaka, the divine lord whom the rishis praise forever, gave Vasudeva the boons he deserved, and Vyasa repeated them word for word. Narayana, by my grace you shall be of immeasurable might and soul among men, gods, and Gandharvas. No god, no Asura, no great serpent, no Pishacha, no Gandharva, no man, no Rakshasa, no bird, no Naga, no creature in the universe shall ever be able to bear your prowess. No one, even among the celestials, shall be able to defeat you in battle. By my grace no one shall be able to hurt you with the thunderbolt, or with anything wet or dry, or with anything that moves or does not move. And if you ever come to battle against me, you shall be superior to me myself. Those were the boons that Shauri won in the days of old, Vyasa said, and that same god now walks the earth as Vasudeva, beguiling the universe with his illusion. From Narayana’s asceticism was born a great sage named Nara, equal to Narayana himself; know that Arjuna is that Nara and no one else. Those two rishis, who are said to be older than the oldest gods, take birth in every age to serve the purposes of the world. And then Vyasa turned the discourse on the man in front of him. You yourself, great-hearted one, have been born as a portion of Rudra, by the power of all your religious acts and as the fruit of high austerities, endowed with great energy and great wrath. In a former life you were a man of great wisdom, equal to a god; regarding the universe as consisting of Mahadeva alone, you wasted yourself with vows of every kind out of the desire to gratify that god, and in the form of a superior person blazing with splendor you worshiped the great god with mantras, with homa, and with offerings. Adored by you in that life, the great god was gratified and gave you, learned one, the many boons you had cherished in your heart. Like Keshava’s and Arjuna’s, your birth, your acts, and your austerities are superior; like them, in every age, you have adored the great god in his linga form. Keshava is the devoted worshiper of Rudra who has sprung from Rudra himself. Keshava always worships the lord Shiva, regarding his linga as the origin of the universe. In Keshava is always present the knowledge by which he sees the identity of Brahman with the universe, and that other knowledge by which the past, the present, and the future, the near and the far, are all seen as if they stood before his eyes. The gods, the Siddhas, and the great rishis adore Keshava in order to obtain the highest object in the universe, Mahadeva. Keshava is the creator of everything; the eternal Krishna should be adored with sacrifices; the lord Keshava always worships Shiva in the linga as the origin of all creatures, and the god who has the bull for his sign holds Keshava in greater regard than any other. Ashvatthama heard all of it. He bowed to Rudra and held Keshava to be worthy of the highest regard; with his soul under full control he was filled with a delight whose marks showed on his body; and having bowed to the great rishi, he looked at the Kuru army and had it withdrawn for the night. When the cheerless Kurus retired from the field after Drona’s fall, the Pandavas withdrew their army too. Having fought for five days and made an immense carnage, Drona, that Brahmin versed in the Vedas, went to the region of Brahma.

A key to reading this (Vyasa’s discourse): This is the Drona Parva’s own theology and it is given here exactly as Vyasa gives it, no more. Narayana, born as the son of Dharma, performs austerities in the Himalaya and obtains the sight of Rudra (also called Hara, Shambhu, Mahadeva, the blue-throated one, the wielder of the Pinaka, the three-eyed, the destroyer of Andhaka); Rudra’s boons are the reason Vasudeva cannot be harmed, and Arjuna is Nara, born from Narayana’s asceticism: that is Vyasa’s answer to why the weapon failed on the two Krishnas. In Narayana’s hymn the two birds, the four ashvattha trees, the seven guardians, and the ten holders of the city are figures the text leaves as numbers; Ganguli’s notes read them as the Lord and the individual soul, the four Vedas, the five elements with the heart and the understanding, and the ten senses. Vyasa also calls Ashvatthama a portion of Rudra and recalls his worship of Shiva in a former life. The aksha garland is a string of rudraksha beads; the Pinaka is Shiva’s bow; the lengths of Narayana’s austerities (sixty-six thousand years, then twice that) are the source’s figures.

