Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata Read online

  81

  Drona’s onslaught

  On the eleventh day, Drona became the leader of the Kaurava army. Duryodhana told Drona, ‘The first great warrior to die on this battlefield is a Kaurava, not a Pandava. This is a great blow to our morale. You must kill a great Pandava too, preferably Yudhishtira.’

  Drona swore to do so. Unlike Bhishma, who showed great restraint in his battle strategies, and whose intention was primarily to push the Pandavas back with the least harm, Drona’s strategies were directed at causing maximum damage.

  He dispatched the charioteers of Trigarta known as the Samsaptakas against Arjuna and a vast legion of elephants led by Bhagadatta, king of Pragjyotisha, against Bhima. ‘With Arjuna and Bhima thus distracted, the eldest Pandava, left unguarded, will be easy to capture,’ said Drona.

  Bhima tried his best to push back Bhagadatta’s elephants. But they were more than a match for him. He decided to retreat.

  The sight of Bhima’s chariot retreating filled the Pandava army with gloom. Arjuna saw this and felt he should subdue Bhagadatta first and then deal with the Samsaptaka charioteers. So Krishna pulled out the chariot and moved towards Bhagadatta and his elephants. ‘No, go back. First Samsaptaka and then Bhagadatta,’ he said first. Then he said, ‘No, maybe first Bhagadatta and then Samsaptaka.’

  Realizing Arjuna’s dilemma and rising stress, Krishna said with a smile, ‘You can defeat both. One at a time or simultaneously. I have faith in you.’

  Thus reassured by Krishna, Arjuna raised his bow and first showered arrows in the direction of the Samsaptakas. The arrows hit dozens of horses, smashed hundred more chariots and killed thousands of riders. As the horses fell on top of each other and the broken chariots piled up, there was complete confusion among the great Samsaptakas. Arjuna had single-handedly destroyed this legion which had sworn either to destroy Arjuna or be destroyed by him.

  Arjuna then turned to Bhagadatta. As the chariot moved towards Bhagadatta, the great warrior stood on top of his elephant and released a dreaded weapon—the Vaishnav-astra. Arjuna raised his bow to counteract the effects of this astra. But Krishna came in between and bore the brunt of the missile. As soon as the missile touched him it turned into a garland of flowers.

  ‘Why did you take the weapon upon yourself, Krishna? I could have destroyed it myself,’ said Arjuna arrogantly.

  Krishna replied, ‘No, you could not. This weapon was given to Bhagadatta by his father, who had received it from his mother, the earth-goddess, who in turn had received it from me when in an earlier incarnation, in the form of a boar I had raised the earth from the bottom of the sea. No creature in this world, but me, its creator, could withstand the power of the Vaishnav-astra. That is why I took the brunt of the weapon.’

  Arjuna apologized for his arrogance. And then he turned his attention to Bhagadatta. With one arrow, he split open the head of the elephant on which Bhagadatta rode. With another, he ripped open Bhagadatta’s chest. As the two fell, so much blood spurted out that it felt like it was raining blood.

  And while Arjuna was defeating the Samsaptaka charioteers and Bhagadatta’s elephants, Bhima ensured that Yudhishtira was well protected, foiling Drona’s plans.

  Shakuni led the forces of Gandhara against Arjuna. With his arrows, reverberating with the power of chants, he conjured up darkness and torrential rains. Arjuna retaliated by releasing magic missiles of his own: he destroyed the darkness with light and the rains with dryness. Shakuni finally had to give up and withdraw from the battlefield.

  A warrior called Shrutayudha tried his best to defeat Arjuna but failing to do so, hurled his mace at Krishna. This mace was a gift of the sea-god Varuna and could not be used against an unarmed warrior. As Krishna was unarmed, the mace bounced off Krishna’s chest and struck Shrutayudha and killed him on the spot.

  Despite hearing Krishna’s Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna struggles with his attachments and prejudices. This repeatedly manifests in his hesitation and indecisiveness on the battlefield. Growth is thus not a one-time activity; it is a process where decisions to overpower the beast within have to be taken every single moment.

  The stories of the Vaishnav-astra and Shrutayudha show us that the Pandavas are clearly under divine protection. Krishna’s presence ensures that Arjuna can do what he is supposed to do on the battefield, unhurt.

  The Pandavas and the Kauravas fight each other with astras: these were not just ordinary arrows. These were missiles charged with the power of magical hymns. There were different types of astras, each one containing the power of one or many gods. There were the Brahma-astra, Vishnu-astra and Pashupat-astra containing the power of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva respectively. There were the Agni-astra, Vayu-astra and Indra-astra, reverberating with the power of fire, wind and rain respectively. The descriptions of the effect of these weapons have led to speculations that the ancients were probably familiar with nuclear technology and that astras were really nuclear warheads.

  82

  Death of Abhimanyu

  As the twelfth day drew to a close, Krishna noticed that just as Arjuna had hesitated to strike down Bhishma, who he considered to be like a father, he hesitated to strike down Drona, who was his teacher. ‘In battle there are no sons or fathers or uncles or teachers. There are only soldiers who fight for dharma or adharma,’ said Krishna. But Arjuna’s heart was filled with too much regard for his teacher to be so detached.

  Drona, meanwhile, angry at his failure to harm even a single Pandava, after two days of intense fighting, came up with a terrifying plan on day thirteen.

  He had observed that Krishna constantly kept Arjuna away from Karna, who had, after the fall of Bhishma, finally entered the battlefield. The reason for this was as follows:

  As long as Bhishma led the Kaurava forces, Karna had not stepped into the battle. When it was time for him to finally enter, after Bhishma’s death, an old man came to him, at dawn, begging for alms. As was his nature, Karna said, ‘Ask and it shall be yours.’ The old man immediately asked Karna for his earrings and armour that had been part of his body since the day of his birth. They clung to his body like flesh and were impermeable to any weapon. Giving them up meant giving up his advantage in the battlefield and letting himself be vulnerable. Without a second thought, Karna decided to part with his divine gifts—cutting them out like bark from a tree using a very sharp knife. The old man, who was none other than Indra, king of the gods, and father of Arjuna, acted out of love for his son. As he watched the blood gush out of Karna’s ears and chest, he felt overwhelmed by Karna’s selflessness. He revealed his true identity and said, ‘I salute you, son of Surya. Your charity has no parallel. I give you a gift. A celestial spear that never misses its mark. But you can use it only once. Use it wisely.’ Karna decided that he would use this spear to kill Arjuna. Divining this, Krishna never let Arjuna come within Karna’s line of sight from the moment the latter stepped into the battlefield.

  ‘Let your chariot be next to mine,’ said Drona to Karna, thus ensuring that Krishna would move Arjuna to the other end of the battlefield. Drona then organized his soldiers in the dreaded battle formation called Chakra-vyuha where the soldiers encircle and entrap the enemy. Only Arjuna knew how to break this formation but with him on the other side of the battlefield, Drona was able to trap some of the major warriors of the Pandava army within the Chakra with great ease.

  Suddenly surrounded by the Kaurava army, Yudhishtira cried out for help, but Krishna blew his conch-shell simultaneously so that Arjuna heard nothing. ‘How do we break this battle formation? How do we escape?’ asked a nervous Yudhishtira.

  Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s young son by Subhadra, newly married and barely sixteen, said, ‘I know how to break the battle formation so that you can escape.’ His eyes were wide with excitement at this opportunity to fight great warriors in this great war.

  ‘How?’ asked Yudhishtira.

  ‘I overheard father describe it when I was still in my mother’s belly. But…’

  ‘Bu