novelraw Arc 1 - Karna-senāpati-nirmāṇa Parva - Chapter 5 - Arjuna Surrounded by the Samsaptakas
Arc 1 - Karna-senāpati-nirmāṇa Parva - Chapter 5 - Arjuna Surrounded by the Samsaptakas
Vaiśampāyana said:
Hearing of Bhīma’s furious encounter with Droṇa’s son, King Dhṛtarāṣṭra, his heart trembling with grief and dread, said to Sañjaya, “Describe to me, O Sañjaya, the battle of Arjuna with the Samsaptakas—that tide of men sworn to his death—and tell me also of his meeting with Aśvatthāmā, and of the other kings who contended with the sons of Pāṇḍu.”
Sañjaya said:
Listen then, O monarch, as I recount that sacred yet terrible encounter—the battle that destroyed bodies, sins, and lives alike, where the very earth quaked beneath the fury of men. When Arjuna, the vanquisher of hosts, entered the vast ocean of the Samsaptakas, he churned it as a tempest stirs the sea. From Gāṇḍīva flew broad-headed arrows, severing heads bright as the full moon, their brows curved, their eyes still gleaming. The earth became strewn with fallen faces, as though a field of lotuses had been cut down in bloom.
He struck off arms strong and massive, anointed with sandal and musk, adorned with gold and gems, still clutching weapons in their dying grasp. Those limbs fell like serpents with five hoods writhing in death. Chariots were shattered, steeds and elephants torn apart, and the ground ran red as molten sunset. Thousands of men and beasts fell beneath his storm of arrows, as rain falls endlessly upon the sea. Yet Arjuna stood unmoved, steady as a mountain amid the deluge, scattering his foes like Indra among the Dānavas when heaven was besieged.
With ceaseless showers of shafts he broke their ranks; their banners fell, their lines dissolved like reeds before the wind. Through the chaos he wheeled his chariot, gleaming like a cloud lit by the sun, and the Samsaptaka host—blinded by dust and terror—seemed a sea drained dry beneath the burning sun of doom.
Bows bent like rainbows, thunder pealed,
The ground was red where elephants kneeled;
The arrows sang, the helmets gleamed—
And heaven above with wonder beamed.
Crowds of Siddhas and celestial Ṛṣis beheld his deed with awe. Flowers rained from the sky, and unseen hands beat celestial drums. Then, from the empty heavens, a bodiless voice proclaimed: “Behold Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna—Nara and Nārāyaṇa—fire and wind, sun and moon upon one car! Invincible are they, eternal and radiant as Brahman and Īśāna, born to restore the world’s forgotten balance.”
Hearing that divine utterance, Aśvatthāmā, son of Droṇa, his eyes burning like twin flames, rushed forth in his chariot, his bow drawn tight as a coiled serpent. Raising a shining arrow, he cried to Arjuna, “O son of Pāṇḍu, if thou regardest me as a guest arrived unbidden, grant me the hospitality of battle! Let our bows be the cups and our arrows the offering!”
Arjuna, smiling at the challenge, turned to Kṛṣṇa and said, “The Samsaptakas await my wrath, yet Droṇa’s son now summons me to combat. Tell me, O Mādhava, what is just—to honour the guest or to fulfil my vow?”
Kṛṣṇa, calm and radiant as the morning sun, replied, “Let hospitality come first, O Pārtha! For to a Kṣatriya, the welcome of a guest is battle. I shall bear thee to him, as Vāyu bears Indra to the sacrifice.”
The horses flew, the sky did roar,
The banner blazed from shore to shore;
The chariot shone like dawn’s first fire,
Bearing gods in mortal ire.
Then Kṛṣṇa approached Aśvatthāmā and said courteously, “Strike, O Brāhmaṇa, and bear thy trial with patience. Now is the hour for those who owe their masters to repay their debts with valour. The quarrels of sages are subtle, but the contests of warriors are plain—they end in victory or death.”
The son of Droṇa bowed and answered, “So be it!” Then, with the swiftness of wind, he pierced Kṛṣṇa with sixty arrows and Arjuna with three. Arjuna, blazing with wrath, severed his bow with three shafts. Aśvatthāmā seized another—larger and stronger—and loosed again. Three hundred arrows struck Kṛṣṇa; a thousand smote Arjuna. Drawing deep from his knowledge of celestial weapons, he loosed a storm of arrows in countless millions till the sky darkened and the air grew thick with death.
From his bow, his hands, his very armour, arrows leapt like tongues of fire from a sacred flame—from his eyes, his breath, his chariot, and its banner. The twin heroes vanished beneath his torrent, as twin peaks of Meru beneath the monsoon’s flood.
“Behold,” said Pārtha, “the pride of flame—
He deems us lost, yet none can tame
The light that dwells within our breath;
His arrows break—mine conquer death.”
Then swiftly did Arjuna strike back. Each of Aśvatthāmā’s countless shafts he cut into three with a single flight, and the air cleared as the son of Pāṇḍu shone once more like the midday sun piercing storm-clouds. Turning again upon the Samsaptakas, he poured destruction upon their ranks—chariots split, elephants toppled, banners and drivers shorn away. The earth itself seemed to burn beneath the rain of Gāṇḍīva.