The gist: Ashvatthama, seeing his unbeatable weapon fail, drops his bow, says “everything is untrue,” and walks off the field, and on the road he asks Vyasa why a weapon that can kill every creature could not kill two men. Vyasa answers with the story of Narayana’s austerities on Himavat, his vision of Rudra, his hymn, and Rudra’s boons: Vasudeva is that Narayana, Arjuna is the Nara born of his asceticism, and Ashvatthama himself is a portion of Rudra. Ashvatthama bows to Rudra, gives Keshava the highest honor, and withdraws the army for the night. After five days of fighting, Drona goes to the world of Brahma, and the Drona Parva ends.

The blazing figure that walked ahead of the chariot: Arjuna’s question, Vyasa’s answer, Daksha’s sacrifice, the burning of the three cities, and the child on Parvati’s lap

The blind king wanted to know what came after the killing. When Prishata’s grandson cut down the atiratha Drona, he asked Sanjaya, what did my sons do next, and what did the Pandavas do? Sanjaya answered him with something that was not, at first, an answer at all. After the rout of the Kuru army, he said, Arjuna had seen a wonder attached to his own victory, and while he was still turning it over, Vyasa came that way on his wanderings, and Arjuna put the wonder to him. Great rishi, he said, all through this battle, while I was killing the enemy with showers of bright arrows, I kept seeing a man walking ahead of my chariot. He was the color of fire; the light on him was the light that lives inside fire. He carried a lance held up, and wherever he went with that lance the enemy ranks broke in front of him. They were broken by him, and people took it that they had been broken by me. I followed in his wake and killed men he had already killed. Holy one, tell me who that was, that man with the lance and the energy of the sun. His feet did not touch the ground. He never once threw his lance, and yet out of that single lance, by his own power, thousands of lances kept issuing.

Vyasa told him. You have seen Shankara, Arjuna: the first cause, from whom the Prajapatis came; the being of immense power who is heaven, earth, and sky made into a body; the divine lord, guardian of the universe, the great master, the giver of boons, who is also called Ishana. Seek the protection of that boon-giving god, that lord of the universe. He is called Mahadeva, the supreme soul, the one and only lord, with matted locks on his head, the abode of all that is auspicious. Three-eyed, mighty-armed, he is called Rudra, his hair bound up in the shape of a crown, his body clothed in skins. That boon-giving lord of the universe, that supreme deity, is also called Hara and Sthanu. He is the first of every being in the universe; he cannot be defeated; he is the joy of the universe and its supreme ruler. First cause, light and refuge of the universe, always victorious; the soul and maker of the universe, whose form is the universe itself, great in fame; lord of the universe and its great governor, he is master of all actions too, and he is called Shambhu, self-born, lord of all creatures, source of the past, the future, and the present. He is Yoga and the lord of Yoga; he is called Sharva and is lord of all the worlds, and he stands above everything. Foremost in the universe and highest of all, he is also called Parameshthi: the ordainer of the three worlds and their only refuge; unconquerable protector of the universe, and the ground in which birth, decay, and death stand. He is the soul of knowledge, beyond the reach of knowledge, the highest knowledge and unknowable. Through grace he gives his worshipers the boons they want. And his companions, Partha, are celestial beings of every shape: some dwarfs, some with matted hair, some bald, some short-necked, some big-bellied, some enormous, some of great strength, some long-eared; all of them with misshapen faces and mouths and legs and strange clothes. That supreme god, Mahadeva, is worshiped by followers like these. And it is that Shiva, my son, with that energy in him, who out of kindness walks ahead of you. In that battle that raised the hair on every neck, Arjuna, who other than the divine Maheshvara, first of all bowmen, could even have imagined defeating a force guarded by strikers and archers like Ashvatthama and Karna and Kripa? No one can stand before a warrior who has Maheshvara walking in front of him. There is no being in the three worlds equal to him. At the mere scent of Mahadeva enraged, enemies in battle tremble and lose their senses and fall in heaps. That is why the gods in heaven adore him and bow to him. And those in this world, and those other men of pious life, who devoutly worship the boon-giving, divine, auspicious Rudra, find happiness here and reach the highest state hereafter.

