Bhishma

The eighth Vasu

The eight Vasus, cursed by the sage Vashishtha for stealing his cow, asked Ganga to bear them as mortals and free them at birth. She married King Shantanu on condition that he never question her, and drowned seven sons in the river. When he protested at the eighth, she left with the child, and returned him years later as the young prince Devavrata, taught the Vedas by Vashishtha and arms by Parashurama. Shantanu made him heir.

The vow at the fisher chief's house

Shantanu then fell in love with Satyavati, whose father, a fisher chief, demanded that her son inherit the throne. Devavrata gave up his claim, and when the chief worried about the sons he might still have, he swore never to marry. The gods named him Bhishma, the one of the terrible vow, and Shantanu granted him the power to die only when he chose.

The vow shaped everything after. To find wives for his half-brother Vichitravirya, Bhishma carried off the three princesses of Kashi. The eldest, Amba, had already chosen King Shalva; Bhishma released her, Shalva refused her, and Bhishma would not marry her himself. She turned to Parashurama, who fought his old pupil without result, then sought Bhishma's death through austerities and was reborn as Shikhandi. When Vichitravirya died childless, Bhishma refused Satyavati's plea to father heirs, and Vyasa fathered Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura instead.

The elder in the dice hall

He raised both lines of princes and loved the Pandavas, but his oath bound him to whoever sat on the throne of Hastinapura. When Draupadi asked the assembly whether she had been lawfully lost, he answered that the course of dharma was too subtle for him to decide. He counselled peace for years and was not heeded.

Ten days and the bed of arrows

Made commander of the Kaurava army, he promised Duryodhana ten thousand of the enemy each day but would not kill the sons of Pandu. After nine days of slaughter the Pandavas came to his tent and asked him how he could be defeated. He told them he would not raise his bow against Shikhandi, who had been born a woman. On the tenth day Arjuna shot from behind Shikhandi until Bhishma fell onto a bed of arrows that held him above the ground; Arjuna gave him a pillow of three arrows and drew water for him from the earth with a fourth.

He lay there for fifty-eight nights waiting for the sun to turn north. In that time he taught Yudhishthira on kingship, law and liberation, the teaching of the Shanti and Anushasana books, and then released his life by his own will.

A promise kept too long

Bhishma is the epic's study of a vow kept past the point where it serves anyone. The oath that won his father a bride left the kingdom to weaker men, bound him to fight for a cause he told to its face was wrong, and left him silent before Draupadi's question. Readers still argue whether his steadfastness was the highest dharma or one of the roots of the catastrophe.