Jayadratha

King of Sindhu, son-in-law of the Kurus

Jayadratha ruled Sindhu and the Sauviras, the river country on the western edge of the epic's map. His father, the old king Vriddhakshatra, had won a boon by penance: whoever made his son's head fall to the ground would have his own head burst into a hundred pieces. Jayadratha married Dussala, the only daughter of Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, which made him Duryodhana's brother-in-law and a kinsman of the Pandavas as well. Their son was Suratha.

The abduction in the Kamyaka forest

During the Pandavas' exile, Jayadratha passed the Kamyaka forest on his way to seek a second wife and saw Draupadi alone at the hermitage while her husbands were out hunting. He sent his companion Kotikasya to learn who she was, then came himself and urged her to leave her exiled husbands for him. When she refused, he dragged her onto his chariot and drove off, with the priest Dhaumya following on foot.

The brothers returned, routed his escort and caught him. Bhima beat him and would have killed him, but Yudhishthira ordered him spared for the sake of Dussala and Gandhari. At Draupadi's word Bhima shaved his head, leaving five tufts of hair, and made him say before his own soldiers that he was the slave of the Pandavas. Yudhishthira then set him free.

The boon and the wheel formation

Jayadratha did not go home. He went to the Ganga and practised severe austerities until Shiva appeared. He asked for the power to defeat all five Pandavas. Shiva refused to set anyone above Arjuna, but granted that for a single day Jayadratha could hold back the other four.

He spent that day on the thirteenth of the war. Drona arrayed the Kauravas in the chakravyuha while Arjuna was drawn away by the Samshaptakas. Abhimanyu broke into the formation, and when Yudhishthira, Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva tried to follow him, Jayadratha closed the breach and held all four outside. Abhimanyu was surrounded and killed.

The sunset on the fourteenth day

That night Arjuna swore to kill Jayadratha before the next sunset or enter the fire himself. Terrified, Jayadratha asked leave to go home to Sindhu, but Drona promised to protect him and set him far behind a deep array of cart, lotus and needle. Arjuna fought through it all day while the sun sank.

Near dusk Krishna veiled the sun, the Kauravas believed the day was over, and Jayadratha lifted his face to look. Krishna warned Arjuna of the father's boon, so Arjuna's arrows cut off the head and carried it through the air to Vriddhakshatra, who sat at his evening prayers. The head dropped into the old king's lap, rolled to the ground as he rose, and his own head burst.

A grudge that outlived him

Jayadratha is a lesser king whose weight in the war came from one borrowed day. His story shows how a public shaming bred a revenge that fell on a sixteen-year-old boy, and how that revenge came back on him and on the father who had tried to protect him. Years later, when Arjuna escorted the horse of Yudhishthira's horse sacrifice into Sindhu, Suratha died of fright at the news, and Dussala brought her grandson to Arjuna to ask for peace.