Then the sage gave the son of Kunti the names, one after another, the way a garland is strung, and told him to bow to each. Bow to him who is peace; to Rudra of the blue throat, exceedingly subtle and greatly radiant; to Kapardin of the coiled locks; to the terrible one, the tawny-eyed one, the giver of boons; to that great ordainer of red hair and righteous conduct, the doer of auspicious acts, the one whom desire seeks; to Sthanu; to Purusha; to the tawny-haired, the bold, the subtle and radiant one; to the giver of light, the embodiment of all sacred waters, the god of gods, the one of great impetus; to him of manifest form; to Sharva; to the one of pleasing dress, excellent headdress, and handsome face; to him whose home is in the mountains; to peace, to the protector, to him who wears bark for clothing; to him whose arms are decked with gold; to the fierce one, the lord of all the directions, lord of the clouds and of all created things, lord of all trees and all cattle, him whose body is shrouded in trees; to the general of the gods, the inspirer of all thought, him with the sacrificial ladle in his hand; to the blazing one, the wielder of the bow, Rama’s own self, the many-formed lord of the universe, him who wears munja grass; to him of a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand arms, a thousand legs. Seek the protection, son of Kunti, of that boon-giving lord of the universe, the lord of Uma, the god of three eyes, the destroyer of Daksha’s sacrifice, guardian of all created things, always cheerful, protector of all beings, of unfading glory, with matted locks, the mover of all higher beings; whose navel is like a bull’s and whose sign is the bull, who is proud like a bull, lord of bulls, marked by the bull’s horns, the bull of bulls, with the bull on his banner; generous to all righteous people; reachable only through Yoga; bull-eyed; the owner of superior weapons; who has Vishnu himself for his arrow; the embodiment of righteousness, called Maheshvara; vast of belly and vast of body, seated on a leopard’s skin; lord of the worlds, devoted to Brahma and loving the Brahmins; armed with the trident, giver of boons, wielder of sword and shield, most auspicious, holder of the bow called Pinaka, without the battle-axe, protector and lord of the universe. I place myself, Vyasa said, in the hands of that divine lord, that granter of protection, that god clothed in deerskin. Salutations to the lord of the celestials who has Vaishravana for a friend. Salutations always to him of excellent vows, whose companions are excellent bowmen, who himself wields the bow, whose favorite weapon is the bow, who is himself the arrow the bow sends, and the bowstring, and the bow, and the teacher who teaches the use of the bow. Salutations to the god of fierce weapons, foremost of the gods. Salutations to him of many forms, with many bowmen around him. Salutations always to Sthanu, who keeps a great company of fine bowmen. Salutations to the destroyer of the triple city. Salutations to him who slew Bhaga. Salutations to the lord of trees and of men. Salutations to the lord of the celestial Mothers and of the spirit-hosts called the Ganas. Salutations always to the lord of cattle and of sacrifices. Salutations always to the lord of the waters and lord of the gods, who broke Surya’s teeth, three-eyed, giver of boons, called Hara, blue-throated, golden-haired.

