novelraw Arc 4 - Ghaṭotkacha-Vadha Parva - Chapter 3 - Aśvatthāman’s Fury
Arc 4 - Ghaṭotkacha-Vadha Parva - Chapter 3 - Aśvatthāman’s Fury
Sañjaya said:
Seeing his maternal uncle reviled by the Sūta’s son, Aśvatthāman’s hand leapt to his scimitar. In the very sight of the Kuru king he bounded forward, like a lion springing for an enraged elephant.
Aśvatthāman cried:
Base tongue that bites a Brahman’s fame,
Thou mock’st the elder’s stainless name.
When Gaṇḍīva sang and Jayadratha died,
Where was thy bow, where all thy pride?
The gods with Asuras could not bind
The fire of Pārtha’s archer-mind;
Yet thou wouldst boast to fell that star—
Come, Sūta’s son, and learn how far!
He rushed; but the king of the Kurus and the quiet-hearted Kṛpa seized him fast. Karṇa laughed a little and said, “Loose him, O monarch; let him feel the weight he questions.” Aśvatthāman, reining his wrath, answered coldly, “This fault of thine we forgive—Phālguna will chasten thy pride.”
Duryodhana, touching the warrior’s arm, spoke gently: “Lay anger aside, O best of Brahmanas. A great burden rests on thee—on Droṇa, on Karṇa, on Kṛpa, on Śalya, on Suvala’s son. The Pāṇḍavas come roaring for Radha’s child; forgive and stand.”
Thus pacified, Aśvatthāman mastered the flame within. Kṛpa, mild as moonlight, returned to Karṇa with the same quiet reproof: “We forgive; yet Pārtha’s shaft will school this surge of words.”
Then the Pāṇḍavas and Pāñcālas, famed for prowess, poured in by thousands with leonine shouts. Karṇa, ringed by Kuru lords and glorious as Śakra amidst the gods, stood ready—bow drawn, trusting in his two arms. A dreadful battle sprang up, tremoring with roars.
“Where is Karṇa?”—“There!—Ho, Radha’s son!”—“Face us, thou root of this evil!” The allied kings, urged on by Yudhiṣṭhira, swept against him in a storm of steel. Karṇa did not tremble. He raised a cloud of arrows that darkened the field and met the surge on all sides. The Pāṇḍavas, shaking hundreds and thousands of bows, fought him like the Daityas of old against Maghavan. But Karṇa, with a denser rain of his own, split and scattered their volleys, engraving his name on yokes and axles, on umbrellas and harness, on cars and horses with barbed memorial. Kings strayed like cattle in a frost, their coolness fled. Steeds and elephants and car-lords dropped where they stood. The plain wore severed heads for stones and arms for roots, and with the moan of the dying became Yama’s antechamber.
Duryodhana, drunk with triumph, rode to Aśvatthāman: “Behold Radha’s son—see how the foe buckles, as Asuras under Kārttikeya! But yonder comes Vibhatsu, wrath like world’s-end. Ward him off, lest he fell our champion before our eyes!” At once Aśvatthāman, with Kṛpa and Śalya and Hṛdika’s son, moved to screen Karṇa—while the diademed Arjuna, followed by the Pāñcālas, drove like Purandara at Vṛtra.
Dhṛtarāṣṭra said:
“O Sūta, my Karṇa has ever challenged Phālguna. When the Destroyer-faced Arjuna rushed, what did Vikartana’s son do?”
Sañjaya said:
Karna took him head-on, fearlessly—elephant to elephant. Arjuna feathered him first: straight shafts with gold-bright wings. Karṇa answered in kind; Pārtha closed again with clouds of arrows. The Sūta’s son, stung to speed, planted three keen shafts in Arjuna’s frame. The Pāṇḍava smiled, could not brook the deftness; thirty whetted arrows rang on Karṇa’s mail, and one long shaft, laughing, kissed the left wrist. Karṇa’s bow fell. In the blink of rage he snatched it up again and smothered Phālguna with steel. Arjuna smiled once more and broke that storm mid-fall.
Two tuskers met in rut and rain;
The earth took imprint of their strain;
The night forgot to breathe between—
So fierce their dance, so bright their sheen.
Then Pārtha, marking the instant, sheared Karṇa’s bow at the grip. With broad-headed razors he sent the four white steeds to Yama’s gate and struck the charioteer’s neck from the trunk. Bowless, steedless, driverless, Karṇa took four wounds more; then sprang to Kṛpa’s car. Thy warriors broke and fled; Duryodhana himself rode among them crying, “Stand! I will slay Pārtha—hold and see my tempest!” He spurred forward with eyes blood-red.
