The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering (2 Vols.), page 124
With that bow and arrow, Arjuna and Krishna, and the Sivaganas with them, fly back to Kailasa. They come to Siva again and offer the weapons to him. He smiles at them, and an unearthly light issues from his body. From it, a wild brahmachari stands forth, his eyes fire, his hair falling to his waist in a shimmering blue and black cascade. Bowing to Siva, the apparition picks up the ancient weapons. He shows Arjuna the only way that bow, older than the world, can be strung. He shows him how the arrow is fitted to it, and the string is drawn back. Arjuna masters the art of it instantly, as no other archer could.
As he pulls back the bowstring, Arjuna hears Siva’s voice, deep in his mind, intoning the mantra for the Paasupatastra, which begins by invoking Ganapathy, the Lord’s elephant-headed son, master of his host of ganas. The mantra fills every cell in Arjuna’s body. In a moment, he knows it perfectly. Now, the brahmachari takes those weapons back from the Pandava and, with a cry, from where he stands he casts them back into the distant lake. Becoming fierce serpents again, they submerge below dark ripples and are gone. But Arjuna feels the lake and the weapons within himself still; and he knows the astra will return to him, whenever he needs it.
The brahmachari vanishes. Krishna and Arjuna prostrate themselves once more at holy Siva’s feet. As he blesses them, Arjuna sees him again as he did in the forest near Indrakila: as the vetala! All his anxiety swept from him in a wave of joy, Arjuna touches the Lord’s feet and flies back to Kurukshetra with Krishna beside him.
Arjuna emerges from dhyana, but Krishna has vanished from his dream. Other dreams flow into the Pandava’s sleep, and bear him away on tranquil currents.
THIRTEEN
The three vyuhas
DAWN IS YET TO BREAK OVER KURUKSHETRA, AND YUDHISHTIRA IS the first one up to greet the fourteenth day of war. As always, he begins his morning with worship. When he has finished, the sun appears on the rim of the world, and the birds in the trees around the battlefield hymn the brilliant Deva. As Yudhishtira rises from his prayers, Krishna walks into his tent.
“Did you sleep well, my Lord?”
Krishna smiles, “I did. And now, seeing your serene face, I know that no harm can befall me!”
With Krishna, come Bheema, Dhrishtadyumna, Satyaki, Shikhandi, Sahadeva, Nakula, Draupadi’s sons, Chekitana, Dhrishtaketu, the five Kekaya brothers wearing red mail and looking like indragopaka insects, Yuyutsu, Ghatotkacha, Drupada and Virata. One by one, Yudhishtira embraces them all. Those lords of the earth, the soldiers of dharma, are solemn on this momentous fourteenth morning of the war.
Yudhishtira turns again to Krishna. “My Lord, we rely on you to see us through this war, to bring us victory. More than any other day, we depend on your grace today.” He takes the Dark One’s hand, “Arjuna must keep his vow, Krishna. With you as his sarathy, he cannot fail.”
Krishna is full of light, full of faith. He says, “There is no kshatriya in all the world like your brother. When Jayadratha dies, the Kauravas will know that Arjuna’s vows are made not just of words, but arrows. Have you seen the omens of the earth and the sky, of the water, the wind and the birds? They all cry out that you will prevail today and that the Kauravas are doomed. Yudhishtira, I am here with you, I swear Arjuna will keep his oath.”
Arjuna walks in, and he seems entirely calm. He touches Yudhishtira’s feet, and those of the others older than him. Yudhishtira embraces his brother. “Your face is as bright as Krishna’s, as if the two of you have some secret you are keeping from us. I am content, Arjuna: seeing you like this, I have no doubt that Jayadratha will die before the sun sets. But if there is some good news you have, won’t you share it with us?”
Arjuna recounts last night’s dream, still vivid in his mind. He says, “Siva’s own astra is mine to summon. Jayadratha will not see the sun set today.”
Word goes out about Arjuna’s dream, and soon the Pandava camp echoes with the news. Conches and trumpets blare, and excited soldiers make for the battlefield, eager for the fighting to begin. No one doubts, any more, that Arjuna will keep his oath. Who will stop him, when Siva himself has blessed the Pandava?