Now I will tell you, Vyasa went on, as far as I know and have heard, the divine deeds of Mahadeva of supreme wisdom. When Mahadeva grows angry, neither gods nor Asuras nor Gandharvas nor Rakshasas can find peace, even hiding at the bottom of the sea. Long ago Daksha gathered everything needed for a sacrifice. Mahadeva, in his wrath, destroyed that sacrifice, and he was very stern that day. He shot an arrow from his bow and roared terribly, and the celestials were seized with anxiety and fear. When Mahadeva was angry and the Sacrifice itself, in its bodily form, ran away, the gods were terrified by the twang of Mahadeva’s bow and the sound of his palms. Gods and Asuras alike fell down and submitted to him. All the waters heaved up in agitation; the earth shook; the mountains split; the directions and the Nagas were stupefied; the universe, wrapped in thick darkness, could no longer be seen; the light of all the luminaries, the sun among them, was put out. The rishis, full of fear, grew agitated and performed rites of propitiation for their own good and the good of all creatures. Surya at that moment was eating the principal oblation. Smiling, Shankara walked up to him and tore out his teeth. The gods humbled themselves and fled, trembling. Once more Mahadeva aimed at them a shower of blazing, keen arrows, like tongues of fire mixed with smoke, like clouds with lightning in them. Seeing that shower, all the gods bowed to Maheshvara and assigned Rudra a substantial share in sacrifices. In their fright, prince, the gods sought his protection. When his wrath had passed, the great god restored the sacrifice. The gods who had fled came back. And they are afraid of Maheshvara to this day.

Then the second deed. In former times, Vyasa said, the valiant Asuras had three cities in heaven, each excellent and vast: one of iron, one of silver, one of gold. The golden city belonged to Kamalaksha, the silver city to Tarakaksha, and the iron city had Vidyunmalin for its lord. Maghavat, Indra, with all his weapons, could make no impression on them. Afflicted by the Asuras, the gods went to Rudra for protection, and with Vasava at their head they said: these terrible dwellers of the triple city have received boons from Brahma; proud of those boons, they are tormenting the universe; lord of the gods, no one but you can kill them; therefore, Mahadeva, slay these enemies of the gods, and, Rudra, the creatures slain in every sacrifice shall be yours. Mahadeva, wishing to do them good, accepted, and said: I will overthrow these Asuras. And Hara made the two mountains Gandhamadana and Vindhya the two poles of his chariot. Shankara made the earth, with her oceans and forests, the chariot itself. The three-eyed god made Shesha, prince of snakes, its axle. The god of gods, wielder of the Pinaka, made the moon and the sun its two wheels. The three-eyed lord made Elapatra and Pushpadanta the two pins of the yoke. Valiant Mahadeva made the Malaya mountains the yoke, great Takshaka the cord that binds the yoke to the poles, and the creatures around him the traces. Maheshvara made the four Vedas his four horses, and the lord of the three worlds made the supplementary Vedas the bits of the bridle. Mahadeva made Gayatri and Savitri the reins, the syllable Om the whip, and Brahma the driver. With the Mandara mountain for his bow, Vasuki for the bowstring, Vishnu for his excellent arrow, Agni for its head, Vayu for its two wings, Yama for the feathers of its tail, lightning for the whetstone, and Meru for the standard, Shiva mounted that chariot built of every celestial power and went out to destroy the triple city. And Sthanu, first of smiters, destroyer of Asuras, that handsome warrior of immeasurable prowess whom the gods and the ascetic rishis adore, formed an unrivaled array named after himself and stood immovable in it for a thousand years. When at last the three cities came together in the sky, the lord Mahadeva pierced them with that terrible three-knotted arrow of his. The Danavas could not even look at that arrow, filled with the fire of the end of the age and made of Vishnu and Soma.

