Ghatotkacha

Born in the Hidimba forest

After escaping the house of lac, the Pandavas and Kunti fled into a forest ruled by the man-eating rakshasa Hidimba. He sent his sister Hidimbi to bring them to him, but she fell in love with Bhima at first sight and warned him instead. Bhima killed Hidimba in a fight that shook the forest, and with Kunti's consent and Yudhishthira's conditions he lived with Hidimbi until she bore a son.

Rakshasa children grow quickly, and the boy was a youth on the day he was born. His head was bald and round like a water pot, so he was called Ghatotkacha, the pot-headed. Before the Pandavas moved on, he promised that whenever they had need of him and thought of him, he would come. Then he went away into the wild with his mother.

Carrying the exiles

He kept that promise in the years of forest exile. On the pilgrimage toward Gandhamadana, when Draupadi collapsed on the mountain path, Bhima called his son to mind. Ghatotkacha arrived with his rakshasa followers and carried Draupadi and the Pandavas through the high country to the hermitage at Badari. The epic names his own son as Anjanaparvan; the tale of a son called Barbarika who watched the war as a severed head belongs to later regional tradition.

The rakshasa at Kurukshetra

He fought for the Pandavas from the first days, riding a huge car covered in bearskins. On the eighth day, when Arjuna's son Iravan was killed by the rakshasa Alambusha, Ghatotkacha's roar and his illusions drove Duryodhana's division into flight until Bhagadatta rode his great elephant against him. His true hour came on the fourteenth day, when the armies went on fighting after sunset by torchlight, for a rakshasa's power grows in the dark. He killed Alayudha, a rakshasa who fought for the Kauravas, while his son Anjanaparvan fell to Ashwatthama.

The dart meant for Arjuna

His illusions filled the night with falling rocks and phantom armies, and whole Kaurava divisions broke. Duryodhana begged Karna to stop him. Karna could not bring him down by ordinary means and, with the army collapsing, threw the Vasava Shakti, the dart from Indra that could kill one enemy without fail and that he had saved all war for Arjuna. It pierced Ghatotkacha's heart. As he fell he swelled to the size of a mountain and crushed a whole division of Kaurava troops beneath him.

The Pandavas wept; Krishna danced for joy and embraced Arjuna, explaining that with the dart spent, Arjuna was safe.

Between two worlds

Ghatotkacha is loved by readers as the loyal son who always came when called and was rarely asked to stay. The epic is harder on him. Krishna adds that had Karna not killed him, he would have had to do it himself, since Ghatotkacha was an enemy of brahmins and sacrifices. Whether he was a hero spent as a piece on Krishna's board, or a rakshasa the epic never fully admits into the family, is still argued.