novelraw Arc 1 - Karna-senāpati-nirmāṇa Parva - Chapter 7 - Sahadeva Vs Duḥśāsana
Arc 1 - Karna-senāpati-nirmāṇa Parva - Chapter 7 - Sahadeva Vs Duḥśāsana
Sañjaya said:
While Sahadeva, hot with wrath, was blasting thy host, Duḥśāsana, O King, drove forth to meet him—brother against brother, as fate would have it. At the sight, the great car-warriors roared lionlike and waved their garments in the wind. Then thy angry son, bow in hand, struck the son of Pāṇḍu in the chest with three keen arrows. Sahadeva answered at once: first he pierced thy son with a single shaft, then with seventy more in swift succession, and struck his charioteer with three.
Duḥśāsana, in that great battle, sheared away Sahadeva’s bow and smote his arms and breast with three and seventy arrows. Sahadeva, blazing, seized a sword, whirled it, and hurled it straight at thy son’s car. It cut the bow—string and nocked arrow together—and then fell to earth like a serpent dropping from the sky. Taking up another bow in a breath, Sahadeva sped a death-bright shaft; the Kuru prince, with a sweep of his sword, clove it in twain as it flew. He whirled that same sword and cast it back; Sahadeva, unshaken, clipped the hurtling blade to fragments with a flutter of arrows and let it die upon the dust.
Steel met steel in midnight air;
Blades like comets split and flare;
Bows sang high and arrows rang—
War kept time to fate’s low clang.
Then thy son loosed four and sixty shafts at Sahadeva’s car; the son of Mādrī, calm and cutting, broke them all in flight with but five. Checking that storm, he launched a rain of arrows in return; Duḥśāsana, clipping each with thrice three shafts, lifted up his voice and shouted so that earth itself seemed to answer. Again he struck Sahadeva and wounded the driver with nine keen points. Then Sahadeva, monarch, filled with a steady rage, set to his string a terrible shaft—like the Destroyer embodied—and drew the bow to the ear. He let it fly.
The arrow sped with a hiss, pierced armour and body with dreadful speed, and drove into the earth beyond, as a snake goes into its ant-hill. Thy son, great car-warrior though he was, swooned upon the terrace of his chariot. His driver, seeing him senseless, wheeled away to safety, though arrows beat upon him like rain.
A single flame through iron ran,
Undid the mail, unmade the man;
The prince bowed down, the standard reeled—
Night fell upon the Kuru field.
Having vanquished the Kuru in fair fight, the son of Pāṇḍu turned and beheld Duryodhana’s division before him. Then Sahadeva, wrath harnessed to purpose, pressed in on every side and crushed that host; as an angered man treads down an ant-swarm without counting, so did he trample the Kaurava ranks, and the dust of their ruin rose beneath his wheels.
Sañjaya said:
While Nakula was breaking thy divisions with fierce onset, Vikartana’s son, Karṇa, burning with wrath, wheeled to check him, O King. Smiling, the son of Mādrī called out, “By the gods’ allowance we behold each other at last, O root of this quarrel! Through thy counsel the Kurus are thinned and turned against their own. Slaying thee today, I shall count my vow fulfilled and the fever of my heart dispelled.” Karṇa answered as a prince and bowman should: “Strike, hero; show thy manliness. Boasting follows deed. Fight to thy utmost—I will quiet thy pride.”
Then the Sūta’s son smote Nakula with three-and-seventy shafts; Nakula answered with fourscore venom-bright arrows, and three for the charioteer. Karṇa, great bowman, sheared away Nakula’s bow with gold-winged heads and drank his blood with thirty piercing shafts. Nakula seized a second bow, gilded at the back, and pierced Karṇa with twenty and his driver with three; then, with a razor-headed stroke, he clipped Karṇa’s bow once more and, smiling, rained three hundred arrows on the bowless lord of war. Wonder rose among the car-warriors—and in the sky, the gods—beholding Karṇa so afflicted. But Vikartana’s son took up another bow and fixed five keen points in Nakula’s shoulder-joint; the son of Mādrī shone with those arrows as the sun with his rays. Again Nakula cut a horn from Karṇa’s bow; Karṇa, grasping a tougher stave, filled the air before his foe with a woven storm. Swift was Nakula’s answer—shaft for shaft—till the heavens were a hive of fireflies, a flight of golden cranes, a long cloud of locusts.
Two suns rose in the arrowed noon,
Their light a rain, their rain a rune;
The sky, a drum of iron string,
Beat time to death’s unending wing.
Somakas, hewn by Karṇa’s line, dropped moaning to the dust; thy warriors, torn by Nakula’s rush, were scattered like wind-tossed cloud. The two hosts, scourged by celestial weapons, fell back to watch as the duel darkened. Within chambers of arrows both fighters vanished, like sun and moon curtained by storm. Karṇa, wrathed to a terrible visage, brimmed the quarters with shafts; yet the son of Pāṇḍu felt no pain, like Day-maker veiled by cloud.
