novelraw Arc 3 - Jayadhratha-Vadha Parva - Chapter 5 - Vāsudeva’s Skill as a Charioteer
Arc 3 - Jayadhratha-Vadha Parva - Chapter 5 - Vāsudeva’s Skill as a Charioteer
Sañjaya said:
“When the sun bent westward toward the summit of the Asta hills, when dust curtained the welkin and the blaze of noon grew mild, the day began to fade. Some warriors paused for breath, some wheeled again to strike, and some returned to the mêlée with victory in their mouths. Amid that shifting surge, Arjuna and Vāsudeva pressed toward the Sindhu-lord’s refuge.
With shafts hewing a path through men and mail, the son of Kuntī opened a way broad enough for the chariot—Janārdana guiding the reins like a dancer of the winds. Wherever the car of Pārtha drove, thy ranks, O king, broke of themselves, leaving a sudden corridor in terror. Keśava showed his craft in the circle and counter-circle, while the arrows of Arjuna—engraved with his name, iron-ribbed or knotted from split bamboo, straight as a vow and swift as thought—drank with the carrion birds the blood of the living.
“Far sped the shafts beyond the car,
A league ahead their harvest lay;
The wheels came after, scarred with war—
Death reached the spot before the day.”
Hr̥ṣīkeśa urged the steeds, yoke-bearing and keen, with a speed to shame Garuḍa’s flight; the worlds beheld and wondered. Neither Sūrya’s car nor Rudra’s nor Vaiśravaṇa’s had ever moved so fast in battle as Arjuna’s car, that sped like a wish made manifest. Yet, when they reached the press of shattered cars, dead elephants like black hills, and tangled harness, the noble horses—wounded, thirsty, famished—laboured, still describing bright circles as they climbed the wreckage of war.
Then Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti, exulting to see the white steeds flag, moved in with their force. They smote Arjuna with four and sixty barbs, Vāsudeva with seventy, and the four steeds with a hundred more. Roused, Pārtha marked their vital points and with nine straight shafts struck them both to the quick. The brothers roared like lions, cloaking Pārtha and Keśava in a new storm of steel.
Pārtha of the white steeds flashed out two keen broadheads and lopped their golden standards and fair bows; the Avanti lords caught fresh bows in fury—and Pārtha sheared those also. Then with a handful of gold-winged arrows he slew their steeds, their charioteers, and the rear-guard that shielded them. A single razor-edge took Vinda’s head; the hero fell like a wind-broken tree.
Anuvinda leapt down, grasped a mace, and advanced, careering like a dancer upon a thunder-drum. He struck Vāsudeva full upon the brow; Keśava trembled not, firm as Maināka. Then Arjuna’s six swift shafts cut neck, arms, and legs—the warrior fell in pieces, hill by hill. Their followers rushed howling; Pārtha burned them like a winter fire through dry cane and leaf. Shining beyond the press, he rose like the sun breaking cloud, and though thy men quailed, they rallied in a ring, roaring from every side when they marked his weariness and knew Jayadratha still lay far.
“Ring him round and shout him down—
So thought thy lords with iron breath;
But vows are spears and dharma crown,
And one man’s wrath is legion’s death.”
Smiling, the bull among men spoke softly to Dāśārha’s scion: “Our horses are spent and arrow-sore; the Sindhu-lord is yet afar. What thinkest thou is best?” Keśava answered, “What thou hast judged, I judge.” Pārtha said, “I will hold the host; do thou tend to what must next be done.”
Then Dhanañjaya sprang from the car-terrace with Gāṇḍīva in hand and stood upon the earth like an unmoving hill. Beholding him afoot, thy Kṣatriyas thought it fortune’s hour—shouting for victory, they ringed him round with cars and loosed a deluge of arrows.
But Pārtha, wrath-lit, met all weapons with his own and veiled them in returning fire, till the very clash of shafts in mid-heaven engendered sparks like a storm of meteors. The air grew hot with bellows of elephants, snorts of blood-caked steeds, the beat of drums and conchs; and that wide, unfordable ocean of cars—arrows for its current, standards for its eddies, elephants for crocodiles, footmen as fishes beyond number, head-crests for tortoises, umbrellas for froth, dead tuskers for sunken rocks—was stemmed by Pārtha as the shore holds back the sea.
“He stood—the continent of will—
While all thy ocean hurled its foam;
His bow the cliff, his shafts the hill,
And every wave broke short at home.”
