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Duryodhana’s rise from the lake, his demand to be fought one man at a time, Yudhishthira’s answer about Abhimanyu, and Krishna’s alarm at the boon that let your son choose his opponent are told at the close of chapter 30; here Bhima answers Krishna.
Bhima answers Vasudeva’s worry
Bhimasena said, “Delight of the Yadus, do not grieve! However hard this quarrel is to end, today I will bring it to its end! Without doubt I will kill Suyodhana in battle. It seems to me, Krishna, that the victory of Yudhishthira the just is certain! This mace of mine is heavier than Duryodhana’s by half again. Do not grieve, Madhava. I dare to fight him with the mace for my chosen weapon. Stand and watch this encounter, all of you, Janardana! What is Suyodhana to me? I could fight the three worlds, the very gods among them, armed with every kind of weapon!”
Hearing these words of Vrikodara, Vasudeva was filled with joy and praised Bhima warmly. “Leaning on you Yudhishthira the just will surely win back his blazing prosperity once all his foes are slain! You have killed all the sons of Dhritarashtra in battle. At your hands many kings and princes and elephants have met their end. The Kalingas, the Magadhas, the Kauravas, the men of the west, the Gandharas, all have fallen in this terrible war! Kill Duryodhana and give the earth with her oceans to Yudhishthira the just. But always fight the son of Dhritarashtra with care. He has both skill and strength, and he takes constant delight in battle.” Then Satyaki praised the son of Pandu, and Yudhishthira with all the Pancalas and Pandavas approved those words of Bhima.
A key to reading this (the numbers, in modern terms): Duryodhana’s thirteen years of practice against an iron statue are the same thirteen years the Pandavas spent in the forest and in hiding. Through that whole stretch Duryodhana bent himself to a single aim, the mace-skill that would kill Bhima. That is why Krishna will not stake everything on Bhima’s raw strength: thirteen years of single-minded discipline can outweigh any natural power.
Bhima’s vow and the memory of old wounds
Then Bhima of terrible might spoke to Yudhishthira, who stood among the Srinjayas like the scorching sun. “Meeting him in battle, I dare to fight him! This man of the worst conduct is not fit to beat me in war! Today I will vomit upon Suyodhana the wrath I have nursed so long in my heart, as Arjuna threw fire upon the forest of Khandava! Today I will pluck out the dart that has stuck so long in your heart! Laying this wretch low with my mace, I will make you happy. Today Suyodhana will give up his life, his prosperity, and his kingdom!”
Having said this, that prince of Bharata’s race, full of great energy, stood up for battle, like Shakra summoning Vritra. Unable to bear that challenge, your son, of great energy, moved to meet it, like one furious elephant charging another. The Pandavas saw your son come, armed with the mace, and thought of the crested peak of Kailasa. Seeing your mighty son stand alone like a prince of elephants cut off from the herd, the Pandavas were filled with delight. Standing there for battle like a very lion, Duryodhana had no fear, no alarm, no pain, no anxiety.
Seeing Duryodhana stand with his mace lifted like the crested peak of Kailasa, Bhimasena spoke to him. “Call to mind all the wrongs that king Dhritarashtra and you have done to us! Remember Varanavata! Remember how Draupadi, while in her season, was maltreated in the midst of the assembly, and how king Yudhishthira was cheated at dice on Shakuni’s counsel! See now the terrible harvest of those acts and of all your other wrongs! It is because of you that the prince, the son of Ganga, the grandsire of us all, lies today on a bed of arrows! Drona too has been slain! Karna has been slain! Shalya of great valor has been slain! And that Shakuni, the very root of this quarrel, has been slain in battle! Your heroic brothers, your sons, with all your army, have been slain. And that Pratikamin, that wretch who seized Draupadi’s hair, he too has been slain! You alone are still alive! You too I will kill today with my mace! Of this there is no doubt.”
