The thirteenth day at Kurukshetra, and a chariot drawn by horses three years old. In front of it stands Drona‘s wheel array, the formation that turns on itself like a spinning rim, whose road inward bends and bends again and whose road out no one on the Pandava side can describe. Arjuna is far away on the southern edge of the field, held there by the Samshaptakas and their oath. The Drona Parva of Vyasa’s Mahabharata lets the charioteer Sumitra speak once before he touches the reins. “May you live long. It is a heavy load the Pandavas have put on you.” And then, “You have been brought up in great comfort, and you are not used to battle.” The archer on the chariot behind him, a boy of sixteen in golden mail under a standard that carries a karnikara tree, laughs. “Charioteer, who is this Drona? And what is this great gathering of Kshatriyas?” He goes further. “Put my mother’s brother Vishnu, who conquered the universe, in front of me as an enemy, or put my father Arjuna there, and fear would still find no way into my heart.” Then the order: “Go with all speed toward the army of Drona.” The whole story of Abhimanyu fits between that laugh and that order, and after them there is not one more day of it.
At Indraprastha Subhadra, Krishna’s favorite sister, gave birth to a splendid son, as the queen of heaven once gave birth to Jayanta, and on the day of his birth Yudhishthira gave ten thousand cows to the Brahmins. Krishna himself performed the rites of his infancy. The boy grew as the moon grows through its bright fortnight, learned the Vedas early, and had from his father the whole science of arms in its four branches and its ten divisions, the attacks and the answers both, how to turn aside a weapon thrown at him and how to keep his hands light and fast. Arjuna looked at him and was as happy in this son as Indra is when he looks at Arjuna. He had long arms, a broad chest and eyes as large as a bull’s, and in courage and in looks he was the equal of Krishna. In Virata’s court, when the year in hiding ended and Brihannala’s dress came off, Arjuna asked the king for his daughter, and asked for her for someone else. He had taught the girl singing and dancing for a whole year, and the one way to put her purity beyond suspicion was to make her his daughter in law. “My son Abhimanyu, the strong-armed, is beyond everyone in his knowledge of weapons, and he is as handsome as a young god, and he is the favorite nephew of Vasudeva, the wielder of the discus.” The bridegroom came from Dwarka with his mother and his uncle, kings arrived from every country with an akshauhini apiece, and the marriage of Abhimanyu and Uttara at Upaplavya closed the Virata Parva. On the morning after the wedding, in the same hall, the council of war sat down.
The Grandsire’s Standard
On the first day of the war Brihadbala, king of the Kosalas, opened well against him, cut down his standard and knocked his charioteer off the chariot, and the boy, with no one at his reins, answered with nine arrows. Later that morning Bhishma drove into the Pandava army with five great warriors around him, dancing on the floor of his moving chariot, and the first man to ride into that road was Abhimanyu. He pierced Kritavarma with one arrow and Shalya with five and weakened his own great grandfather with nine, and the men around Bhishma began to say to one another that this was Arjuna’s own capacity in a smaller body. Then he did what no one else managed that day. Nine arrows that did not miss, and the tall silver standard with the palmyra on it came out of the sky and fell on the earth, and Bhima roared to cheer his brother’s son. On the fourth day five of the Kuru chiefs fought him at once, Ashvatthama and Bhurishravas among them, and he stood among them like a young lion among five elephants, and when Duryodhana’s son Lakshmana met him for the first time, Kripa had to carry the prince out of the fight. On the twelfth day, Drona’s first morning in command, Jayadratha’s sword caught in the boy’s gold plated shield and broke, and when Shalya hurled a dart at him he caught it in the air, as Garuda catches a snake, and killed Shalya’s driver with it.