While the triple city was burning, Vyasa said, the goddess Parvati came to see the sight, and on her lap was a child with a shaven head and five tufts of hair on it. The goddess asked the gods who the child was. Shakra, out of ill will, tried to strike that child with his thunderbolt. The child was the divine lord Mahadeva himself, and smiling, he paralyzed the raised arm of the angry Shakra at once. Then Shakra, his arm frozen, went quickly with all the celestials to the lord Brahma of unfading glory, and bowing their heads and joining their hands they said: Brahma, we saw some wonderful creature lying on Parvati’s lap in the shape of a child, and we did not salute him, and he has defeated us all; we want to ask you who he may be; that boy, without fighting, with the greatest ease, has beaten every one of us, Purandara at our head. Brahma, first among those who know Brahma, reflected a moment and understood that the boy of immeasurable energy was none other than the divine Shambhu. He said to them: that child is the divine Hara, lord of the whole moving and unmoving universe; there is nothing above Maheshvara; the being of immeasurable splendor you saw with Uma is the divine lord, who took the form of a child for Uma’s sake; let us all go to him; he is the supreme lord of the world, and you gods could not recognize the master of the universe. So all the gods went with the Grandsire to that child who shone like the morning sun. Seeing Maheshvara and knowing him for the supreme being, the Grandsire Brahma praised him: you are Sacrifice, lord; you are the stay and refuge of the universe; you are Bhava, you are Mahadeva, you are the abode of all things and the highest refuge; this whole universe with its moving and unmoving creatures is pervaded by you; holy one, lord of the past and the future, lord of the world, protector of the universe, let Shakra, who suffers under your wrath, have your grace. Hearing the lotus-born Brahma, Maheshvara was pleased, and wanting to extend his grace, he laughed aloud. The celestials praised both Uma and Rudra, and the arm of thunder-wielding Shakra came back to its natural state. That first of the gods, destroyer of Daksha’s sacrifice, whose sign is the bull, was gratified with the gods.

And then Vyasa opened the names, because a name in this hymn is a small argument. He is Rudra, he is Shiva, he is Agni; he is everything and knows everything; he is Indra, the Wind, the twin Ashvins, the lightning; he is Bhava, Parjanya, Mahadeva, the sinless one; he is the Moon, Ishana, Surya, Varuna; he is Kala, Antaka, Mrityu, Yama; he is day and night, the fortnight, the month, the seasons, the two twilights, the year; he is Dhatri and Vidhatri, the soul of the universe and the doer of every act in it. Without a body himself, he is the embodied god; he is One, he is Many, he is a hundred and a thousand. Brahmins learned in the Vedas say he has two forms, the terrible and the auspicious, and each of those is again manifold; his auspicious forms are water, light, and the moon. Whatever is most mysterious in the branches of the Vedas, in the Upanishads, in the Puranas, and in the sciences of the soul, is that god, Maheshvara. He is unborn. I could not count his attributes, son of Pandu, if I recited them without a pause for a thousand years. Even for those afflicted by every evil planet, even for those stained with every sin, that great protector, if they seek him, is gratified and grants them salvation. He gives and takes away life, health, prosperity, wealth, and every object of desire; the prosperity seen in Indra and the other gods is his; he is always at work in the good and the ill of men; being supreme, he obtains whatever he wants; he is Maheshvara, lord even of the supreme ones, and in many forms of many kinds he pervades the universe. One mouth of that god is in the ocean; it is well known that this mouth, in the form of a mare’s head, drinks the sacrificial libation that is water. He dwells always in cremation grounds, and men worship the supreme lord in that place where only the brave can go. Many are his blazing and terrible forms that men speak of and worship; many are his names of true meaning in all the worlds, founded on his supremacy, his omnipotence, and his acts. In the Vedas the excellent hymn called the Shatarudriya has been sung to that great god, the infinite Rudra. He is the lord of every human and every heavenly wish, omnipotent, the supreme master, pervading the whole vast universe. Brahmins and munis call him the first-born of all creatures, the first of all the gods; from his mouth was born Vayu, the wind. Because he always protects creatures and sports with them, and is the lord of all creatures, he is called Pashupati. Because his emblem is held to stand always in the vow of brahmacharya, and because he always gladdens the world, he is called Maheshvara; the rishis, gods, Gandharvas, and Apsaras worship that upright emblem, and the worship makes Shankara happy, pleased, and glad. Because with respect to past, future, and present he has many forms, he is called Bahurupa. With one eye he blazes, or he may be seen to have many eyes on every side of his body. Because he possesses the worlds, he is called Sharva; because his form is like smoke, Dhurjati; because the Vishvedevas are in him, Vishvarupa; because three goddesses, Sky, Water, and Earth, adore him and take refuge in him, Tryambaka; because he always increases every kind of wealth and wishes men well in all their acts, Shiva. He has a thousand eyes, or ten thousand, on every side. Because he protects this vast universe, he is called Mahadeva; because he is great and ancient, the source of life and of its continuance, and because his emblem is everlasting, Sthanu; because the rays of the sun and moon that appear in the world are spoken of as the hair of the Three-eyed one, Vyomakesha; because he afflicts Brahma and Indra and Varuna and Yama and Kubera and destroys them in the end, Hara; because he is the past, the future, and the present, everything in the universe and the origin of all three, Bhava. The word kapi is said to mean supreme and the word vrisha to mean righteousness, and so the god of gods is called Vrishakapi. Because Maheshvara, with his two eyes closed in meditation, created by sheer will a third eye on his forehead, he is called the Three-eyed. Whatever is unsound in the bodies of living creatures and whatever is sound in them is that god; he is the wind, the vital airs called prana and apana and the rest, in the bodies of all creatures, the sick included. Whoever worships any image of the emblem of that high-souled god obtains great prosperity by the act. The lower half of his body is fire, and the auspicious half is the moon; half his soul is fire and half the moon. His auspicious form, full of energy, blazes brighter than the forms of the gods; among men his blazing and terrible form is called fire. With the auspicious form he keeps brahmacharya; with the terrible form, as supreme lord, he devours everything. And because he burns, because he is fierce, because he is greatly powerful, and because he devours flesh and blood and marrow, he is called Rudra. Such, Partha, is Mahadeva, armed with the Pinaka, whom you saw killing your enemies ahead of your chariot. After you had vowed to kill the ruler of the Sindhus, sinless one, Krishna showed you this god in your dream, seated on the summit of that best of mountains. This illustrious god goes before you in battle. It was he who gave you the weapons with which you slew the Danavas. The hymn the Vedas approve, the Shatarudriya, in honor of that god of gods, excellent, famous, life-enhancing, and sacred, has now been explained to you. This hymn in four divisions accomplishes every object, is sacred, destroys all sins, drives away all stains, and kills all sorrows and all fears. The man who always listens to it conquers all his enemies and is highly honored in the region of Rudra. The person who attentively reads or hears this excellent and auspicious account of the illustrious deity in battle, and worships that lord of the universe with devotion, obtains everything he desires, because the three-eyed god is gratified with him. Go and fight, son of Kunti. Defeat is not for you, who have Janardana at your side for adviser and protector. Having said this to Arjuna, Sanjaya told the king, the son of Parashara went back to the place he had come from.