From his bow streamed arrows like rays of the sun, drying up the ocean of the Samsaptakas as the Sun at Yuga’s end drinks up the seas. Then again he turned upon Droṇa’s son, piercing him, his steeds, and his charioteer with shafts bright as Indra’s thunderbolt. Aśvatthāmā, eager for vengeance, rushed again like a storm upon a mountain. But Arjuna, cutting off each arrow as it came, answered him with volleys unending—quivers upon quivers, as though a generous host offered all he possessed to his guest.
Leaving the Samsaptakas behind as one dismisses unworthy claimants, he fixed his gaze wholly upon Aśvatthāmā, the worthy guest of his bow. And the heavens, beholding, held their breath in awe.
The world grew dim beneath their might,
The sky was fire, the day was night;
And men beheld, with hearts undone,
The war of Nara and Nārāyaṇa.
Sañjaya said:
Then occurred that wondrous battle between Arjuna and Aśvatthāmā—two warriors radiant as Shukra and Bṛhaspati, confronting one another like those two planets contending in the heavens for entrance into the same constellation. They afflicted each other with blazing shafts that shone like rays of light, and the world trembled as if its two brightest orbs had left their courses to collide in space.
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Arjuna, seizing Gāṇḍīva, pierced Aśvatthāmā deeply in the midst of his brows. The son of Droṇa shone with that arrow fixed upon his forehead, as the Sun blazes upward with its crown of light. Then both the Kṛṣṇas—Nara and Nārāyaṇa—struck by Aśvatthāmā’s storm of arrows, glimmered like twin Suns at the end of the Yuga, clothed in their own radiance. When Keśava seemed momentarily dazed by that storm, Arjuna invoked a weapon that loosed torrents of shafts on every side, each arrow flashing like thunder, flame, or the sceptre of Death.
But Aśvatthāmā, endued with fierce might and supreme mastery of arms, returned the assault. His arrows, inspired with terrible energy, struck the two heroes so hard that even Death himself would have felt pain. Yet Arjuna, checking those shafts, covered Droṇa’s son with twice as many arrows, swift and winged like celestial swans. He shrouded that foremost of warriors—his steeds, driver, and banner—and turning swiftly, smote again the Samsaptakas who pressed in from every side.
His shafts cut through bows and bowstrings, quivers and arms, weapons and standards, umbrellas and ornaments, steeds, car-shafts, and coats of mail. Hands grasping swords were severed; crowned heads fell in heaps upon the dust, their faces still radiant with the splendour of the Sun and the cool beauty of the Moon.
Bright as stars the severed crowns were shed,
Gems and garlands stained with red;
The field became a jewelled floor,
Where kings lay down to rise no more.
The heroes of Kalinga, Vanga, and Niṣāda, riding mighty elephants radiant as Airāvata, rushed upon Arjuna with uplifted weapons, roaring in wrath. But the son of Pāṇḍu cut off the trunks, riders, banners, and crests of those beasts; they fell crashing like mountain peaks split by thunder. When that elephant force was broken, Arjuna, crowned with his diadem, turned once more upon the son of his preceptor. With shafts radiant as the newborn Sun, he shrouded Aśvatthāmā, as storm-clouds shroud the dawn.
Droṇa’s son, however, checked those shafts and answered with a roar, like thunderclouds closing upon the Sun and Moon. He covered both Arjuna and Keśava with a darkness of arrows, but the son of Pāṇḍu dispelled that night with his own light, piercing his foe and the followers that surrounded him with shafts winged and keen. So swift were his hands that none could see when he drew, when he aimed, or when he released his arrows—only that elephants, steeds, and warriors fell lifeless wherever his gaze turned.
Then Aśvatthāmā, losing not a heartbeat, shot ten arrows, swift as thought and united like a single flame. Five struck Arjuna, five struck Keśava, and both heroes, radiant as Indra and Kubera, were bathed in blood. The armies cried out, thinking those two divine warriors slain by Droṇa’s son, master of every weapon.
At that moment, the chief of the Vṛṣṇis spoke, his voice deep as the ocean: “Why, O Pārtha, dost thou spare Aśvatthāmā? Strike him down! Neglect breeds ruin as disease untreated brings death.”
Arjuna bowed his head slightly and answered, “So be it.” Then, his eyes blazing, he showered the son of Droṇa with arrows, mangling his arms, his chest, his head, and his broad thighs with shafts barbed like the ears of goats and driven by the full might of Gāṇḍīva. He severed the traces of Aśvatthāmā’s steeds and pierced the steeds themselves. Maddened with pain, they bore their master away with the swiftness of the wind.
Like fever purged by sacred spell,
So fled the fire he could not quell;
And far away, through dust and flame,
The son of Droṇa hid his shame.
Thus borne away by his steeds, Aśvatthāmā, pierced and weary, reflected for a time and chose not to renew the combat. He knew that victory ever follows Keśava and Dhanañjaya, and so, subduing his wrath, the mighty descendant of the Aṅgirasas entered Karṇa’s host, despondent and nearly weaponless.
