Bhishma

The tenth day at Kurukshetra is sinking toward dusk. For nine days one man has scorched the Pandava army like the sun of the world’s ending, and now he is coming down from his chariot, pierced by the arrows Arjuna has sent from behind Shikhandi. Section 119 of the Bhishma Parva holds the picture: his body does not touch the earth, because the countless arrows sunk in his limbs hold him up, and he lies on that bed of shafts in the air above the ground. Thousands of warriors on both sides take off their armor, stop the fighting, and come to him as gods come to Prajapati. The man who never once in his life lay on a couch of comfort is given a couch of arrows at the end, and he accepts it only because he himself has chosen the hour.

His story begins far back in the Adi Parva, on the bank of the Ganga, where King Shantanu accepts a woman’s one condition for marriage: he will never question anything she does. Seven newborn sons go into the river in her arms, and at the eighth the king’s patience breaks. In section 98 Ganga names the child Gangadatta, the gift of Ganga, and takes him away with her. That eighth son comes back grown as Devavrata, and then a second longing of his father decides the direction of his life. Shantanu wants Satyavati, the fisherman’s daughter, and her father wants a promise that the kingdom will pass to her sons. The king will not ask it of his heir, so the heir goes himself to the fisherman’s courtyard. In section 100 he gives up the throne in a sentence, “The son born of this girl shall be our king,” and then, to close the fisherman’s second doubt, swears lifelong celibacy so that no child of his can ever claim it. Flowers rain from the gods onto his head, and a name comes out of the air: “This one is Bhishma, the man of the terrible vow.” He drives Satyavati home to his father, calling her mother, and Shantanu, overjoyed and undone at once, gives him the one gift left to give, the boon of death at will.

The watch of a vow, the service of a throne

After that day the whole of Bhishma’s life turns on one axis, the throne of Hastinapura, whoever sits on it. He never becomes king, and every king is made in his shadow. Under Satyavati’s command he crowns Chitrangada, and when a gandharva of the same name kills him, he crowns Vichitravirya, still a boy. For that brother alone he carries off the three daughters of the king of Kashi, section 102 of the Adi Parva, lets Amba go to the man she has chosen, and marries Ambika and Ambalika to the young king; years later, for his nephews, he arranges Gandhari for Dhritarashtra and Madri for Pandu, sections 110 and 113. When Vichitravirya dies childless, Satyavati asks him in section 103 to father heirs on the widows and take the throne, and he answers gently: “the truth I cannot surrender.” She presses him twice; then he names the way out, an accomplished Brahmin invited with an offer of wealth, and it is Satyavati who calls her own firstborn, Vyasa. And then comes the hall with the dice. When Yudhishthira names Draupadi as his stake, the old men cry shame, and sweat stands on Bhishma, on Drona, on Kripa. Draupadi asks the kings whether she was won or unwon, and Bhishma, in sections 66 to 69 of the Sabha Parva, can answer only this: “Blessed lady, dharma is subtle, and I am unable to settle the point you have raised.” Vidura sits with his head in his hands.

When war comes he is the first commander of the Kaurava army. On the first morning he rides out in white, on a chariot of silver, like the moon just risen. On the third day, section 59, he spends himself on the Pandava ranks, and Krishna, sworn to carry no weapon in this war, lets the reins fall, comes down with the discus turning on his right arm, and walks at him on foot. Bhishma stands where he is, bow in hand, and welcomes him: “Come, Krishna, come. Throw me down off this excellent chariot by force. Killed here by you, I will have great good fortune in this world and in the next.” Arjuna runs after him, holds his legs, and stops him at the tenth step. On the ninth night, sections 107 and 108, the Pandavas come to his tent to ask how he may be brought down, and he tells them: “When Shikhandi, who was a woman first, is before me, I will not wish to strike him, even armed with bow and arrow. So let Arjuna put Shikhandi or someone else before him and throw me down from my chariot.” All he asks of the war now is that his end arrive with the vow unbroken.

After the fall the surgeons are sent away. He refuses the soft pillows the kings bring; Arjuna holds up his head on three arrows, “a pillow fit for a hero’s bed,” and Bhishma, by his father’s boon, holds his life back until the sun turns north. Through the Shanti Parva, with Yudhishthira seated close, he teaches the dharma of kings, ministers, forts and treasury, the conduct allowed in a bad year, and then the dharma of liberation, answering grief with old stories: a jackal who turns out to be Indra, Bhrigu on Kailasa telling Bharadvaja how the world was made. The Anushasana Parva opens the law of giving, flowers and lamps, the cow and gold, until two entire parvas are his voice. After fifty-eight nights on the arrows he says, “The maker of day, the holy sun of a thousand rays, has begun his northward course,” and holds his life breaths stage by stage until they break through the crown of his head and go up like a meteor, while the drums of the gods sound and flowers fall. He goes the way a man rises when the work is finished, sets the seat straight, and puts out the lamp.

His path

Shantanu, Ganga, and the vow of Bhishma · Seven sons carried into the river, an eighth kept back, and a courtyard where a prince hands his crown to a child not yet born.

Satyavati and the thread of the line · Three princesses carried off from Kashi, a weeping queen asking her stepson for heirs, and the answer that the truth cannot be surrendered.

The dice hall · Shakuni’s dice at Hastinapura, a kingdom going stake by stake, and in chapter 11 Draupadi’s question, answered with “dharma is subtle.”

The war begins, the armies in view · White headgear, white umbrella, white mail, and a commander on a silver chariot like the moon just risen.

The fall of Bhishma · Arrows loosed from behind Shikhandi, a body held above the ground on its own wounds, and a pillow of three shafts.

The dharma of kings on a bed of arrows · A fallen warrior, a seated king, and the whole science of rule taught through ministers, forts and treasury.

The gist of the dharma of liberation and the dharma of distress · Old stories for a grieving king: a jackal who is Indra, and Bhrigu on Kailasa telling how the world was made.

The final teaching and the ascent to heaven · Flowers, incense and lamps, the gift of the cow, and after fifty-eight nights the breath leaving through the crown of the head.

The weight of a word

Reading Bhishma, one question keeps returning: how did a man this capable stay this powerless? The answer is in the courtyard by the water. A single decision, taken in youth for a father’s happiness, in one breath, and then never altered through every change of circumstance to the last day of his life. He refused a grieving Satyavati in the name of truth, and years later lent the same unbroken loyalty to Duryodhana’s throne. In the hall at Hastinapura dharma asked only one thing of him, that he lift his loyalty off the throne and set it on justice, and the vow had no clause for that. The wound of the dice hall was his own word, and he knew it; he told Krishna on the third day that destiny is the strongest thing there is, and on the ninth night he told the Pandavas where to stand. The warning is plain: a promise that was firm at the moment of giving can turn blind at the moment of keeping, if it is never tested against time. The other face of the story is just as true. On the arrows he turned his own defeat into a school, handed a grieving king everything he knew, his errors included, and let two parvas carry his voice past his death. Keeping a word was the thing he did better than anyone else in the epic. Choosing which word deserves a life is what he taught from the arrows, with his own life as the text.