Kṛpa caught Aśvatthāman by the hand: “Stop the king. A moth will not survive the lamp. Keep him from Gaṇḍīva’s range.” Aśvatthāman sped and barred Duryodhana’s path: “While I live, O son of Gāndhārī, thou needst not storm the fire thyself. I shall check Pārtha—stand here.”
Duryodhana, bitter through weariness and wound, murmured: “The preceptor ever shields the sons of Pāṇḍu; thou likewise seldom grow’st terrible against them. Is it love for Yudhiṣṭhira—or for Draupadī—that cools thy wrath? Fie upon my greed that lays my friends in grief! Yet if any hand can hew the Pāñcālas, it is thine—born, the seers said, to end that race. Go then, tiger among men! The Somakas and Pāñcālas flame through my troops like a forest-fire. Quench them—else, under the diademed one’s guard, we are undone. Even gods with Vāsava shrink before thy weapons; what then the Pāṇḍavas and Pāñcālas? Hasten!”
Aśvatthāman bowed without a word;
His glance was iron, calm and sword.
He turned where standards bled and blew—
And Destiny’s thread pulled taut anew.
Sañjaya said:
Thus urged by Duryodhana, the son of Droṇa—hard to defeat as the god of storm himself—set his heart to destroy the foe, like Indra bent upon the Daityas’ ruin. He answered the Kuru prince with plain truth and iron will:
“Even so, O descendant of Kuru: the Pāṇḍavas are dear to my father and to me, and we to them—save in battle. There we strive without fear, measuring might with might and wagering life upon the bowstring. Know this also, O king: if I, and Karṇa, and Śalya, and Kṛpa, and Hṛdika’s son stood not upon this field, the Pāṇḍava host would shatter thee in an eyeblink—
even as, without us, we could in an eyeblink break theirs. Energy meets energy; each cancels each. So long as Pāṇḍu’s sons live, their army will not be vanquished. They are strong, and they fight for their own cause. Why should they not slay thy men?
“But thou, O Bharata, art covetous and suspicious; in thy doubt thou wrongest even us. Think me wicked if thou must—yet I go, to spend my life for thee. I will scorch the Pañchālas, the Somakas, the Kāikeyas, the Pāṇḍyas; I will make Yudhiṣṭhira’s heart like winter’s sun, beholding Aśvatthāmans everywhere. Whoever comes within my reach—him I strike down.”
So vowed the preceptor’s lion-born;
He shook his crest of wrath and scorn.
The bows began their midnight hymn—
And stars grew iron, cold, and dim.
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Advancing, the son of Droṇa cried to the Pañchālas and Kāikeyas: “O lords of cars, strike at me—coolly, swiftly—show your hands!” The kings poured weapons like monsoon rain; he broke the storm and slew ten foremost warriors before the eyes of Dhṛṣṭadyumna and the sons of Pāṇḍu. The Pañchālas and Somakas, thus battered, turned and fled.
Then Dhṛṣṭadyumna, son of the Pañchāla king, ringed by a hundred uncompromising cars with wheels that thundered like charged clouds, drove upon Aśvatthāman and cried, “O foolish son of the preceptor, why hew the common stock? If thou art hero, strike at me! Do not fly; I slay thee here!”
Swift and terrible, his arrows ran in a shining file—gold-winged, heart-seeking—entering Aśvatthāman like wild bees entering a flowering tree. Pierced and rising in anger like a trodden serpent, the preceptor’s son said: “Wait, Dhṛṣṭadyumna—presently I send thee to Yama!”
Vow answered vow; their bow-circles flamed,
Each called for death, each deathward aimed;
The dark grew thick with iron rain—
Where life was loss and loss was gain.
Aśvatthāman mantled the Pañchāla prince with shafts from every quarter; Dhṛṣṭadyumna, staunch and still, returned the fire. “Thou knowest not my vow,” he said. “Having first slain Droṇa, I will not slay thee while he yet lives. When dawn uncloses, I strike thy sire—and after him, thee. Till then, keep thy hatred warm and thy fealty to the Kurus bright: thou shalt not escape me alive. A Brāhmaṇa who forsakes his law to take a Kṣatra’s craft is slayable by all Kṣatriyas—even as thou.”
Stung by those harsh and cutting words, Aśvatthāman gathered his fury and hissed, “Wait!” His gaze seemed fire. Sighing like a snake, he smothered Dhṛṣṭadyumna in another rain of barbed night. The Pañchāla hero—best of car-warriors—stood unshaken amid his host and answered shaft with shaft; and so they gambled for life, stake for stake, neither enduring the other’s pride.