Then with one ruthless chain of strokes, Karṇa cut Nakula’s bow, felled his driver from the car-niche, slew his four steeds, and chopped to splinters the chariot—standard, wheel-guards, mace, sword, moon-bright shield, and all the gear of war. Nakula, steedless, carless, armourless, sprang down with a spiked bludgeon; Karṇa sliced even that mid-swing with arrow after arrow, and—holding his hand—smote him with straight shafts yet spared his life.
A noose of mercy, bright and round,
He cast—no killing, only bound;
Around the neck a bowstring lay,
A moon within a haloed day.
Laughing, the son of Rādhā pursued the retreating prince and slipped his strung bow round Nakula’s neck. “Thy words were wind,” he said. “Speak them again, if joy remains in thee. Do not measure strength with Kurus of heavier might; seek thy equals, child. Return to camp—or go where Kṛṣṇa and Phālguna are.” Remembering Kuntī’s plea, he let him go. Burning with shame, Nakula climbed Yudhiṣṭhira’s car and sighed like a jarred serpent.
Karṇa, having vanquished Nakula, spurred his moon-white team toward the Pañcālas. A great cry rose in the Pāṇḍava ranks as the Kaurava leader drove on. At high noon the Sūta’s son made a vast massacre, whirling with the quickness of a wheel: Pañcāla chariots fled broken—axles snapped, wheels shattered, standards torn—while riderless elephants staggered like forest-lords scorched by wildfire, their globes split, trunks lopped, tails shorn, armour hanging in blood. Some tuskers, maddened, struck each other and ran red as mountains with runnels on their breasts; others rushed at Karṇa like insects to a flame and died.
Steeds of noble breed, stripped of trappings and gems, wandered masterless; horsemen, lance-cut and sword-hewn, fell piecemeal or trembled limbless; golden cars were dragged headlong, poles and axles broken, banners gone, their lords cast out and scalded by Karṇa’s hail. Heads, arms, and sundered chests lay strewn; constellations of bells and starry studs still clung to fallen elephants. The Śṛñjayas, blinded by wrath and ruin, rushed upon the Sūta’s son as gnats into a summer blaze. Kṣatriyas shunned his path, taking him for the world-fire at the end of the Yuga. Those Pañcāla heroes who lived fled; Karṇa chased them, quivers singing, and burned the armourless and bannerless from behind, scorching the quarters like the sun at zenith.
Meridian fire on the field of men,
He blazed—was shadow, blaze again;
Wherever ran the fleeing line,
His arrows wrote the hour: “Noon. Align.”
Sañjaya said:
Against Yuyutsu, who was then turning thy son’s vast array, Ulūka sped forth crying “Wait! Wait!” Swift as a hawk he closed; but Yuyutsu, O King, met him with a winged shaft keen as a tusk, smiting him as Maghavan smites a mountain with the thunderbolt. Stung, Ulūka shore away Yuyutsu’s bow with a razor-head and struck the prince himself with a barbed barb. Casting aside the sundered bow, Yuyutsu, eyes reddened with wrath, seized a stronger weapon and smote Ulūka with threescore shafts, then pricked his driver. Ulūka, raging, answered with twenty gold-feathered arrows and lopped the golden standard from Yuyutsu’s car; the lofty banner fell glittering before the yoke. Bereft of his sign, the son of Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s house grew hot and struck Ulūka five times in the breast. Then the son of Subala’s line, with an oiled broadhead, shore off the head of Yuyutsu’s charioteer and in the same breath slew the four steeds, and pierced the prince besides. Yuyutsu, hard-pressed, leapt to another car and drew away; Ulūka, having worsted him, turned upon the Pāñcālas and Śṛñjayas and hewed them down with sharp shafts.
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“Wait!”—and thunder split the din;
A banner fell, a head spun thin;
The rain of iron drove men wide—
Clouds broke upon the Pāñcāla tide.
Thy son Śrutakarman, fearless and nimble as lightning, in less than the wink of an eye made Sātānīka steedless, driverless, and carless. Sātānīka, standing upon his wreck, caught up a mace and hurled it in wrath; it crushed steeds and seat and the charioteer together and bored the earth like a falling star. Both heroes, enhancers of Kuru glory, dismounted and drew apart, glaring like rival tigers; then Śrutakarman climbed the car of Vīviṅgśu, and Sātānīka swiftly mounted that of Prativindhya.
