novelraw Arc 1 - Droṇābhiṣeka Parva - Chapter 8 - Bhagadatta’s End
Arc 1 - Droṇābhiṣeka Parva - Chapter 8 - Bhagadatta’s End
Sañjaya said:
Thou askest me, O mighty-armed king, concerning the deeds of Arjuna in that day’s battle. Listen now, O Dhṛtarāṣṭra, to the tale of Pārtha’s valor.
When the dust rose high as storm-clouds and the wails of warriors shook the sky—while Bhagadatta, lord of the mountain realms, ravaged the ranks—then spoke the son of Kuntī to Keśava, the slayer of Madhu:
“O Mādhava! It seems the lord of the Pragjyotiṣas, proud upon his tusked mount,
Hath driven with tempest might into the field.
This roar that rends the quarters—’tis his sign.
Matchless he is in elephant-war,
A second Indra on his beast,
The first of tusker-lords, untiring, terrible,
Unpierced by any shaft or flame.
His beast alone can shake the host,
And none but we, O flawless one,
Can check his fury on this day.
Turn then thy steeds, O Kṛṣṇa mine,
To where that monarch rends our lines.
Proud in age and swollen with might,
On that same hour shall I dispatch him
To Vṛtra’s slayer, as a guest well-honoured.”
Thus addressed, Vāsudeva turned the reins, guiding the white coursers toward Bhagadatta, even as a cloud is drawn toward the peak it must drench.
But while they went, a new tumult rose: the Samsaptakas—fourteen thousand chariot-warriors, ten thousand of them Narāyaṇa Gopālas once attendants of Kṛṣṇa himself—returned to the field and hemmed Arjuna in.
Seeing the Paṇḍava ranks broken by Bhagadatta’s elephant, yet hearing the challenge of the Samsaptakas, the heart of Pārtha was divided.
He pondered within himself—
“Shall I turn back to strike these sworn foes,
Or fly to the aid of Yudhiṣṭhira?”
Then, gathering his mind like the tightening of a bowstring, he resolved: “First must these Samsaptakas fall.”
Thus did Arjuna, mindful of his vow, defeat the craft of Duryodhana and Karṇa, who had planned this double peril.
Then the hosts of the Samsaptakas loosed upon him thousands of arrows, straight and keen. So dense was that rain that neither Arjuna, nor Kṛṣṇa, nor their steeds, nor even the golden car could be seen, lost beneath the black hail of steel.
Vāsudeva, struck and stifled, swooned and sweated with strain;
Then Pārtha, eyes blazing, invoked the Brahma weapon.
A roar like the birth of fire shook the field;
And in a breath, he annihilated their multitude.
Arms clutching bows and standards, shorn from trunks,
Fell in showers like forest boughs;
Elephants huge as wooded hills,
Riders flung like birds from the sky;
Steeds and men and chariots, sundered,
Covered the ground like drift after a storm.
Arjuna’s arrows were scythes of light;
They shore through sword and mace and axe,
Through neck and wrist and crown.
Fair heads fell shining—
Some red as dawn, some pale as lotus, some moon-white—
All severed clean by Kiritin’s wrath.
Then blazed that host, illumined by his rage,
As though a forest burned at sunset’s hour.
Beholding Dhanañjaya mowing down the Samsaptakas
As an elephant tramples lotus-stalks,
The watchers cried from earth and heaven alike:
“Excellent! Excellent is the son of Pāṇḍu!”
Keśava too, hands joined in wonder, spake—
“Verily, O Pārtha, this feat of thine
None could accomplish—not Śakra,
Nor Yama, nor Kubera, nor the Lord of the Waters.
Hundreds and thousands of the Samsaptaka host
Lie slain beneath thy hand!”
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When the oath-sworn warriors had been destroyed and the field lay silent under his rain of death, then Arjuna turned to Kṛṣṇa once more and said:
“Drive now, O Mādhava—
Turn thy reins to Bhagadatta!”
Thus ended that slaughter, bright as the wrath of the gods,
And the chariot of the two Krishnas sped onward,
Like lightning seeking the heart of a storm.
Sañjaya said:
At Pārtha’s command, Keśava urged his white steeds, swift as thought and clothed in golden mail, toward Droṇa’s furious divisions. The car of Arjuna blazed forth like the midday sun, and the whirl of its wheels seemed to tear the dust from the very earth.