Then Janārdana, dear to Arjuna, spoke: “There is no well for the steeds, O Pārtha; they need water to drink, not a bath.” Pārtha laughed gently: “Here it is.” He drove a weapon into the earth; from that wound welled a lake—clear, fathom-deep, broad as mercy—where swans and ducks seemed to alight, and chakravākas floated upon blooming lotus-crowns. Fish flashed in the lucid water; sages were said to make it their sudden resort; and Nārada himself came sky-borne to behold the wonder wrought in a single breath.
And even as the horses drank, the son of Pāṇḍu raised beside them an arrow-hall—rafters of arrows, pillars of arrows, roof of arrows—fashioned swift and sure as if Tvaṣṭṛ had returned from heaven to ply his art upon the plain.
“From earth he called a river bright,
From air he built a sheltered dome;
And Keśava, beholding, cried
‘Excellent!’—the smile of Hari’s home.”
Thus refreshed and shielded, they made ready once more for the road of vow, while the sun sank lower and the shadow of Arjuna’s oath stretched long upon the field.”
Sañjaya said:
“After the high-souled son of Kuntī had brought forth the lake from the earth, and after he had built his hall of arrows and checked the tide of foes, then did Vāsudeva, that radiant lord, descend from the chariot. Unyoking with his own hands the four steeds, pierced and bleeding, he tended them gently amidst the fury of battle.
When that wonder, unseen in any age, was beheld—heroes unyoking their steeds in the heart of war—there arose a tumult of praise. The Siddhas and Cāraṇas chanted in the sky, and even the warriors of both hosts broke into murmurs of awe. For though throngs of elephants, chariots, and horsemen bore down upon him, the son of Pāṇḍu stood fearless, fighting alone on foot—unshaken as a mountain amid storm.
The kings shot dense showers of shafts; maces, lances, and darts fell upon him as rivers upon the sea, but Pārtha received them all within the vastness of his bow. Alone he baffled a multitude, as one fault—avarice—destroys a host of virtues.
“The sea takes rivers without a sigh,
So Pārtha met each storm that came;
The storm was spent, the tide rolled high,
And silence bowed before his name.”
Even the Kauravas, struck by wonder, praised him and Keśava aloud: “Never before has the world seen such a deed—these two, in the midst of foes, unyoking their steeds! Fierce in energy, calm in spirit, they have turned battle into revelation.”
Then Hr̥ṣīkeśa, eyes cool and lotus-like, smiled softly—as though seated among maidens, not armed men. In full sight of the Kuru host, he led the tired steeds into that gleaming hall of arrows. There, with his own divine hands, he plucked forth their barbs, cleansed their wounds, rubbed their trembling flanks, and soothed their pain. He walked them gently till they trotted sound again; then he gave them drink from the new-born lake and, their thirst and hurt dispelled, yoked them once more to the golden car.
“The Lord of Yoga, soft of hand,
Drew pain from bone and blood and brand;
The steeds revived, the air grew still,
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And faith awoke on Kurukṣetra’s hill.”
Then the two Krishnas—warrior and guide—mounted again, radiant in mail, and the chariot sped forth with a blaze like dawn’s own chariot. But seeing it newly yoked, gleaming once more with strength, the foremost Kuru warriors grew pale and sighed like serpents robbed of their fangs.
“Fie upon us!” they cried. “Behold them—those scourges of kings—depart again together, slaying our host as boys break their toys! In our sight they go unhindered, while our arms and shouts avail nothing.” Others shouted to their peers, “Haste! Pursue! Slay Keśava and Arjuna before they reach Jayadratha! See, the Dāśārha hero yokes his steeds before our eyes and rides unopposed!”
And among the lords of earth some said to one another: “Alas, through Duryodhana’s folly the whole race of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, the Kṣatriyas, and the world itself are ruined! He knows not his own destruction.” Others whispered grimly, “Jayadratha is already slain—his hour is past. The blind king’s son, unseeing, brings his realm to ruin.”
Meanwhile, the son of Pāṇḍu beheld the sun hastening toward the western hills, and urged his steeds on with renewed fire. Swift as the Destroyer in wrath, he broke through the Kaurava ranks; none could resist his advance.
“The wind obeyed his chariot’s cry,
The sky was rent, the dust was flame;
Lions fled, and deer did die—
Such was the path of Arjuna’s name.”
Routed like deer before a lion, the host quailed as he swept through their ranks. Keśava urged the steeds faster, his conch Pāñcajanya thundering like a storm-cloud over the slain. The shafts that Pārtha had loosed ahead fell behind him now—so swift were those steeds that had drunk from his lake.