As a malady cast out of the body by charm or herb departs from its host, so too did Aśvatthāmā depart from the field. Freed from that peril, Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna turned once more toward the Samsaptakas, their chariot resounding like the roar of the storm, its banner streaming proudly in the wind.
Sañjaya said:
Meanwhile, in the northern wing of the Pāṇḍava host, a mighty uproar arose. The earth quaked beneath the trampling of elephants and the charge of chariots; the sky resounded with the cries of warriors and neighing steeds, for Dandadhara, lord of the Magadhas, was slaughtering the troops of Yudhiṣṭhira like Death himself arisen upon the field.
Turning the course of his car without halting the steeds that raced like Garuḍa or the wind, Keśava said unto Arjuna, “Behold, the chief of the Magadhas, unrivalled in prowess, rides forth upon his towering elephant. In might and training he is the equal of Bhagadatta himself. Slay him first, O Pārtha, and then turn again upon the Samsaptakas.”
At Kṛṣṇa’s word, the chariot of the two Kṛṣṇas rolled forward, its flag streaming in the smoke-dark sky. Before them rose Dandadhara upon his elephant, immense as a living mountain. He was peerless in the use of the ankusha, the elephant-hook, even as Ketu among planets is peerless in the heavens. Like a comet blazing to destroy the world, he ravaged the army of the sons of Pāṇḍu.
Mounted on that furious beast whose roar echoed like thunder through the clouds, Dandadhara swept through the ranks. Arrows and javelins flew like rain; men and steeds and elephants sank beneath his crushing tread. The foremost of elephants trampled car and rider into dust, pressing them down into the earth with crackling bones, as reeds are broken underfoot.
He came like Death with trumpet cry,
Whose tread was thunder, whose breath was sky;
Where’er he turned the earth grew red,
And the fallen crowned with garlands fled.
Then Arjuna, standing upon his chariot of gold, advanced like Indra toward the storm. The tumult of battle rose around him—the blare of conches, the roll of drums, the clash of wheels, the humming twang of bowstrings.
Dandadhara beheld him and, raising his great bow, pierced Pārtha with twelve arrows, Keśava with sixteen, and each of their steeds with three. Laughing aloud, the king of Magadha uttered a shout of triumph. Arjuna, unmoved, drew back his string and with a flight of broad-headed shafts cut off his enemy’s bow, its string and arrow still fixed thereon, his standard gleaming with jewels, and the guards of his elephant as well.
Enraged, Dandadhara struck again with lances hurled from his mighty hands, the tips blazing like meteors. Desiring to smite Keśava himself, he urged his elephant forward—a living storm-cloud with tusks as white as lightning. Then Arjuna, calm as Time and fierce as Fire, loosed three razor-headed arrows. They struck so swiftly that they seemed one, severing both arms of the Magadhan king, bright as the trunks of elephants, and then his head, full and shining as the moon.
The head fell earthward while the body, still upright for a heartbeat, toppled and sank. Then Pārtha turned his wrath upon the elephant. His arrows, gold-feathered and sun-bright, fell thick as rain, covering the beast till it shone like a flaming hill at night. Roaring in agony, it reeled and ran in circles, crashing down at last like a mountain peak riven by thunder.
The tusks flashed white, the banners fell,
The sky was filled with battle’s knell;
The beast lay still—the storm was done,
The earth reclaimed her fallen son.
At the fall of Dandadhara, his brother Danda rushed forth, mounted on a snow-white tusker gleaming like the Himalaya’s crest. He hurled three lances at Keśava and five at Arjuna, shouting his name in challenge. Then the son of Pāṇḍu, uttering a shout that shook the air, drew his bow and cut off both his foe’s arms at once. They fell from the elephant’s back together—two mighty limbs anointed with sandal, adorned with armlets and still clutching gleaming spears—gliding down through the air like golden serpents from a mountain’s height.
With another crescent-headed arrow, Arjuna severed the king’s head. Blood-dyed and radiant, it rolled upon the earth like the sun fallen from the Asta mountain into the western sky. The elephant too he pierced with shafts until it fell roaring, white hide turned crimson, thundering down like a broken cliff.
Then Savyasācī, with relentless arm, cut down many other elephants of colossal strength—each one towering like a hill, each guided by a prince of renown. One by one they fell, until the Magadhan host was broken utterly. The air filled with dust and cries; elephants and steeds, chariots and men, reeled and clashed and perished together. The field became a sea of ruin, its waves blood-red beneath the sinking sun.
The soldiers of the Pāṇḍavas surrounded Arjuna, shouting praises as the gods once hailed Indra when Vṛtra fell. “O hero,” they cried, “the foe that struck terror in our hearts as Death himself has been slain by thee! Hadst thou not come, our armies would have perished beneath his tread. Now by thy hand, O slayer of enemies, we are delivered!”
Hearing their words of joy, Dhanañjaya, radiant and serene, bowed to them with affection, honouring each according to his worth. Then, raising his banner once more, he turned his chariot southward, its wheels flashing, its sound like storm in the clouds, and sped again toward the Samsaptakas, eager to finish the task that destiny had laid before him.