Arjuna

Indra's son and Drona's pupil

Pandu, cursed to die if he lay with a wife, asked Kunti to use her mantra to call the gods. After Dharma and Vayu she called Indra, and Arjuna was born on the slopes of Shatashringa. Brought to Hastinapura after Pandu's death, he trained under Drona, who promised to make him the first archer in the world. When Drona set a wooden bird in a tree as a target, Arjuna alone said he could see nothing but its head. To keep that promise Drona took the thumb of the Nishada archer Ekalavya, and Arjuna paid his teacher's fee by capturing King Drupada.

Draupadi, Subhadra and the Khandava fire

Disguised as a brahmin at Drupada's swayamvara, he strung the bow no king could bend and struck the target, winning Draupadi, who became the wife of all five brothers. Later, having broken the brothers' rule by entering the room where she sat with Yudhishthira, he left on a long exile of pilgrimage. On the road he married the Naga princess Ulupi, mother of Iravan, and Chitrangada of Manipura, mother of Babruvahana, and at Dwaraka carried off Krishna's sister Subhadra with Krishna's blessing. With Krishna he burned the Khandava forest for Agni and received the Gandiva bow.

Weapons from the gods

In the forest years after the dice game he went alone to Indrakila in the Himalayas. Shiva came to him as a Kirata hunter, quarrelled with him over a boar, beat him in a fight, and then gave him the Pashupata weapon. Arjuna spent five years in Indra's heaven learning celestial arms; there the apsara Urvashi, refused, cursed him to live a year as a eunuch. The curse became his disguise in the thirteenth year: as Brihannala he taught dance to Virata's daughter, until he took the Gandiva down from a shami tree and routed the Kuru champions alone in the cattle raid.

The archer at Kurukshetra

Offered Krishna's army or Krishna himself unarmed, Arjuna chose Krishna. On the first morning, facing his grandsire, his teacher and his cousins, he let the bow slip from his hand, and the Bhagavad Gita is Krishna's reply. He felled Bhishma from behind Shikhandi on the tenth day. When his son Abhimanyu was killed inside Drona's wheel formation, he vowed to kill Jayadratha before sunset or burn himself, and did. On the seventeenth day he killed Karna as Karna struggled with his sunken wheel.

The bow that failed

After the war he guarded the horse of Yudhishthira's horse sacrifice, and at Manipura was killed by his own son Babruvahana and revived by Ulupi. When Krishna died, Arjuna came to lead the Yadava women out of Dwaraka; robbers attacked on the road, the Gandiva would barely string, and his weapons would not come. Vyasa told him time had done its work. On the great departure he fell on the mountain road, and Yudhishthira named his fault as pride in his own archery.

Arjuna is the epic's picture of mastery, and also of doubt. The greatest warrior on the field is the one who asks whether the war should be fought at all, and his question is the reason the Gita exists.