As he sped to aid his brothers, hard pressed by Droṇa’s storm of arrows, Śuśarmā of the Trigartas, with his brothers beside him, followed behind, eager for battle.
Then the ever-victorious son of Kuntī spoke to Kṛṣṇa, his brow darkened with thought:
“O Mādhava of unfading glory, behold this Trigarta prince,
He comes behind me, calling me to battle.
Yet toward the north, Droṇa’s fury breaks our ranks.
My heart, O slayer of foes, wavers between two paths—
To strike these Samsaptakas that harry me,
Or to guard our host now crushed beneath the preceptor’s bow.
Tell me, O Kṛṣṇa, which way is dharma’s road today—
To rescue our kin or to slay these foes who seek my life?”
Thus spoken to, the son of Daśārha turned the car about like a master helmsman steering through storm, and bore Pārtha toward the roaring Trigarta king.
Then Arjuna loosed seven shafts, keen as serpents, at Śuśarmā, cutting off his bow and jeweled standard with a pair of swift arrows. Six more, feathered with golden wings, he shot at the Trigarta princes, and in that instant sent them to Yama’s dark hall.
Śuśarmā, writhing with rage, hurled a dart of iron forged like a serpent at Arjuna, and another, long as a lance, at Vāsudeva. But Pārtha, laughing softly, severed both—three arrows to the dart, three to the lance—and with a shower of keen shafts struck Śuśarmā senseless upon his car.
Then, wheeling suddenly like a storm-cloud loosed from the hills, the son of Indra fell upon thy division, O King, scattering his shafts as Vāsava himself poureth rain. None dared face him. Like fire consuming dry reeds, he swept through the hosts, burning the proudest warriors among the Kurus. None could endure his onset—no more than a mortal could endure the touch of fire.
Thus the son of Pāṇḍu, his wrath a gale of flame, smote down thy ranks until they rocked like a ship dashed upon hidden rocks. Ten thousand bowmen, fierce and resolute, encircled him; yet Arjuna, calm as the mountain, took up that weight as easily as the wind takes dust.
He broke them as a tusked elephant of sixty years rends lotus-stalks by the river. The arrows sang like bees around him; men fell, standards toppled, and the world seemed filled with his thunder.
Then the lord of Pragjyotiṣa, Bhagadatta, towering upon his great elephant Supratika, rushed forth, roaring for battle.
From mountain height to chariot-floor
They met—two warriors, dread of yore:
The elephant rolled like a cloud in storm,
The chariot blazed with golden form.
Bhagadatta, like Indra upon Airāvata, loosed arrows from his moving cloud. But Dhanañjaya, that lion among men, met each shaft mid-air, shattering them before they struck.
The king of the mountainous lands, baffling the streams of Partha’s bow, turned his wrath on both the heroes and drenched Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna alike in a ceaseless rain of iron. Then, with voice like a drum of doom, he urged his beast onward—its tusks wet with ichor, its eyes red with fury—straight at the car of the two Krishnas.
Seeing Death itself advance, Janārdana veered the chariot left, keeping the tusker always to his flank. Yet though Arjuna could have slain it from behind, he refrained, remembering the code of righteous battle.
But the maddened beast, thundering onward, crushed elephants, steeds, and cars alike in its path, sending them to the halls of Yama.
Beholding this butchery, Dhanañjaya’s wrath blazed forth like the fire that ends the age.
His eyes were the red of dawn’s first light,
His bow was thunder in darkened night;
Against the mountain-beast he stood—
A tempest caged within mortal blood.
Sañjaya said:
When Pārtha and Keśava met Bhagadatta upon the field, all creatures gazed upon them as two beings standing on the brink of Death’s open jaws. The earth trembled; the air was thick with the hiss of arrows.
From the neck of his elephant, that mountain-like beast, the king of the Pragjyotiṣas showered down volleys of iron shafts, dark as serpents, their feathers of gold, their tips whetted upon stone. They fell upon the two Krishnas like meteors, hissing through the air, and each that touched Vāsudeva passed clean through him, entering the ground beyond—as if the earth herself drank the venom meant for the gods.
Then Arjuna, calm amid the storm, cut down Bhagadatta’s mighty bow and slew with a single arrow the guard who fought beside the elephant’s flank. Smiling faintly, he took the battle up as though it were play.