Then many kings, aflame with fury, closed in around him; Duryodhana himself followed close, seeking to bar his path. Yet when the Kaurava host beheld that car—its banner bearing the ape roaring in the wind, its wheels singing like thunder, its radiance veiled in battle’s dust—they lost all heart. The sun was dimmed by the haze of war, the air choked with arrows and cries, and the Kurus, scorched by those two, could no longer lift their eyes.
“The ape-bannered car rolled on like fire,
The dust rose up to hide the sun;
And men beheld, through smoke and ire,
The death of Sindhu’s haughty son.”
Sañjaya said:
“O Monarch, when Vāsudeva and Dhanañjaya, the two invincible Krishnas, burst through the heart of thy host—piercing many mighty divisions—thy kings fled in terror like deer at the roar of a lion. Yet soon, shamed by flight and stung by wrath, those high-souled warriors gathered themselves again and pressed on toward Pārtha.
But alas, O king, whosoever rushed in fury against the son of Pāṇḍu returned no more—like rivers that, having reached the ocean, return not to their source. Seeing this, many of thy ignoble Kṣatriyas turned from the field, courting sin and infamy, as faithless men turn from the Vedas.
At length, transgressing that ocean of chariots, those two bulls among men broke out upon the farther side. Freed from the tangle of Drona’s net, they shone like the sun and the moon emerging from Rāhu’s shadow.
“The net was rent, the stars released,
Two fires blazed forth through storm and steel;
The world beheld, its breath decreased—
For might had broken Drona’s seal.”
Having cleft that impenetrable array, where showers of weapons had fallen thick as monsoon rain, they looked like twin suns of the Yuga rising in wrath upon the sky. And having passed through the tempest of arrows, they themselves filled the air with a storm of their own, clouding the heavens as though two beings had escaped a burning world. Like two makaras stirring the deep, they agitated thy host with their motion and their light.
Before, thy sons had deemed it impossible that the two Krishnas could ever break free from the grasp of Drona and the guard of Hṛdika’s son. But when they saw those heroes, their wounds streaming yet their faces bright, issue from that terrible division, hope died within them. No man, O king, believed Jayadratha could live the hour out.
Then, while pressing on through the ruins of the host, the two heroes spoke together, their words low but fierce as thunder before rain.
Arjuna said:
“Six of the foremost Kaurava lords encircle this Jayadratha. Yet if once he stands within my sight, he shall not escape. Though Indra himself descend with all the celestials for his guard, still will I slay him.”
Thus the two Krishnas spoke—Dhanañjaya with vow unshaken, Keśava with steady rein—seeking the Sindhu lord. Hearing their purpose, thy sons wailed aloud in despair.
Refreshed as two mighty elephants after finding water in the desert, beyond death and toil they moved on—like merchants safe across a mountain pass filled with lions and tigers. Their faces, flushed red with wrath and light, seemed dreadful to behold; and thy men, seeing them thus, regarded Jayadratha as already slain.
Freed from Drona—who was like a serpent of deadly venom or a fire that consumes forests—they shone as twin suns released from eclipse. Joy lit their forms, like men who have crossed a swelling sea. From that dense rain of weapons and from the walls guarded by Drona and Kṛtavarman, Keśava and Arjuna emerged like blazing Indra and Agni themselves.
“Blood ran bright on arm and crest,
Karnikāra blooms upon the breast;
They strode, two mountains crowned with flame—
And death went whispering each their name.”
Having forded that vast lake of war—where Drona was the alligator, darts the serpents, shafts the makaras, and kings the deep waters—they came forth shining. Escaped from that thunder-cloud of arrows, whose lightning was swords and whose thunder was bow-string and palm, they looked like sun and moon bursting from storm.
All creatures beheld them as two who had crossed, with their own arms, the five great rivers—the Satadru, Vipāśā, Ravi, Chandrabhāga, and Vitastā—when flooded to the brim. Casting their gaze on Jayadratha, not far ahead, they resembled tigers sighting a tender deer. The hue of their faces, blazing with resolve, made thy warriors cry out that the Sindhu king was dead already.
Their eyes were red with wrath; their forms terrible and divine. Together they roared with joy at the sight of Jayadratha, and the splendour of Keśava, reins in hand, beside Arjuna with his bow, was like that of blazing fire beside the rising sun.
“Twin lights they seemed, the earth did shake,
As hawks that see the morsel take;
They stooped on Sindhu’s trembling lord—
The hour had come, the oath was sword.”