Duryodhana answered, “What use is all this talk? Fight me now! Today, Vrikodara, I will beat the desire for battle out of you! Why do you not see me standing here for an encounter with the mace? Do I not hold a fearsome mace like a peak of Himavat? What foe would dare to defeat me armed with this weapon? For all those wrongs of mine that you speak of, you could never do me the slightest harm! By my own strength I drove you into the forests, made you serve in another man’s house, forced you to hide in disguise! Our losses have been equal. If I fall in this battle, that will be highly praiseworthy; or perhaps Time itself will be the cause. Up to this day I have never been beaten in fair fight on the field. If you defeat me by deceit, your infamy will last forever! That deed will be full of wrong and disgrace, of this there is no doubt. Do not roar in vain like autumn clouds with no rain in them! Show now, in battle, all the strength you have!”
A sub-tale: Duryodhana’s warning here, that a victory won by deceit will carry infamy forever, stays lodged in the story like a thorn. The words he speaks now will come back only moments later, after the blow to the thighs, from his own mouth as a charge against Krishna. The Mahabharata plants this foreshadowing on purpose, so the coming blow is known in advance to break the rule and that the story never declares it fair.
Balarama’s arrival
When that terrible fight was about to begin and all Pandavas had taken their seats, Rama, whose banner bore the palmyra palm and who owns the plow for his weapon, having heard that the battle between his two students was at hand, arrived at that spot. Seeing him, the Pandavas with Keshava went forward in joy and welcomed him with the proper rites. Their worship over, they said, “Witness, Rama, the skill of your two students in battle!” Casting his eyes on Krishna and the Pandavas, and on Duryodhana of Kuru’s race standing there with his mace, Balarama said, “Two and forty days have passed since I left home. I set out under the constellation Pushya and have returned under Sravana. I wish, Madhava, to see this encounter with the mace between these two students of mine.”
At that time the two heroes, Duryodhana and Vrikodara, stood resplendent on the field, both armed with their maces. King Yudhishthira embraced the plow-bearer, asked after his welfare, and bade him welcome. The two Krishnas, Vasudeva and Arjuna, joyfully saluted the hero of the plow and embraced him. The two sons of Madri and the five sons of Draupadi saluted the son of Rohini of great strength and stood at a respectful distance. Bhimasena and your son, both with maces uplifted in their arms, did honor to Baladeva. The other kings bade him welcome, and all of them said, “Witness this battle!” Rama of immeasurable energy embraced the Pandavas and the Srinjayas and asked after the welfare of all the kings, and, embracing Janardana and Satyaki with affection, he smelled their heads. Clad in blue robes and fair of complexion, Rama shone amid those kings like the moon in the sky ringed by a company of stars.
A key to reading this (lineage): Balarama (Baladeva, Rama, the son of Rohini, Sankarshana) is Krishna’s elder brother and the mace-teacher of both Duryodhana and Bhima. For the great war he chose neutrality, taking neither the Kaurava side nor the Pandava. That is why he had set out on a pilgrimage along the Sarasvati, and now, having completed a journey of forty-two days (from the constellation Pushya to the constellation Sravana), he returns to watch the last duel between his two students. His neutrality is exactly what makes him the impartial judge of what follows.
A sub-tale: At the war’s outset Balarama had told Krishna that he would help neither Duryodhana nor the Pandavas and would go wherever he pleased. His Bhoja kinsman Kritavarma took Duryodhana’s side, and Vasudeva, along with Yuyudhana (Satyaki), took the Pandavas’. Balarama himself set out on a pilgrimage to the sacred waters of the Sarasvati, taking with him all the Yadavas, their priests, the sacred fire of Dwarka, and gifts of gold and cattle and cloth, moving from Prabhasa to Kurukshetra, bathing at each site and giving to the Brahmins at every step. It was from Narada that he heard the news of the carnage at Kurukshetra and of Duryodhana’s entry into the lake, and he mounted his chariot and came to see this final duel.