The Way In, and No Way Out
On the thirteenth day Drona built the wheel and the Samshaptakas drew Arjuna away. Yudhishthira laid the unbearable load on Subhadra’s son. “Child, act so that Arjuna, when he comes back from the Samshaptakas, has no cause to reproach us. We do not know how to break the circular array. You can pierce it, or Arjuna, or Krishna, or Pradyumna. A fifth who could do it is not to be found.” The boy told the truth in front of all of them before a horse had moved. “My father taught me how to break into an array of this kind and strike it from inside. But I will not be able to come out again if any danger overtakes me there.” Yudhishthira gave his word. “Break this array once and make a passage for us. All of us will follow you along the track you take.” Bhima gave his. And then the sentence that is the whole of his nature: “I will go into this invincible array of Drona’s the way an insect in a rage flies into a blazing fire.” “If any man who meets me today gets away with his life, I will not count myself begotten by Partha and born of Subhadra.” Sumitra drove the three year old horses forward with a heart that had little cheer in it, and with Drona looking on, Arjuna‘s son broke the array and went in.
Inside, he was seen on every side at once, breaking whatever stood in front of him, strewing the ground with bodies and the limbs of bodies as priests strew the altar with kusha grass. Duryodhana came at him in person and had to be rescued under a cloud of arrows; twelve warriors pierced him together and each received three in return. And the men who had given their word did not come. At the gate Jayadratha had taken his stand, the king of the Sindhus who had been beaten by Bhima for laying hands on Draupadi and had worshiped Mahadeva until the god came to him in a dream and granted what he asked, that he could check all the sons of Pandu in battle, with one exception: “Arjuna, the son of Pritha, is excepted.” That day Arjuna was far away, and half a boon did the work of a whole one. The boy was alone inside. Duhshasana swore before the king, “I will swallow the son of Subhadra today as Rahu swallows the sun,” and Abhimanyu, torn with arrows, smiled at him. “It is my good luck that I see here in battle, come to face me, that vain hero who is cruel, who has thrown away all righteousness, and who bawls out his own praises.” “You will not escape me with your life, unless you leave the battle.” One arrow went in at the joint of the shoulder and Duhshasana was carried off senseless. Karna came next and lost his umbrella, his standard, his driver and his horses; Karna’s younger brother stepped between them and lost his head to one arrow; and Karna fled the field. Rukmaratha, the son of Shalya, called out, “While I am here, what is Abhimanyu? I will take him a living captive,” and lost both arms and his head. A hundred princes ringed him, and under the Gandharva weapon they saw him as one man, then as a hundred, then as a thousand, and the hundred lay like a grove of young mango trees flattened by a storm.
When the whole army ran, one man kept coming: Lakshmana, the son of Duryodhana, brought up in luxury and without fear because he was inexperienced and proud, and his arrows struck Abhimanyu in both arms and in the chest. The answer came back like a snake struck with a rod. “Look well at this world, for soon you will have to go to the other. I am going to send you to the house of Yama while all your kinsmen watch.” A broad headed arrow took the handsome head with the rings in its ears, and Duryodhana shouted to every Kshatriya under him, “Kill this one!” Six chariot warriors closed around him: Drona, Kripa, Karna, Ashvatthama, Brihadbala and Kritavarma. He gave Drona fifty arrows and Kripa sixty, stood under sixty of Ashvatthama’s as immovable as Mount Mainaka, and when Brihadbala came at him on foot with a sword to take his head, he shot the king of the Kosalas through the heart, and ten thousand kings broke and ran. Karna, suffering, asked Drona how the boy could be killed, and the teacher who had trained the boy’s father answered first with praise: “I see no difference in battle between the bearer of Gandiva himself and this boy with his quick hand, who is filling every point of the horizon with his arrows.” Then, slowly and with a smile, the method. “With his bow in his hand he cannot be beaten by the gods and the Asuras together. If you wish it, take his chariot from him, and take away his bow.” Karna cut the bow while the boy was shooting, Kritavarma killed the horses, Kripa killed the two flank drivers, and the six buried in arrows a boy who had no chariot and was fighting all of them alone.