Krishna climbs into Satyaki’s chariot to leave Yudhishtira’s tent; for, they have both come as Yadavas to the early council. But when they arrive at the stables where the horses are stalled, Krishna is a sarathy again for the day’s battle. The Avatara goes into the enclosure like any charioteer; with his own hands, he rubs down Arjuna’s gandharva horses. He washes them lovingly, then drapes mail over their smooth bodies, while they stand for him in delight, nuzzling their faces against him.
Fortunate indeed is the Pandava who has Vishnu’s Avatara for his sarathy! Krishna places his warrior’s weapons in the chariot, where Arjuna can reach them easily. Finally, he hoists Hanuman’s banner over the gleaming ratha and brings the chariot to his cousin’s tent. A young servant is strapping the golden mail on his master, which Indra gave Arjuna. Krishna comes in, “Your ratha is here, Kshatriya, and your sarathy is ready for battle!”
Last of all, Arjuna sets his kirita, worked with unearthly gemstones, on his head, picks up the Gandiva, and the two of them emerge. Completely majestic, they mount the white chariot. Krishna takes the reins, while his pale chargers toss their necks and neigh eagerly in anticipation of battle. Regally, they make their way towards the field, the early sun blazing on Hanuman’s banner, the vanara alive on it!
At the front, Arjuna says to Satyaki, “In our excitement, we mustn’t forget Drona has sworn to take Yudhishtira captive. What better opportunity could he have than today? Satyaki, your task to protect Yudhishtira will be no less than mine. You are more than equal to it, my friend; I leave my brother’s life in your hands.”
Satyaki says, “Yudhishtira will be safe as long as there is breath in my body.”
Across Kurukshetra, they see Drona’s chestnut horses flitting here and there, as the brahmana forms the three vyuhas, one behind the other. In the van, facing the Pandava force, is the shakata vyuha, square and solid, the cart phalanx. Behind the shakata, Drona forms a lotus, a padma vyuha, a subtle variation of the chakra in which Abhimanyu died. Like an artist painting, he forms the indrawn petals of the lotus. Near the last of these, like a stem, Drona deploys the Kaurava maharathikas in their chariots: the final and most powerful line of defence. He arrays them straight as a needle, a suchi, one after the other, with the precious Jayadratha at the eye of the needle, which faces away from the field.
With dawn, Jayadratha is full of anxiety again. When he hears the Pandava conches, and sees Arjuna ride out to the front and stand, stern and erect in the white chariot, Jayadratha begins to quake.
Drona lays a kindly hand on him, “The three vyuhas are six krosas long, Jayadratha. Six krosas will separate you from the frontlines. A hundred thousand horsemen, sixty thousand chariots, three million foot-soldiers, fourteen thousand elephants, and then six maharathikas, each one more powerful than all these together, stand between Arjuna and you. Not even the army of Devaloka could break past such a defence before the sun sets. Your eyes will see Surya Deva rise tomorrow, but not Arjuna’s!”
Jayadratha is hardly consoled. He peers across six krosas, and sees only Arjuna. He sees every feature on the Pandava’s face, as if he already stood next to him. Jayadratha is terribly certain that all Drona’s assurances will not keep Arjuna away. Six krosas and hundreds of thousands of fierce kshatriyas separate the Pandava from him; but when he sees Krishna’s dark form at Arjuna’s chariot-head, he knows that not six oceans would be enough.
Today Drona sets himself at the rim of the padma vyuha. Between him and the Pandava army lies the stolid square of the shakata. One of Duryodhana’s bravest brothers, Durmarshana, begs to command this phalanx. Drona lets him meet Arjuna’s first charge. With his legion of bowmen around him, Durmarshana takes his proud place at the head of Duryodhana’s army.
Duryodhana’s brother is certain Arjuna will not pass him. “I won’t let him through. Arrogant Arjuna shall taste Durmarshana’s valour today!”
FOURTEEN
Arjuna the magnificent
ARJUNA’S ARMOUR RADIATES LANCES OF FEAR ACROSS KURUKSHETRA. The Gandiva glitters, already piercing Jayadratha’s heart. To that king, hidden behind the teeming Kaurava army, Arjuna seems like the God of death. The Pandava raises the Devadatta, and blows a long, echoing blast. The Kaurava frontlines cower at the sound, and when Krishna joins a deep note to it on the Panchajanya, Jayadratha whimpers in his chariot.
Conches resound on both sides for the fighting to begin. Arjuna raises his arm high, and cries to his sarathy, “Let us burn this shoddy cart. Ride at them, Krishna, the sun waits for no man!”