The caravan that turned the road itself into a festival, and how the tirtha called Prabhasa got its name
The carts came first, drawn by cattle and mules and camels, and what they carried was everything a traveler could want and had not thought to bring. Country after country fell behind them, and in each one the same thing happened. Someone worn down by the road would ask, or a child would ask, or an old man leaning on somebody’s arm would ask, and whatever had been asked for was handed over in quantity, with no accounting made of it afterward. Brahmins named the food they wanted and the food appeared, without delay and without any show of reluctance. Rohini’s son had given an order before the journey began, and because of that order there were men posted at the stages ahead, laying in grain and water in bulk, so that when the column halted nobody had to stand and wait. For Brahmins who wanted rest there were costly robes brought out, and beds set up, and coverlets and bedding found from somewhere. Brahmin or Kshatriya, whoever asked received, and received it without stinting and without being asked why he wanted it. That is the reason everyone traveling in that company traveled happy and lived happy the whole way.
The giving did not stay with Baladeva either. The people moving with him had caught the habit from him. A man who needed to get somewhere was given a vehicle. A man who was thirsty was given drink. A man who was hungry was given good food, the kind worth remembering, and a great many people were given robes and ornaments besides. So the road the column traveled began to shine. It became so easy and so comfortable for everyone on it that a stranger coming upon it might have taken it for one of the roads of heaven. There was celebrating along its whole length. Savory food could be had anywhere on it at any hour. Stalls went up and booths went up, and all sorts of goods were laid out for sale, and the whole way was thick with human beings. On either side stood trees of many kinds, creatures of many kinds moved through them, and gems of many kinds added their own light to the road. A pilgrimage had set out, and what it had turned into as it moved was a city that traveled.
People with no connection to the column at all came out to join the road, since a hungry man was fed on it, a thirsty man was given water, and a man with a journey of his own was given something to ride, all of it without conditions attached. And at every sacred place along the way, Baladeva, who was holding to a hard vow through all of this, gave the Brahmins great wealth and made the sacrificial gifts generously. The chief of Yadu’s line gave away thousands of milk cows, each one covered with fine cloth, each one with its horns cased in gold. He gave horses bred in many different countries. He gave vehicles. He gave beautiful servants. In just this way, at one after another of the excellent tirthas on the Sarasvati, Balarama distributed wealth and never once closed his hand, and he did it while keeping the vow he had taken on himself when he walked away from the war, never loosening it at any halting place. Wandering on in this manner, that hero of unmatched strength and open-handed conduct came at last to Kurukshetra.
Consider what that arrival meant. The man at the head of this column had been on the field where the two armies formed, had seen who stood on which side, and had put the whole quarrel down and walked away from it, refusing to lift a weapon for either of his two pupils. What he had taken up instead was a route along a river and a schedule of ablutions, and he had been working through it in order, tirtha by tirtha, with his priests around him and a vow tightening on him the whole time. The road behind him was fed and clothed and entertained for its entire length. The road ahead of him ran to Kurukshetra, where the thing he had refused to take part in was still going on. A pilgrimage like that keeps two clocks at once, and the men walking in it knew it.
Here Janamejaya stopped the telling. Describe the tirthas on the Sarasvati to me, he said. Tell me what marks each one, how each one came to be, and what merit belongs to it, and tell me also what observances a man should keep while he is staying there. Take them in their order, one after another. My curiosity will not sit still, and you are the foremost of all men who know Brahma.
The question is a strange one to put at that moment. The war stands at its last hours somewhere ahead, the two maces are about to be lifted, and the king listening has reached past all of it to ask after the names of bathing places on a river. The names carry their own weight. Each one opens into an older story, and the country Balarama is crossing stage by stage is a country whose ground remembers, and gives up what it remembers to anyone who asks at the right bank.
Vaishampayana answered him. The features of all these tirthas and the accounts of how they began make a very large subject, he said, and even so I will describe them to you. Listen to this sacred history from the beginning to the end of it. Baladeva, with his priests and his friends around him, went first to the tirtha called Prabhasa. It was at Prabhasa that the lord of the constellations, Soma, who had been struck with the wasting sickness, was set free from the curse on him. He recovered his energy at that spot, and he lights the universe to this day because of it. That tirtha, the best of all the tirthas on earth, once gave Soma back the splendor that had been taken from him, and the name Prabhasa comes from exactly that.