Without bow or chariot he kept his eye on what a warrior owes. He took up a sword and a shield and leaped into the sky, and swept through the air like Garuda until Drona cut the jeweled hilt out of his hand and Karna cut away the shield. He came down whole, picked up a chariot wheel, and ran at Drona with the wheel lifted over him and the dust bright on his body, so that for a while on that field he was a fearful likeness of Krishna with the discus, and the kings cut the wheel into a hundred pieces. Then a mace, and with the mace Ashvatthama’s horses, Kalikeya the son of Subala, seventy seven Gandharas, ten elephants, and the chariot of Duhshasana’s son, smashed into the earth. The two cousins went at each other with maces, each wanting the other dead, and both fell. Duhshasana’s son got up first, and as Abhimanyu was on the point of rising, the mace came down on the crown of his head. He lay on the bare ground with lashes as black as a raven’s feathers, and the creatures of the sky said aloud, “Alas, this one lies on the field, killed while he fought alone by six great chariot warriors of Dhritarashtra‘s army, with Drona and Karna at their head. We hold that this was an unrighteous act.” At dusk the jackals howled, and in the Pandava camp the warriors left their chariots, took off their armor and sat down around the king. “I wanted to do what was good, and I was looking for victory, and it is I who have done this great evil to Subhadra, and to Krishna, and to Arjuna.” “He was only a child. He should have been given good food, and carriages, and beds, and ornaments, and we set him in the very front of the battle.” When Vyasa came, Yudhishthira said to him what the sky had said. “Those who take up battle as their calling always fight with opponents who are placed as they are placed. This battle that the enemy fought with Abhimanyu was a wholly unequal one.”
The One Who Did Not Come Out to Meet Him
Arjuna rode back that evening from his victory over the Samshaptakas with a fear in him he could not name, and at the edge of the camp he spoke to Krishna. “Janardana,” he said, “no trumpet sounds its blessing tonight, with the drums and the conches in it.” “And Subhadra’s son, who is always cheerful, has not come out today with his brothers, smiling, to meet me as I return from battle.” Inside sat the pale faces, and the question turned into its own answer as he asked it. “I do not see Abhimanyu, and he does not come to congratulate me. I heard that Drona formed the circular array today. None of you could break that array except the boy, and I never taught him how to come out of it once he had pierced it. Did you send the boy into that array?” “What will Subhadra say to me, when she looks for Abhimanyu and he is gone? What will Draupadi say to me?” Out of that night rose the oath that ruled the fourteenth day: “If tomorrow’s sun sets and I have not killed that wretch, then here, on this very spot, I will walk into the blazing fire.” On the field afterward Gandhari showed Krishna the body. “I see, Krishna, that the splendor of Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna, has not dimmed even in death.” Beside it knelt Virata’s daughter, who had taken off the golden mail and was looking at the blood. “You were brought up in every luxury. You slept on the soft skins of the ranku deer. Does your body feel no pain today, lying on the bare ground?” “Why do you not speak to me when I am weeping so?” And the count she kept: “Our time together in this world was to be six months, it seems, and no more. In the seventh you were taken.”
At Dwarka Krishna told his father the whole war and stepped over one death on purpose. Subhadra noticed. “Tell how my son died, Krishna,” she said, and fell to the ground in a faint. Old Vasudeva asked whether the boy had died running, whether his face had lost its light, whether Drona and Karna and Kripa had killed him by deceit, and the man the whole earth knew for a speaker of truth had to answer. “His face never lost its light. He fought at the very front, and fierce as that battle was he never turned his back on it.” Subhadra went on asking the girl who had been his wife, “He used to come out of his room the instant he heard my voice, daughter of Virata. Why does he not come out today?” It was Kunti who turned the grief around. “Look at Uttara. She is carrying a child. Do not give way to sorrow; this girl will soon bear that hero a son.” That son was Parikshit, and the Kuru line went on through him. In heaven Narada showed Yudhishthira where the boy was. “Look at Subhadra’s son, whom no one could defeat in battle. He stays with Soma now. He is Abhimanyu, the great bowman, and the gentle light of the moon, the great lamp of the night, is his.” And on the last page of the poem the secret of him was told. “Soma had a son of great prowess named Varchas, and it was he who became Abhimanyu, the son of Phalguna. He fought as a Kshatriya should, with a bravery no one else had ever been able to show, and then that righteous man entered Soma.” The sixteen years were paid back in full.
His Path
Three Stops, Three Questions
Three places where he admits something, trusts a promise, or is left alone. Pause at each one.
- The way in, and no way out. Read the exchange before the array in Abhimanyu and the wheel array, and set it beside the sentence in Arjuna’s return that no one had taught him how to come out. Ask: when a man names his own limit in front of everyone and goes anyway, whose promise is his courage resting on?