Their arrows wove a blinded sky;
The drums were waves that would not die;
Two tuskers clashed in forest gloom—
And hearts beat time to promised doom.
Shouts burst; conches blared; a hundred thousand instruments clamored. For a time the fight ran even, terror-bright. Then Aśvatthāman surged—shearing Dhṛṣṭadyumna’s bow, his standard, his umbrella, striking down both rear-guards, his chief charioteer, and the four steeds that bore him. The Pañchālas broke like dry reeds; in hundreds and thousands they fled, their banners torn.
Like Vāsava clad in storming flame
He strode, and none could spell his name;
A hundred fell to a hundred darts—
And three great chiefs to three pierced hearts.
Before Drupada’s son and Arjuna’s gaze, he hewed down leaders of the Pañchālas; the Pañchālas and Śṛñjayas fled dismayed, leaving the preceptor’s son alone in the open dark. Then, having scattered foes like chaff, Aśvatthāman roared—a cloud at summer’s end—and stood resplendent, a Yuga-fire that has eaten its fill.
Applause rose from the Kaurava ranks; the sky-ways thronged with unseen witnesses. The preceptor’s son shone with victory— and yet, O King, beneath that blaze the night held still its secret hinge, for fate had further reckonings to close before the dawn.
Sañjaya said:
Then king Yudhiṣṭhira, firm in virtue, and Bhīmasena of dreadful strength, hemmed in Droṇa’s son on every side. Beholding this encirclement, Duryodhana, with the aid of Bharadvāja’s mighty heir, charged upon the Pāṇḍavas.
Then burst a battle fierce and appalling, a grinding storm that thickened the hearts of the timid. Yudhiṣṭhira, angered beyond measure, loosed his arrows like flaming vows, sending multitudes of Āmvaṣṭhas, Mālavas, Vaṅgas, Śivis, and Trigartas to the realm of Yama. Bhīma, with his iron arms, smote down the Abhiṣāhas and the Sūrasenas, making the red earth run like a river of blood.
The diadem-decked Arjuna, driving his white steeds as clouds before lightning, swept through the ranks of the Yaudheyas, Madrakas, and mountaineers, filling the field with the ruin of his shafts. Elephants, pierced with swift and slender darts, reeled like twin-peaked hills struck by thunder. The plain, strewn with severed trunks that still writhed in death, seemed a living carpet of serpents.
Umbrellas of kings, rimmed with gold, lay fallen and flashing; they turned the field into a false firmament—its suns, moons, and stars the trophies of the slain.
About Droṇa’s car a roar arose—“Strike! Slay! Pierce! Cut asunder!”—and through that tempest the preceptor, aflame with wrath, loosed the Vāyavya weapon. His arrows swept like storm-winds over the plain, driving the Pañchālas before him as a tempest drives cloud-banks to tatters.
Fleeing in fear, they rushed past Bhīma and the high-souled Pārtha. But those two lions of men checked the rout; calling to their warriors, they turned again upon Droṇa’s sea of steel.
Vibhatsu struck on the right, Vṛkodara on the left; from their bows poured twin deluges of arrows that hemmed the son of Bharadvāja round in ceaseless lightning. Behind them came the Sṛñjayas and Pañchālas, the Matsyas and Somakas, eager and thundering in their wake.
Against them, from the Kaurava ranks, surged many chiefs—lords of cars, seasoned and valorous—forming a wall about their teacher.
The host of Bhārata, slaughtered by Arjuna’s burning rain and smothered by the deepening dark, began to crumble. Droṇa and Duryodhana both strove to rally them, but panic had no leash.
That vast sea of men broke and scattered like foam beneath a mountain gale; kings fled in terror, abandoning elephants, chariots, and steeds. The twilight wrapped them; the smoke of slaughter mingled with the falling night.
And the earth, trembling under the tread of the living and the fall of the dead, seemed herself to sigh— as though weary of bearing both sin and valor upon her breast.
Sañjaya said:
Beholding Somadatta shaking his mighty bow, Sātyaki—the lion of the Vṛṣṇis—spoke to his charioteer in wrathful joy:
“Drive me toward him, O Sūta. Verily, I shall not return from this field without slaying that wretch of the Kurus, the son of Vālhīka. Today the blood of Somadatta shall moisten the dust of Kurukṣetra.”