A key to reading this (names and stories): Prishata’s grandson is Dhrishtadyumna, who took Drona’s head. The Shatarudriya is the hymn to Rudra in the Yajur Veda; what Vyasa gives Arjuna here is the Mahabharata’s own version of it, a string of names followed by an etymology for each, and this page keeps to that and nothing else. The three stories, Daksha’s sacrifice and Surya’s teeth, the burning of the three cities, and the child on Parvati’s lap, are told here only as far as Vyasa tells them to Arjuna; the Puranas have larger and different versions that are not the basis of this page. Kamalaksha, Tarakaksha, and Vidyunmalin are the Asura lords of the three cities; Elapatra, Pushpadanta, Shesha, Vasuki, and Takshaka are serpents. The dream Vyasa mentions is the one on the night of the vow to kill Jayadratha, when Krishna took Arjuna in sleep to Shiva seated on the mountain. Vaishravana is Kubera.

The gist: After Drona falls, Arjuna asks Vyasa who the blazing man with the lance was, the one who walked ahead of his chariot with his feet off the ground and broke the enemy before Arjuna reached them. Vyasa answers: that was Shankara. He gives Arjuna the garland of Rudra’s names, the wrecking of Daksha’s sacrifice, the burning of the three cities from a chariot built out of the whole cosmos, and the child on Parvati’s lap who froze Indra’s arm, and then he opens the names one by one. Go and fight, he says; no one loses who has Janardana beside him.