Beholding them thus, Duryodhana, clad in armour fastened by Drona’s own hand, skilled in guiding steeds and filled with the fire of defence, spurred forth alone to shield the Sindhu king. He drove swiftly, passing between the two Krishnas, facing Keśava of the lotus eyes.
Then, O king, a cry rose through thy host: drums beat, conchs blared, and voices shouted in fierce acclaim as Duryodhana rode to meet them. Those other heroes, blazing like fires, rejoiced too, beholding thy son standing against the two Krishnas.
But seeing Duryodhana thus rush past, Keśava of the mighty heart smiled and spoke unto Arjuna words suited to that moment, as the sun dipped low and destiny approached.”
Sañjaya said:
Then Vāsudeva, whose wisdom was as deep as the sea, beheld the Kaurava king racing before them upon his chariot and said unto Dhanañjaya with calm and shining eyes:
“Behold, O Pārtha, this Suyodhana who hath dared to overpass us!
Wonderful indeed is his courage, and fierce his skill.
None among men can easily vanquish him,
For he is a mighty bowman, long-armed, and firm in the science of war.
His shafts fly far, his hand never trembles,
His heart knows not fear, nor his mind weariness.”
“Brought up amid the softness of wealth, yet hardened by pride, he ever hateth you and yours. Therefore, O sinless one, it is meet that thou shouldst fight with him now. Upon this one man hangs the fortune of the Kurus, even as the stake upon the board of dice. Pour forth, O son of Pāṇḍu, the venom of thy long-cherished wrath upon him. He is the very root of all thy woes—the cause of Draupadī’s insult, of the cheated dice, of exile and despair.
See, he standeth within reach of thy shafts—by fortune’s own decree! Why hath this prince, greedy for rule, come within the circle of thy bow? By grace of destiny alone he faces thee today. Smite him, O Partha, as Purandara smote Vṛtra in the battle of the gods.
“The time is ripe, the hour is thine,
The fruit long-sealed is set for fall;
Strike now, O bowman of the line,
And end the grief that shadowed all.”
He hath never known the sting of want, nor the weight of remorse. Deluded by affluence, swollen with pride, he deemeth himself thy equal. Yet not the three worlds—the celestials, Asuras, and men together—could stand before thee in the field. What need be said, then, of this one king? By good fortune, he is now before thee. Slay him, O mighty-armed one, even as Indra slew Jambha, and cut at last the root of this wretched brood. Let this long war find its avabhṛtha, its ritual end, through his fall.”
Thus addressed by Keśava, Pārtha bowed his head slightly and replied with eyes like lightning:
“So be it, O Mādhava.
Even this will I do.
Drive me straight to where Duryodhana stands!
The kingdom that he hath devoured in deceit,
The honour he hath soiled in Draupadī’s hair—
For all these, I will have his head.
Let the bowstring sing his requiem.”
Thus the two Krishnas, joy burning bright in their hearts, urged forward the white steeds once more, eager to reach the Kaurava prince. And Duryodhana, beholding them approach like storm and flame, felt no fear. For pride stood in his breast like armour of iron.
The Kaurava warriors cheered him loudly; conchs were blown, drums beaten, and a shout rose: “The king faces Pārtha!” Beholding him oppose their advance, Arjuna’s anger blazed, and Duryodhana’s too flared in answer—two fires feeding each other. The hosts on every side turned their eyes toward them, awed by the meeting of the wrathful.
Then thy son, smiling as lions smile before the leap, challenged them aloud, while both Keśava and Arjuna, like twin suns, laughed in reply and blew their conchs—Pāñcajanya and Devadatta—till the heavens quaked.
“The white conch sang, the red earth shook,
The wind itself forgot to roam;
And men beheld, with trembling look,
The fire that walks to claim its home.”
Seeing those two radiant heroes so serene amid wrath, the Kauravas lost all hope of Duryodhana’s life. Even their own hearts whispered, “The king is slain.”
But thy son, unshaken, cried out to his trembling host:
“Fear not! I will send these two Krishnas to the halls of Death. Let your hearts be steady.”
Then, swelling with false confidence, he turned to Pārtha and spoke harshly amid the roaring of drums:
“If, O Pārtha, thou art truly the son of Pāṇḍu,
Then waste no time—
Use every weapon thou and Keśava know,
Celestial or mortal—
Hurl them all at me!
I would see the manliness thou boastest of,
The feats sung by tongues that never saw thy hand.
Show me, O conqueror of words,
The deeds that win the world’s applause!”
So spoke Duryodhana, his voice loud as thunder before the storm of fate— and the two Krishnas, calm as gods who know the end, shone brighter yet, their purpose fixed like destiny herself.