novelraw Arc 3 – Yudha Arambha Parva - Chapter 6 - Bhīma and the Kalingas — Death with a Mace
Arc 3 – Yudha Arambha Parva - Chapter 6 - Bhīma and the Kalingas — Death with a Mace
Sañjaya said:
Urged by thy son, O King, the ruler of the Kaliṅgas advanced with a vast division—cars, steeds, and mail-clad elephants like moving hills—straight toward the car of Vṛkodara. Bhīmasena, supported by the Cedis, met that torrent head-on; the Matsyas and the Karūṣas pressed in behind him, and from the opposite quarter came Ketumat of the Niṣādas with his ten thousand elephants, and Śrutāyus with his array in close order. The Kaliṅgas and Niṣādas closed around Bhīma on every side until his banner seemed an island in a black, heaving sea.
The lines crashed together with a sound like the ocean in storm. Friend and foe mingled; drivers fell from seats; steeds reared, and elephants screamed. Blades flashed and were lost; the ground was carpeted in gear and bodies; the air thick with shafts whose feathers shone like meteors.
Iron sang and tusks were red,
Drums beat time for Yama’s tread;
Dust rose up like funeral smoke—
Daylight dimmed beneath the stroke.
The Cedis, though valiant, were forced back by the press of the Kaliṅgas and Niṣādas and left Bhīma ringed about. But the son of Pāṇḍu did not yield a step. From the terrace of his car he poured a storm of arrows that stung elephants on the temples and broke the ranks like wind in ripe grain. Then the king of the Kaliṅgas and his son Śakradeva struck at Bhīma from either side with a hail of shafts, and Śakradeva’s arrows slew the white steeds of Vṛkodara’s car.
Standing on a car made still, Bhīma took up a mace of iron and hurled it. The weapon, like a thunderbolt, crushed Śakradeva on the spot—driver, banner, and youthful prince tumbled together upon the earth. The Kaliṅga king, seeing his son fallen, roared in grief and anger, and thousands of cars closed tighter about Bhīma as a noose about a bull.
A father’s cry split helm and heart,
The host drew in to hide the wound;
But wrath in Bhīma’s heaving chest
Made fear take wing from every sound.
Then Vṛkodara cast aside his mace and drew a scimitar bright as lightning, with crescent-knives of gold at his belt. The Kaliṅga king, string rubbing like a viper’s hiss, loosed a snake-bright arrow deadly as poison. Bhīma hewed it in two mid-flight with one sweep of the great blade and shouted so loud the ranks trembled. Fourteen bearded darts came hissing down; he sliced them all to splinters in the air and rushed upon Bhānumat, who met him with a rain of arrows and a lion’s bellow. Bhīma’s answering roar shook the heart; men said in fear, “This is Death, sword in hand.”
Leaping upon Bhānumat’s towering elephant—using its own tusks as steps—Bhīma gained the beast’s back, and with one sweep of his blade split the prince in twain. The elephant screamed; another stroke took its head, and the tusker fell like a cliff-face bitten out by the sea. Vṛkodara sprang clear, mail ringing, and moved through the mêlée like a wheel of fire: riders dragged down by the hair, car-yokes chopped, standards felled, bodies and heads parted clean. He ran, vaulted, feinted, and struck—side-thrusts, upward cuts, a dancer’s whirl with a headsman’s edge—until elephants raged riderless and trampled their own men.
Swords were moons with bloody rain,
Tusks like scythes and bowstrings whined;
Bhīma carved a red-limned lane—
Where he passed, none looked behind.
Then Śrutāyuḥ led the Kaliṅga forefront, and Ketumat pressed him close. The ruler of the Kaliṅgas pierced Bhīma in the breast with nine quick shafts. Stung like a hook-galled elephant, Vṛkodara burned with wrath. Aśoka, best of charioteers, brought up a gold-decked car; Bhīma mounted and, crying “Wait! Wait!” drove at the Kaliṅga king. Nine more arrows struck him; drawing his bow to the ear, the son of Pṛthā answered with seven iron shafts and slew the ruler of the Kaliṅgas outright. Two more shafts dropped the wheel-guards; Satyadeva and Satya followed to Yama’s hall; long, barbed arrows drank Ketumat’s life.
The Kaliṅga kṣatriyas surged again with maces, lances, axes, and scimitars, hemming him round by the hundred. Bhīma sprang from his car, seized his mace, and went among them like a mountain in avalanche. Seven hundred fell beneath that blow, and then two thousand more; the feat amazed both armies. Elephants, their riders cut down, wandered bellowing, trampling the living, staining the earth as clouds stain the sky with storm.
His conch gave forth a wolfish note,
Hearts went cold and hands grew slack;
Minds were lost as in a trance—
Only terror watched his track.
Then Dṛṣṭadyumna’s red standard appeared through dust and smoke, and the son of Pṛṣata sounded his conch with a lion’s cry. Comforted, Bhīma pressed on; Sātyaki, the grandson of Sini, swept up to take the wing of both heroes and scythed the field with his bow. Yudhiṣṭhira followed with a cloud-dark force of elephants; the Pañcāla commander knit the lines and held one flank of Vṛkodara.