The account of five days: Drona goes to the world of Brahma, and the Drona Parva ends

Sanjaya closes the book in a single sentence. Having fought fiercely for five days, king, the Brahmin Drona, endowed with great strength, fell and went to the region of Brahma. That is all he says, and the sentence carries a weight out of proportion to its length, because the listener knows what those five days held. The commander chosen on Karna’s advice after Bhishma lay down on his arrows; the promise to Duryodhana to bring Yudhishthira in alive, and the condition attached to it, that Arjuna must first be drawn away; the samsaptakas pulling Arjuna to the far end of the field on the eleventh day while Drona’s net closed on the king; the twelfth day and Bhagadatta on his elephant Supratika; the thirteenth day and a boy alone inside the wheel-array, and his death; the fourteenth day and Jayadratha’s head, and the night that followed it, which went on past midnight by the light of lamps and torches until Alayudha and Somadatta and Bhuri were dead and Ghatotkacha had fallen under the Vasavi dart; the fifteenth morning, and Drupada and Virata killed, and an elephant named Ashvatthama killed, and the one sentence spoken by Yudhishthira that brought his chariot down to the ground; the preceptor laying his weapons on the floor of his chariot and sitting down into yoga, and Dhrishtadyumna’s sword; and after that the Narayana weapon and Bhima refusing to lay down his mace, and the fire weapon that burned an akshauhini. Five days, Sanjaya says, and a Brahmin went to the world of Brahma.

The word he chooses deserves a moment. He does not say the commander, or the preceptor, or the atiratha. He says the Brahmin. The man who spent the whole of this book doing a Kshatriya’s work, drawing the bow, building arrays, killing princes, is named in the sentence of his departure by the order he was born into, and is given the destination that belongs to that order, the region of Brahma. The war book ends by circling back to the question that walked behind Drona all his life: why the son born in Bharadvaja’s hermitage, who had once watched his small boy drink flour stirred in water because there was no milk in the house, who had been turned away from Drupada’s door, went to the bow at all, and whether he ever fully belonged to it. Sanjaya does not answer the question. He only says that the Brahmin fell and went to Brahma.

And then, as at the end of every great book of this epic, the teller turns to the listener and tells him what the hearing is worth. The fruit that comes from studying the Vedas comes also from studying this book. The great deeds of brave Kshatriyas are told here. The man who reads it or hears it recited every day is freed from heinous sins and from the most atrocious acts of his life. Brahmins may always obtain from it the fruits of sacrifices. From it Kshatriyas may obtain victory in fierce battle. The other orders, the Vaishyas and the Shudras, may obtain the sons and grandsons they want and every object of their desire. With that the Drona Parva ends. On the morning after this fifteenth evening the Kurus will have to choose a new commander, and the name is no secret to anyone listening: Karna. The Karna Parva begins there, and this sequence takes it up in the next chapter.

A key to reading this (the close of a parva): Every book of the Mahabharata ends with a phalashruti, a statement of the fruit of hearing it; this one belongs to the Drona Parva and is given here exactly as the source has it. The list of the five days above is a recollection of chapters 24 through 27 of this sequence, offered to open out Sanjaya’s one sentence; in the original there is only the sentence. Drona’s going to the world of Brahma is Sanjaya’s own statement. The detail of the flour-water and Drupada’s door comes from Drona’s early life as the Adi Parva tells it. The next chapter opens the Karna Parva, in which Karna takes command and Shalya becomes his charioteer.

The gist: Sanjaya sums the whole book in one line: after five days of fierce fighting the Brahmin Drona fell and went to Brahma’s region. Then the phalashruti: reading or hearing this parva yields the fruit of Vedic study, release from sins, the fruit of sacrifice for Brahmins, victory for Kshatriyas, and sons and every desired thing for the other orders. The Drona Parva ends here.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Drona Parva, Drona-vadha sub-book. This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, sections CLXXXIV to CCIII (184-203); the Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters differently. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. Dialogue and commentary are adapted, not a verbatim translation. About the sources.