A key to reading this (two women named Rohini, and the root of a name): The name Rohini turns up twice in this stretch and belongs to a different person each time. Balarama is called the son of Rohini because Vasudeva’s wife Rohini is his mother. The Rohini who appears in the next scene as Soma’s favorite among his wives is one of the constellations, and the two have nothing to do with each other. Prabhasa is built on prabha, meaning radiance, the thing Soma lost and got back at this one place on the river. Soma, Chandramas and Shashi are three names for the same god, the moon.
The gist: Balarama has left the war and gone on pilgrimage, and his column is so lavishly provisioned that the road it travels becomes a moving festival: food and water stockpiled at every stage before the column arrives, anything asked for handed over without question, and wealth given away at one tirtha after another. The party reaches Kurukshetra, and there Janamejaya interrupts to ask where the names of these places on the Sarasvati came from. The first answer is Prabhasa, where the moon recovered the light he had lost.
Twenty-seven daughters and one favorite: the curse that made the moon waste away, and took the whole earth down with him
Janamejaya wanted the rest of it. Why was the adorable Soma struck with the wasting sickness in the first place, he asked. How did he come to bathe in that tirtha, and how did bathing in that water give him his energy back? Tell me all of it in detail, great Muni. So Vaishampayana went back to the beginning. Daksha had twenty-seven daughters, he said, and he gave every one of them in marriage to Soma. Those wives were joined each to her own constellation, and between them they gave men the means of reckoning time. All of them were large-eyed, and for beauty there was nobody in the world to set beside them. Among them, though, Rohini carried the most beauty of all, and Soma took his greatest delight in her. She pleased him so completely that he kept to her company alone. For a long stretch of those old days the moon lived with Rohini and with nobody else.
His other wives, the constellations, grew unhappy with him over it. They went quickly to their father, to Daksha the lord of creatures, and put it to him plainly. Soma does not live with us, they said. He pays court to Rohini and to no one else. So we will come and live beside you instead, on measured food, keeping hard penances. Daksha heard that and went to Soma. Behave alike toward all your wives, he told him. Do not let a great sin settle on you. Then he turned to his daughters and told them to go back to Shashi, since at his command the one they also call Chandramas would treat all of them alike. They were sent off and they returned to the house of the god with the cool rays, and there the whole thing began again, because Soma, content with Rohini, went on living with Rohini. The other wives came back to their father a second time. We will stay in your hermitage and serve you, they said, because Soma does not live with us and pays no attention to your orders either. Daksha spoke to Soma a second time. Behave alike toward all your wives, he said, and this time he put a warning under it: Virochana, do not make me curse you.
Soma let that go past him as well, and went on living with Rohini alone. His other wives grew angry a third time. They came to their father, bowed with their heads lowered, and asked for protection outright. Soma does not live with us, they said. Chandramas keeps to Rohini and only to Rohini. He gives your words no weight at all and has no wish to show us the smallest affection. Save us, so that Soma takes us all. At that, Daksha’s patience broke. In his anger he threw the curse of the wasting sickness onto Soma, and the disease took hold of the lord of the stars. Shashi began to thin out, a little more each day. He tried to get free of it by every means he had, performing one sacrifice after another, and none of it worked. The maker of night stayed cursed and went on wasting.