Krishna flicks his whip over his horses’ sleek necks. Durmarshana roars like five tigers and charges out of his vyuha to meet Arjuna. Their bows streaming, the cousins fly at each other. Durmarshana fights as never before, and for a while it seems he will hold Arjuna up. Arrow cuts down arrow in flight, or glances off warriors’ stubborn mail. But the equal contention lasts only a few moments. Suddenly, Arjuna lifts his archery and heads roll off necks in a macabre pageant. When Arjuna fights like this, no one can see where he bends his bow, or draws another arrow from his magic quivers; or where he aims it, true as death. They see just a blur in his chariot. At times, it seems he hardly moves at all; but enemy soldiers fall in waves before him, blood spilling on to the dark earth from their carved limbs, and wounds through which their spirits fly out to the invisible hosts waiting above Kurukshetra to take them to other realms. Arjuna dissevers their heads so casually: as if he snipped mallika flowers from their stems, to offer Siva for worship.
The air is a murky opacity of ghosts and screams. Not a sound from the Pandava: save that of his bowstring, and the hum of his arrows. When five thousand Kaurava soldiers have died, in moments, and Duryodhana’s brother realizes that today Arjuna also fights as never before, Durmarshana bolts, and his men go after him. In the time it takes to tell, Arjuna has smashed the first of Drona’s vyuhas: the shakata collapses at his onslaught. And far away, at the eye of the needle he means to thread with a mighty astra today, Jayadratha is near collapse.
As Arjuna’s gandharva horses flash forward, Dusasana appears on his path with a legion of elephants, roaring an arrogant challenge. But to the Pandava, it makes no difference whether it is Durmarshana or Dusasana, horses or elephants. All that matters is that they come between him and his quarry, and he will not let them stand. Grey beasts fall as facilely as men did before them: some shot with a score of wooden shafts all over their hulking bodies, others with just one silver arrow through their hearts. The Gandiva sings, calling the enemy to the ceremony of death.
Mowing through his legion, Arjuna comes face to face with Dusasana himself.
He covers his cousin’s elephant in a mantle of fire. He shreds the weapons in his hands, sprouts red flowers all over the Kaurava’s body, and Dusasana cannot stand Arjuna any longer than his brother Durmarshana did. He, also, turns his beast around and lumbers away quickly. On plunges Arjuna, seeing just Jayadratha before him, and all the others merely obstacles to his reaching that king, his target. It was so when he was a boy and Drona’s sishya, and so it remains. Drona watches him fly at the padma vyuha, and is reminded of the day when he gathered his students under a tree in which he had set a wooden bird, and asked each one what he saw. Arjuna saw only the bird’s eye, and brought it down. Today, Jayadratha is the wooden bird, and the soldiers guarding him just the leaves in the tree. Like an arrow, Arjuna makes for his prey, brushing the leaves aside.
The white chariot storms the rim of the second vyuha, and Drona rides up to stop his favourite sishya. Arjuna folds his hands to his master, and says, “I have come to avenge my child. Once you said you made no difference between Aswatthama and me, and I pray you still feel the same way. Bless me, Acharya, and let me into your vyuha.”
Drona raises his bow in reply. With a smile, he cries, “You cannot enter my vyuha without defeating me!”
Though Drona was the main conniver in yesterday’s treachery, Arjuna cannot find it in himself to hate his master. Without rancour, he looses his first volley at his guru, and those shafts are deadlier for the detachment with which they are shot. Drona answers with a scorching salvo of his own, and a tremendous duel begins.
How well each one knows the other’s mind; how perfectly they anticipate every shaft. But they are not master and pupil any more: Arjuna is more than his Acharya’s equal. The Pandava breaks Drona’s bow; before the pieces fall to the chariot-floor, the master has another one out.
For an hour, they duel; and at first, one has a slender advantage, then the other. They fight at the farthest reaches of their genius, until abruptly Krishna cries, “It isn’t Drona you have sworn to kill before the sun sets. Time flits by, and every moment is precious. Leave the brahmana here, we must break into the vyuha!”
Krishna swerves his horses away; he drives them round Drona’s chariot in a pradakshina. Smiling, Arjuna cries to the Acharya, “My lord, I must leave you!”
Drona roars, “What is this, Arjuna? You ride away from an enemy without beating him? You have never done this before.”