- One and six. In the same chapter read Drona’s praise and, in the same breath, Drona’s method, and then the sentence of the beings in the sky that calls the killing unrighteous. Ask: on the day the makers of the rules of war broke them, whose eyes stayed on dharma?
- Sixteen years on loan. Read the Soma sentence in the last reunion, then the life of Parikshit. Ask: a life that was borrowed from the start, is it to be called unfinished, or complete?
At the end, go back to the first scene, where the charioteer pauses before he touches the reins. Was that laugh the ignorance of a boy, or the laugh of someone who already knew that this road opened in one direction only?
Tilottama, Arjuna’s Exile and Marriages · A son born of Subhadra who grew as the moon grows, with Krishna performing the rites of his infancy.
The Cattle Raid and the Unmasking at Virata · A father in Virata’s court asking for a girl, and asking for her for his son.
The Fall of Bhishma · The palmyra standard brought down on the first day with nine arrows, and Bhima‘s roar.
Drona in Command, and the Samshaptakas · Jayadratha’s sword broken on a shield, and Shalya’s dart caught in the air.
Abhimanyu and the Wheel Array · A laugh at the charioteer’s warning, Jayadratha at the gate, a ring of six, and a mace on a head that was rising.
Arjuna’s Return and His Vow · A silent camp, a question that turned into its own answer, and an oath bound to a sunset.
The Lament of Gandhari · Uttara taking off the golden mail, and a marriage of six months.
The Horse Sacrifice and Parikshit · A death left out of the telling at Dwarka, Subhadra’s question, and Kunti’s finger pointing at Uttara.
The Boy Who Was Taught the Way In
Everything in Abhimanyu’s life comes by halves, and every half is given whole. From his father he had the way into the array and nothing about the way out; Jayadratha had half a boon, four Pandavas out of five, and Arjuna‘s absence made it a whole one; from Uttara he had six months, and from Soma sixteen years on loan. The poem hides none of it. The boy states his limit in front of everyone and still has the horses driven on, and the men on whose promise he went are stopped at the gate. What happened inside, Drona could not tell apart from Arjuna’s own work, and it took that same Drona to say how the boy might be brought down, in words the sky called unrighteous. What remains is a boy covered in chariot dust holding a wheel over his head like Vasudeva, and a father at the gate of the camp asking why no one has come out to meet him. That question dropped Jayadratha’s head into his own father’s lap within a day, and a child in Uttara’s womb carried the line forward; and no one ever learned the way back along the road Abhimanyu took.
Edition and source passages
Main edition: the Gita Press Mahabharata, Sanskrit with Hindi translation; quoted speech follows K. M. Ganguli’s English translation of the same text.
Passages for this reading: the birth and training: Gita Press Adi 221 (Ganguli Adi 220); Varchas the son of Soma and the sixteen years: Adi Parva, Amshavatarana section (Ganguli Adi 67). Uttara’s hand and the wedding: Virata Parva, Vaivahika section (Ganguli 72). The first and fourth days: Bhishma Parva, Bhishma-vadha section. The twelfth day: Drona Parva, Samshaptaka-vadha section. The wheel array, Jayadratha’s boon and the death: Drona Parva, Abhimanyu-vadha section (Ganguli 31 to 50). Arjuna’s return and his oath: Drona Parva, Pratijna section (Ganguli 72 to 85). Uttara’s lament: Stri Parva, Stri-vilapa section. Subhadra and Kunti at Dwarka: Ashvamedhika Parva (Ganguli 52 to 92). With Soma, and into Soma: Svargarohana Parva.
What this edition covers: a character portrait drawn from the whole Mahabharata, with three marked reading questions.
Limits and differences: the episodes rest on the Mahabharata chapters in this library; some of those chapters follow Ganguli’s section numbering, so the Gita Press chapter numbers can differ there. The text has no scene of a lesson overheard in the womb, and the chapter says so itself; here there is only what the boy says before the array. The text counts six warriors around him, and the last mace is the mace of Duhshasana’s son. His age is given in the chapters only as a child, still short of manhood; the sixteen years are Soma’s own words in the Amshavatarana. Sentences in quotation marks follow the English of those chapters.