What happened next is the part that turns a domestic quarrel into everyone’s disaster. As the moon wasted, the herbs stopped coming up. Their juices dried, their taste went out of them, and the virtue went out of them after that. With the herbs failing, the creatures that live on herbs began to fail too, and as Soma thinned, every living thing on earth thinned along with him. The gods came to Soma then and asked him what had happened. Why is your form no longer beautiful and no longer bright, they said. Tell us where this great calamity has come from, and when we have your answer we will do whatever has to be done to put your fear to rest. The god with the hare for his mark told them everything, the curse and the sickness and the cause of both. So the gods went to Daksha and pleaded. Be gratified with Soma, they said. Take this curse of yours back. Chandramas has wasted so far that only a small piece of him can still be seen, and because he is wasting, every creature is wasting. Creepers and herbs of every kind are drying up. As they dry, we are growing thin ourselves. And without us, what is left of this universe? Knowing that, you ought to be satisfied.
Daksha gave them an answer with a hinge in it. What I have said cannot be made not to have been said, he told them. It can be worked around. Let Shashi treat all his wives alike from now on, and let him bathe in that best of the tirthas on the Sarasvati, and the god with the hare for his mark will grow again. That word of mine is true. For half a month he will thin a little every day, and for the half month after that he will fill a little every day. That word of mine is true as well. Let him go to the western ocean, to the place where the Sarasvati runs into that great holder of waters, and worship Mahadeva, the god of gods, there. Then his form and his beauty will come back to him.
Soma did as the celestial Rishi had ordered. He went to the Sarasvati and came to Prabhasa, that best of her tirthas, and he bathed there on the day of the new moon, and the god of great energy got his cool rays back and went on lighting the worlds again. All the creatures had come to Prabhasa as well, and they went back with Soma among them to where Daksha was. The lord of creatures received them properly and sent them away, and being pleased with Soma now he had one more thing to say to him. Do not slight women, my son, he said, and never slight Brahmins. Go, and mind my commands carefully. Soma took his leave and came home to his own house, and every living thing went back to living as it had lived before, glad of it. That is the whole account of how the maker of night came to be cursed and how Prabhasa became the first of all tirthas. On every new moon that comes around, the god with the hare for his mark still bathes in that excellent tirtha at Prabhasa and still gets back his form and his beauty. The name of the place comes from that and nothing else, since it was there, in the water, that Chandramas recovered his great prabha. After Prabhasa, Baladeva of undying fame went on to the tirtha called Chamasodbheda. He gave away costly gifts there, spent one night, and performed his ablutions in due form, the plow still his weapon. Then the elder brother of Keshava moved on quickly to Udapana. The Sarasvati looks lost at Udapana. Men who have come through their austerities successfully know better, from the great merit and the great blessedness they find at that spot and from the coolness of the herbs and of the ground there, that the river is running under it the whole time, out of sight, through the bowels of the earth.
A key to reading this (the constellations, Virochana, and why the moon changes shape): Daksha’s twenty-seven daughters are the twenty-seven lunar mansions, which is why the story says they gave men the means of reckoning time: the moon spends one night in each of them in turn. Virochana, the name Daksha uses when he issues his second warning, means the one who shines out. Notice that the curse is never lifted, only halved, and the half-measure is what produces the fortnights, one of waning and one of waxing. The account explains the moon’s changing shape, and it also sets out a chain of dependence in which the strength of herbs and grain comes down from the moon.
The gist: Daksha married all twenty-seven of his daughters to the moon, and the moon kept to Rohini alone. Three complaints, two warnings, and on the third complaint Daksha cursed him with a wasting sickness. As the moon thinned the herbs dried up, and as the herbs dried every creature thinned, the gods included. On their appeal Daksha halved the curse, though he would not lift it entirely: treat all the wives alike, and bathe at Prabhasa. The moon got his light back there and gets it back every new moon since. Balarama moves on to Chamasodbheda and then to Udapana, where the Sarasvati runs hidden under the ground.
Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Shalya Parva, Gada-yuddha sub-parva, from Bhima’s answer to Krishna in Section 33 to Section 65. The Sanskrit e-text, the Gita Press Hindi edition, and Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s complete English translation were used to verify names, sequence, and principal events. Where the recensions differ, this English retelling follows Ganguli, and the Hindi edition follows Gita Press.
Based on: The Mahabharata, Vyasa (K. M. Ganguli’s English translation; Gita Press, Gorakhpur)