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Bhīma by then had made a river run there—its current blood, its banks of broken mail—men calling it “the Kaliṅga-stream.” The cry went up, “Death fights in Bhīma’s shape!” Bhīṣma, son of Śāntanu, hearing the tumult, drove toward the place, ringed round by chosen guards. Sātyaki, Dṛṣṭadyumna, and Bhīma wheeled upon him, each loosing three keen shafts that struck the grandsire’s mail. Devavrata returned three to each and then a thousand more, and with that storm he slew Bhīma’s fresh team of steeds. Vṛkodara hurled a barbed dart at Bhīṣma’s car; the grandsire cut it in two before it touched his banner. Bhīma leapt down with a Saikya-iron mace; Dṛṣṭadyumna whisked him to safety onto his own car before the old lion could pounce; and Sātyaki, to pleasure Bhīma, shot the grandsire’s charioteer through the throat. Free horses bore Bhīṣma from the press like wind-tossed cloud.
Then Bhīma flared again, a bonfire in dry grass, and none on thy side would stand against him. The Pañcālas and Matsyas rallied round, praising him; he embraced Dṛṣṭadyumna and saluted Sātyaki. The Yādava hero laughed and spoke before them both:
“Good fortune, O son of Kuntī! The Kaliṅga king lies low,
And Ketumat, and Śakradeva; their tusker-legions mown.
By the might of thine arms alone a whole proud host is broken—
Their cars, their steeds, their elephants: all fall before thy token.”
So speaking, the long-armed Sātyaki embraced Bhīma upon his car and sped back to the slaughter, making great havoc and strengthening the hands of Vṛkodara as the day wore on.
Sañjaya said:
When the forenoon had waned and the slaughter of cars, elephants, steeds, and men still surged on, the prince of the Pañcālas, Dṛṣṭadyumna, grappled with three mighty bowmen at once—Aśvatthāman, Śalya, and the high-souled Kripa. With keen, bright shafts he struck true and brought down the famed steeds of Droṇa’s son. Aśvatthāman sprang to Śalya’s car and loosed a torrent of arrows at the heir of Pṛṣata.
Abhimanyu, son of Subhadrā, beheld the press and sped in radiant wrath. He smote Śalya with five-and-twenty, Kripa with nine, and Aśvatthāman with eight. They returned in kind—Droṇa’s son stinging the youth with winged shafts; Śalya with twelve; Kripa with three. Then Lakṣmaṇa, Duryodhana’s son, fired with anger, rushed upon his cousin; the princely youths, kin and equals in valor, fenced in a glitter of steel. Lakṣmaṇa shore Abhimanyu’s bow at the grip; the watching ranks cried out. Calmly the son of Arjuna lifted another—stronger, supple, and fair—and the duel blazed anew.
Seeing his child enclosed by circling cars and kings closing from every side, Duryodhana himself turned toward the knot of battle. Chariots crowded round Abhimanyu like reefs about a swimmer, but the boy stood unagitated, equal in poise to Kṛṣṇa himself. Then Dhanañjaya marked his son embattled and, wrath rising, drove for the place to pluck him forth. As he came, the lords of thy host—Bhīṣma and Droṇa at their head, with elephants, horses, and chariots—rolled forward to bar him.
A brown wall of dust climbed suddenly from wheels and hooves, blanketing sky and quarters. But when those kings and thousands of elephants came within the arc of Arjuna’s bow, they halted as men who feel the cliff-edge underfoot. The cries of creatures rose; the quarters darkened; the Kuru sin flowered into its dreadful fruit. Neither welkin nor earth nor sun could be well discerned, so thick fell Kīrīṭin’s arrows.
The noon went blind beneath his rain,
Standards stooped and tusks ran red;
Arms upraised sank back in pain—
Helm and hand fell, severed, dead.
He cut from elephants their high standards; he stripped car-warriors of steeds; chiefs wandered afoot, Angadas flashing on bare forearms, seeking lost drivers in the murk. Men leapt from mounts, drivers loosed their reins, and fled in all directions, for Arjuna’s shafts were a hunting fire through dry grass. Kings toppled from cars and elephants and horses together.
Assuming a terrible countenance, the son of Pṛthā pared back the field: axe-hafts, mace-wrists, sword-hands, javelin grips—upraised arms fell everywhere; hooks, bows, quivers, and standards went spinning into dust. Spiked maces broke to teeth; mallets, darts, and short-bladed arrows clattered in heaps; keen axes and lances, shattered shields and mail, gold-staved umbrellas, goads and whips and traces—heaps upon heaps lay strewn like offerings upon the ground.
The field became a smithy floor—
Fire and iron, clang and cry;
Each stroke a sutra of the war,
Each breath a question asked of sky.
No man of thy army, O King, could endure the heroic Arjuna. Whoso advanced against the son of Pṛthā went down pierced and passed to Yama’s gate. When thy divisions broke and fled, Vāsudeva and Arjuna blew their conches; the blasts rolled like judgment over the plain.
Beholding the Kuru host in rout, thy grandsire smiled sadly and spoke to Bharadvāja’s son in the midst of the clamor: “See, O best of preceptors—this mighty son of Pāṇḍu, Dhanañjaya, with Kṛṣṇa beside him, deals with our troops as none but he can; today he cannot be vanquished by any means. His form is like the Destroyer at the end of the Yuga. Our vast host is past rallying: men flee looking upon one another. The Sun, robbing all eyes of sight, hastens toward Asta. For this, O bull among men, I deem the hour is come for withdrawal. The warriors are tired, panic-struck; they will not fight.”
Having said this to Droṇa, the mighty car-warrior Bhīṣma ordered the drawing off of thy army. And at the sun’s sinking, both hosts withdrew together. Twilight fell upon Kurukṣetra, and the dust settled slowly over the wrecks of chariots, the fallen standards, and the long shadows of the dead.