Thus urged, the charioteer lashed forth those Sindhu steeds—white as conch-shell, fleet as the mind itself, wind-quick and untiring. Bearing Yuyudhāna, they shone like the four chargers of Indra when he went forth to crush the Dānavas of old.
Somadatta, beholding him approach like a storm, turned fearlessly to meet him. Then from his great bow he poured a rain of shafts, veiling the Sātvata hero as clouds hide the sun. Sātyaki answered with his own deluge of arrows, golden-feathered and sharp as flame, till both were hidden in whirling dust.
As springtime trees ablaze with bloom,
They stood amid that field of doom;
Their blood was blossom, their arrows fire—
Two Kinsukas lit by warrior’s ire.
Each struck the other, breast and arm and flank, till both glittered like porcupines in the moonlight—bodies bright with shafts whose feathers burned like fireflies. Like rival clouds circling the same sky, they coursed their cars in furious circles, thundering as they loosed their storms.
Then Somadatta, seizing an instant of calm, cut off Sātyaki’s bow with a crescent-tipped arrow. Swiftly, while speed was life, he pierced the grandson of Sini with five-and-twenty shafts, and again with ten more. Sātyaki smiled and seized another bow, hard and beautiful, and with five keen arrows struck Somadatta in the breast. With a broad-headed shaft he clove the Kuru’s golden standard, which fluttered down like a fallen sunbeam.
Furious at that sight, Somadatta pierced the Vṛṣṇi hero with five-and-twenty arrows; but Sātyaki, laughing in disdain, cut off his bow and pierced him with a hundred shafts that fell upon his armor like a golden rain. Taking up another bow, the son of Vālhīka answered fiercely. Arrow met arrow, and both were mantled in flame-like showers.
Then Bhīma, coming to Sātyaki’s aid, smote the Kuru warrior with ten shafts. Somadatta, undaunted, turned his fury on Bhīmasena and covered him with countless arrows. But Sātyaki, rising in wrath, drew forth a new weapon—a terrible parigha of iron, gold-staffed and thunder-hard. He hurled it at Somadatta’s chest with a roar.
The Kuru prince, smiling, cleft that rushing mace in twain; the broken halves fell like mountain peaks split by lightning. Instantly Sātyaki, swift as thought, cut off Somadatta’s bow again, then his finger-guard, his four steeds, and the head of his charioteer. At last he drew one terrible arrow, stone-whetted, oil-hardened, gold-winged and flaming like Garuḍa’s flight, and shot it straight at Somadatta’s heart.
That arrow struck deep, and the son of Vālhīka fell lifeless, his body crashing upon the car like a torn banner dropping from heaven. The field grew silent a moment; then the Kaurava host howled like wolves robbed of their leader and rushed upon Yuyudhāna from all sides.
Meanwhile, O King, the Pāṇḍavas, led by the Prabhadrakas, pressed toward Droṇa’s division. Yudhiṣṭhira, burning with wrath, struck and scattered Bharadvāja’s host before the eyes of the preceptor himself.
Droṇa, eyes red with fury, wheeled upon him. Seven arrows flew from his bow, piercing the son of Dharma; Yudhiṣṭhira answered with five in return. Stung and bleeding, Droṇa licked his lips and cut down both the king’s bow and standard in a single flash. But Yudhiṣṭhira, calm in peril, seized another bow and loosed a thousand shafts that struck Droṇa’s car, steeds, driver, and flag.
Arrows flashed like meteors chained,
Each cry of pain by courage drained;
The Brahman bull, in anger bowed,
Rose wrathful as a thundercloud.
Droṇa, dizzy with wounds, sat for a moment upon his car, then, sighing like a serpent, invoked the Vāyavya weapon. But Yudhiṣṭhira, fearless, countered it with one of equal power and shivered Droṇa’s bow in twain.
The preceptor grasped another; the son of Dharma cleft that too. Then Vāsudeva, wise and watchful, spoke aloud:
“O son of Kuntī, cease this fight. Droṇa strives only to seize thee. He is not thy foe to slay; another is born for his destruction. Turn instead toward Suyodhana, king with king should meet. Leave Droṇa to his fate.”
Yudhiṣṭhira listened. With a nod he turned his chariot and sped toward the tumult where Bhīma, roaring like Death himself, mowed down the Kaurava ranks.
The sound of his wheels rolled over the night like thunder among clouds. Side by side the two brothers stood—Dharma’s calm and Vāyu’s rage— and before them, O King, Droṇa again rose, his wrath unquenched, consuming the Pañchālas like a sacred fire fed with ghee.