Thereafter Śakuni, aflame with old enmity, pierced Sutasoma with keen points; but the son of Bhīma was unmoved, like a mountain by a river’s spate. Beholding his father’s foe, Sutasoma veiled Subala’s son with a thousand shafts; Śakuni, sure of hand and lore, clipped them all in air and struck back with three. Then, to the shout of onlookers, thy brother-in-law with arrow and edge cut down Sutasoma’s steeds, his standard, and his driver. Leaping to earth, the great bowman stood fast and from the dust-cloud shrouded Śakuni’s car with golden-winged reeds. The Gandhāra prince did not tremble; he crushed that flight with a flight more subtle. The witnessing warriors—and the Siddhas above—were pleased to behold the wonder: Sutasoma, on foot, contending with a car-born foe.
Śakuni, with broad keen heads, shore the bow from Sutasoma’s grasp and emptied his quivers. Then Sutasoma drew a scimitar the colour of the blue lotus, ivory-hilted, and cried aloud. He circled in the arena and displayed the fourteen measures of sword-play—wheeling and high whirl, side-thrust and leap, rush and rise—cutting down the darts and arrows as they came like serpents in flight.
A blue arc flashed, a bright wheel turned;
Fang met edge and feathers burned;
Fourteen measures, measured clean—
A dance of steel on dust-made green.
Śakuni loosed again a nest of snake-like shafts; by skill and strength Sutasoma clove them in mid-course, light as Garuḍa unfeathering nāgas. Then with a single razor-arrow the son of Subala split the sword itself: half fell ringing upon the ground, half stayed in Sutasoma’s grasp. Stepping back six paces, the Pāṇḍava hurled that shining fragment; it sheared Śakuni’s bow and string and fell. Sutasoma sprang to Śrutakīrti’s car; Śakuni took up a sterner, unconquerable bow and drove on through the Pāṇḍava ranks, cutting them down. Seeing him careering like a storm, a loud uproar rose among the sons of Pāṇḍu; proud lines bristling with arms broke under the Gandhāra lord as the Dānava-host once broke beneath the chief of the celestials.
As Indra through the Daitya spread,
So Śakuni through the war-field sped;
Spears went dim and banners died—
The day itself seemed turned aside.
Sañjaya said:
Kripa, the son of Śaradvata, barred Dhṛṣṭadyumna’s path like a śarabha in the wild halting a proud lion. Checked by Gautama’s might, the son of Pṛṣata could not win a single step, O King. When Kripa’s car stood full in front of Dhṛṣṭadyumna’s, a hush fell among creatures; many thought the slayer of Droṇa would himself be taken by the brahmana’s hand.
“Behold his wrath—Droṇa’s shade returns,”
The warriors whispered, pale with dread;
“His hands are light, his weapons burn;
Who lives when Gautama strikes ahead?”
Then Kripa drew deep breath and with cool precision marked every vital point. His keen shafts, O Bhārata, sought sinew and joint and breast, while Dhṛṣṭadyumna, dazzled and unmoving, knew not his next defence. The charioteer spoke low: “This bodes no good, O son of Pṛṣata. Never till now have I seen thee so pressed. By fortune alone those darts for thy vitals turn aside. I will wheel us back as a river is turned by the sea. That brahmana cannot be slain by thee today.”
Slowly Dhṛṣṭadyumna answered, “My mind reels; sweat floods my limbs; my hairs bristle. Avoid him. Take me where Arjuna stands—or to Vṛkodara. Near either, prosperity may return. Such is my sure thought.” Urging the steeds, the charioteer fled toward Bhīma’s standard.
Kripa followed, O King, showering flights of arrows and sounding a great conch until the valleys answered. He routed the son of Pṛṣata as Śakra once scattered Namuci, and the dust of Dharmakṣetra drank that fear.
Conch and bow in measured beat,
Brahman-hand and kṣatra-heat;
Droṇa’s pupil, cold and bright,
Unstitched the slayer’s will to fight.
Now Śikhaṇḍin—the goad of Bhīṣma’s fate—met Hṛdika’s son upon the field. The Bhoja smiled as he fought, but Śikhaṇḍin’s first five arrows struck true upon the shoulder-joint. Kritavarman, stung, answered with threescore winged shafts, and laughing, clipped his foe’s bow. The child of Drupada seized another and cried, “Wait! Wait!” Then loosed ninety gold-feathered arrows swift as rain. They struck—and sprang back, scattering on the earth from the Bhoja’s hardened mail.
Śikhaṇḍin’s razor-head sheared Kritavarman’s bow; wrathful, he riddled the bowless Bhoja—arms and chest—with fourscore keen points. Blood washed the prince; it poured from his wounds, O King, as water from a brimful jar. Bathed crimson, the Bhoja shone like a mountain streaked with liquid red earth after rain. Seizing a fresh bow already strung, he smote Śikhaṇḍin in the shoulder; the Pāñcāla stood brilliant with shafts, a lordly tree burdened with many boughs.