Flashing away to storm the padma vyuha, Arjuna calls back, “You are not my enemy, but my guru! Bless me, that I succeed.”
The words are borne to Drona on the wind. For the time he has lost fighting his master, arrows flare thicker than ever from the Pandava’s bow, and Kaurava soldiers fall before him in lurid waves, and a swell of mortal screams. At Arjuna’s wheels, guarding his rear and flanks, ride the Panchala brothers, Yuddhamanyu and Uttamaujas, as they have since the war began. Kritavarman comes to challenge Arjuna, and with him Sudakshina, lord of the Kambhojas, and Srutayus. Their arrows darken the sky. But those shafts themselves are livid, and illumine dim Kurukshetra like strange lamps, flying.
Drona swirls round at the mouth of the lotus, and rides after Arjuna. His careful plans foiled by the Pandava breezing past him, the master dashes after his disciple in anger. The gifted Kritavarman holds Arjuna up, and it seems that Arjuna hesitates to unleash his fiercer missiles at the Yadava. Krishna cries, “He is one of the six that murdered your child! Don’t stay your hand because he is my cousin. He is a traitor, and deserves to die.”
No sooner has he spoken, than Kritavarman is struck down with ten sizzling shafts that break his bow and smash through his armour, so he falls screaming. His sarathy flies from the field with his bleeding kshatriya. After Kritavarman departs, Sudakshina cannot resist Arjuna for more than a few moments. The Pandava sweeps him aside, and plunges on deeper into the vyuha. A better warrior than Sudakshina looms in his path: Srutayudha who wields Varuna’s mace. The mace is a magical weapon, and no one can kill Srutayudha as long as he carries it. When he casts it at an enemy, it divides itself into a hundred maces, and strikes like a flock of thunderbolts; and then, it flies back to his hand. But Varuna had said to Srutayudha he must never cast the mace at anyone who bore no arms, for then it would turn on the one who cast it.
Srutayudha harries Arjuna with the Sea God’s mace, but finds he can never strike the Pandava because of Krishna’s lightning manoeuvres in the gandharva chariot. Forgetting that the sarathy carries no weapon, Srutayudha flings the mace at Krishna. The occult gada takes Krishna in his chest, but softly as flowers. With a roar of its own, in anger that it has been cast at an unarmed man, the ocean mace flashes back at Srutayudha, and smashes his head like a peach. As soon as he falls, Varuna’s weapon vanishes from Kurukshetra; it returns to the Lord of tides.
Seeing Srutayudha die, Sudakshina turns back into battle against Arjuna. But the duel lasts just moments and the Pandava kills the lord of the Kambhojas with an arrow through his heart. Panic takes the Kaurava army. Drona roars above the pandemonium to his legions, to surround Arjuna, they must not let him move ahead. But who can stand before the Pandava today? Drona rushes forward himself, covering Arjuna in a fever of arrows. Arjuna burns them all up with a brahmastra, and they fall away as ashes. Fifty thousand footsoldiers run at Arjuna’s chariot. But he is dauntless; he is implacable, as he cuts a way of fire before him with unearthly missiles, parting the dark tide of men in streams of blood.
On through the incarnadine mire the golden chariot ploughs, as if no army stood in its way. Until, two heroic brothers challenge the Pandava: Srutayus and Achutayus, dead Sudakshina’s friends, who have rashly sworn to avenge him. They fly unexpectedly at Arjuna from two sides, and Srutayus strikes Krishna unconscious. When the Pandava’s chariot lurches to a stop, Achutayus casts a javelin at Arjuna, a lance like a green star, and strikes him deep in his side. A roar goes up from the Kaurava army as Arjuna reels, and the Gandiva slips from his hand. The Pandava totters against his flagstaff.
“Arjuna is slain!” cry the Kaurava soldiers.
But in their excitement, they do not press home their brief advantage quickly enough. With a cry, Krishna recovers, seizes the reins again and veers away from Srutayus’ ominous fire. By Krishna’s grace, Arjuna’s wound is stanched and the jade lance falls out. Quicker than thinking, the Pandava invokes the aindrastra to quell the thousand arrows that flare at him from every side. With another shaft of power, he cuts down the two brothers on either side of him. A single arrow, which severs Srutayus’ head, flies on in uncanny trajectory and crashes into Achutayus’ heart.