The monarch, blazing with fury, hurled fourteen lances, each gleaming like a sunbeam. But Pārtha’s hands moved swifter than sight; each lance was split thrice in air before it fell.
Next the son of Indra sent a storm of arrows that tore away the steel armour sheathing the elephant’s vast sides. Falling in shards upon the earth, it left the beast naked, bleeding, and beautiful like a rainless mountain stripped of its clouds, streaked with crimson streams upon its breast.
Bhagadatta, undaunted, raised a dart of iron decked with gold and cast it at Kṛṣṇa; but Arjuna sheared it apart before it could strike. He cut away the king’s umbrella and banner, then smiling, pierced his foe tenfold with shafts tipped with Kanka feathers. The Pragjyotiṣa king, bleeding, roared aloud and hurled lances straight at Arjuna’s crown; one smote the diadem from his head.
Pārtha caught it up again, set it upon his brow, and said sternly:
“Behold well this world, O Bhagadatta—
For its light shall soon depart from thine eyes!”
Enraged beyond measure, Bhagadatta drew his great bow once more and rained arrows upon both the Pāṇḍava and Govinda. But Arjuna, swift as thought, cut his bow and quiver and pierced his vital limbs with two and seventy shafts. The king, reeling, uttered a cry and, in wrath and pain, spoke mantras over his elephant-goad, turning it into the dread Vaiṣṇava weapon. With a terrible shout, he hurled it straight at Arjuna’s breast.
But then, O King, wondrous was the sight!
Keśava, drawing Arjuna to him, took that divine missile upon his own chest. The all-destroying weapon, blazing with the energy of the Supreme, touched Him—and at once became a garland of triumph resting harmless upon His breast.
Amazed and saddened, Arjuna spoke:
“O Kṛṣṇa! Thou hadst vowed to guide my steeds alone,
Not to lift a hand in war.
Why break thy word?
If I sink, if I falter, then aid me;
But while I stand unbroken,
Why dost Thou bear my foe’s assault?
Know that with my bow and shafts I can subdue
Gods, Asuras, and men alike!”
Smiling gently, the Lord of Dvārakā replied:
“Listen, Pārtha, to a secret old as Time.
I am One in four forms, guarding the worlds.
One dwells on earth in penance deep,
One watches deeds of good and ill,
One walks among men in work,
One sleeps a thousand years in peace.
When that Sleeper wakes, He grants His boons—
And once the earth, in that hour, prayed to Me:
‘Give to my son Nāraka the Vaiṣṇava weapon;
Let him be unslayable by gods or demons.’
So I gave it her, and said:
‘This weapon shall protect him in all the worlds.’
Thus did Bhagadatta inherit it from Nāraka.
None in creation—not Indra, not Rudra—
Could survive its stroke.
For thy sake, O son of Pāṇḍu, I received it upon Myself,
That this mighty foe might be stripped of his defence.
Now he stands bare before thee.
Strike! As I slew Nāraka for the world’s good,
So do thou now slay Bhagadatta, scourge of gods.”
Thus commanded by the high-souled Keśava, Pārtha drew his bow to its full curve. Clouds of whetted arrows leapt forth, covering the sky.
Then with a single long shaft, keen as thunder, he struck between the frontal globes of Supratika, the elephant. The arrow clove the creature’s skull as lightning splits a mountain, sank deep as a serpent into its cave, and stilled its heart. Though Bhagadatta urged it fiercely, the beast obeyed no more. Its limbs stiffened; its eyes rolled white. With a cry like the breaking of worlds, it fell—its tusks digging into the blood-soaked earth.
Then Arjuna, seizing a crescent-headed shaft, shot it through the breast of Bhagadatta himself. The arrow pierced him clean; his hands loosed the bow, his eyes dimmed. The jewelled cloth that bound his crown slipped free and fluttered down like a lotus petal torn by the wind.
The king, his body gleaming with gold garlands and ornaments, toppled from his great elephant like a flowering Kiṃśuka torn from a mountain height.
Thus fell Bhagadatta, who in splendour and prowess had rivalled Indra himself—slain by the son of Indra.
And when he fell, O Dhṛtarāṣṭra, thy army’s hope was broken, Even as a forest is shorn by the tempest of Time.