They circled and crossed—a thousand wheels within one dusty ring—each carefully seeking the other’s life. Then Kritavarman, foremost of smiters, drove home threescore and ten gold-winged shafts, and after them a single terrible arrow. Struck by that fate-marked reed, Śikhaṇḍin swayed and swooned, catching his flag-staff to keep his feet. His driver tore him from the press and bore him off; scorched by Hṛdika’s son, he drew breath upon breath.
Gold-feathered rain, one blackened spear—
The banner saved what life held dear;
A bull-horned vow fell slack with pain—
The chariots rolled like summer rain.
After the fall of Drupada’s child from that contest, O lord of men, the Pāṇḍava ranks, butchered on every side, wavered and fled; dhvajas slumped, dust climbed, and the field rang with the bitter music of retreat.
Sañjaya said:
White-steeded Dhanañjaya scattered thy force, O King, as a gust across a heap of cotton. Against him the Trigartas, the Śivis, the Kauravas, the Śālvas, the saṁsaptakas, and that Narāyaṇa phalanx rushed like a swollen river for the sea. Satyasena and Candradeva, Mitradeva and Śatrunjaya, the son of Suśruta, Citraseṇa and Mitravarman, and the Trigarta lord with his brothers and sons, all mighty bowmen, closed in, their showers of arrows darkening the mid-sky. Drawn by fate, they melted at his approach like serpents before Garuḍa; yet, though slaughtered, they clung to the son of Pāṇḍu as moths cling to flame.
A hundred streams to one vast tide,
They surged where Kṛṣṇa’s banner cried;
Yet, touched by gandīva’s breath of fire,
They fell like reeds from martyr’d pyre.
Satyasena pierced the son of Pāṇḍu with three shafts; Mitradeva with three and sixty; Candradeva with seven; Mitravarman with three and seventy; the son of Suśruta with seven; Śatrunjaya with twenty; Suśarmā with nine. Arjuna, unshaken, answered each with his due: seven to the surgeon’s son, three to Satyasena, twenty to Śatrunjaya, eight to Candradeva, a hundred to Mitradeva, three to Śrutasena, nine to Mitravarman, eight to Suśarmā. Then he stoned Śatrunjaya with whetted iron and felled him; from Suśruta’s son he struck the bejewelled head; and Candradeva he sent unshriven to Yama. The rest he checked with five keen reeds apiece, holding the ring alone.
Then Satyasena, wrath-shaken, hurled a lion-roaring lance, iron-mouthed, gold-shafted, and it tore through Mādhava’s left arm and bit the earth. The reins and goad dropped from the Wielder of Discus; blood dyed the yoke.
When Viṣṇu’s arm is marked by steel,
The worlds themselves grow faint and reel;
But wrath in Nara’s heart awoke—
A vow took form in thundered stroke.
“Drive on to Satyasena, O mighty-armed,” said Pārtha; Kṛṣṇa gathered reins and wheeled the white coursers straight. Then Dhanañjaya checked the king with a braid of arrows and, with broad-headed blades, shore from the trunk his earringed head before the army’s eyes. Citravarman he smote thereafter, and with a calf-toothed shaft he struck the charioteer. Flame in his veins, Pārtha felled the saṁsaptakas by the hundreds; with a silver-winged razor he lopped illustrious Mitrasena’s head, and he struck Suśarmā hard in the shoulder-joint.
Ringed then by all the saṁsaptakas—shouting, weapon-showering, filling the quarters with din—Jīṣṇu, soul immeasurable, prowess like Śakra’s, called the Aindra weapon. From that mantra-born blaze arose unending flights of shafts. Cars crashed—standards, quivers, yokes, axles, wheels, traces, fences, bottoms, and bows—together with spears and swords, maces and clubs, darts and lances and the wheel’d śataghnī. Thighs and necklaces, aṅgadas and keyūras, garlands, cuirasses, coats of mail, umbrellas, fans, and diademed heads strewed the clay. Moon-faced brows with bright earrings lay like a night of stars upon the ground. Sandal-scented bodies in garland and robe sprawled like vaporous shapes afloat in the firmament. With princes and kṣatriyas, with fallen elephants and steeds, the Earth grew impassable.
Stars were strewn upon the dust—
Not from heaven, but from trust;
Crowns became a road of pain,
White steeds dragged through scarlet rain.
So dense the mire that even the car’s own wheels seemed to fear the sight of Arjuna raging through his harvest. Yet the white horses, wind-swift, mind-swift, hauled those balking rims through the blooded clay. The saṁsaptaka host, hewn by Pāṇḍu’s son, broke and vanished, leaving scarce a remnant to name. Having subdued their multitude, Prithā’s Jīṣṇu stood resplendent upon the field, a smokeless fire, devouring fate.