Khandava-daha Parva

Khandava-daha Parva closes the sequence of Adi Parva sub-books devoted to Arjuna's exile, marriage, and homecoming, and it does so with an episode of a different order altogether: a cosmic-scale conflagration in which Arjuna and Krishna together defy the god Indra himself. Positioned just before the Sabha Parva begins, it also serves a very practical narrative function, supplying the divine weapons and the architect whose services will make possible the marvels of the Pandavas' new capital.

The episode opens with Agni, the fire god, in a state of consuming hunger brought on by having devoured too many oblations poured into him during rituals, a surfeit that has left him weak and sickened rather than satisfied. To restore his strength he resolves to consume the Khandava forest entire, a vast tract of wilderness that lies near the Pandavas' new city. But Khandava is under the protection of Indra, king of the gods, who favors it for the sake of the naga Takshaka, a serpent lord who dwells there and whom Indra counts among his friends. Whenever Agni tries to burn the forest, Indra sends rain to quench the flames, and Agni's hunger goes unanswered. Learning that Krishna and Arjuna are nearby, Agni approaches them and asks for their help in holding off Indra and his rains long enough for the forest to burn.

To make this feat possible, Agni first arms his two allies. He obtains for Arjuna the great bow Gandiva, forged by Brahma and passed down through Varuna, along with two inexhaustible quivers and a resplendent chariot with white horses and an ape-bannered flag, drawn from Varuna's own treasury; for Krishna he obtains the discus Sudarshana and the mace Kaumodaki, weapons that mark him thereafter as a warrior without equal on the field. Thus equipped, the two heroes take their positions at the edges of the blazing forest, Arjuna in his chariot and Krishna beside him, and hold the perimeter while Agni's flames rise and spread.

What follows is less a battle in the ordinary sense than a sustained cosmic assault: as the forest burns, its creatures flee toward the flame's edge only to be driven back by Arjuna's arrows and Krishna's discus, so that nothing living inside the boundary is permitted to escape the fire, and even Indra, descending with the assembled gods to save his favored wood, is beaten back by the two heroes in a fierce contest that pits them against the king of heaven himself. The devastation is near total. Amid it, a handful of creatures do escape by one means or another, among them the naga Ashvasena, who survives by a trick of fortune and who will remember his enmity toward Arjuna and resurface at Kurukshetra in the guise of an arrow aimed at Arjuna's life. Also spared is Maya, the demon architect, who flees to Krishna for refuge as the fire closes in and, in gratitude for being granted his life, pledges to build something worthy in return, a hall for Yudhishthira, a promise that inaugurates the Sabha Parva that follows directly upon this one.

Within the epic's structure, Khandava-daha Parva performs several jobs at once. It arms Arjuna and Krishna with the signature weapons, Gandiva, the inexhaustible quivers, the chariot, the discus, and the mace, that will define their prowess through the rest of the epic and above all at Kurukshetra. It establishes Arjuna's standing as a warrior capable of matching gods in battle, foreshadowing his still greater trials to come. It seeds two long-delayed narrative debts, Ashvasena's grudge, which resurfaces at the climactic duel with Karna, and Maya's gratitude, which produces the wonder-hall of the very next sub-book. And by having Krishna and Arjuna act as equal partners against Indra, it dramatizes the intimacy of their partnership before the Gita gives it philosophical voice.

The episode's themes are those of appetite, debt, and consequence on a scale larger than ordinary human drama: Agni's hunger must be fed, a debt to a friend must be repaid with weapons of terrible power, and even an act performed at a god's request leaves behind grudges and obligations that the epic does not forget, however many books pass before they are called in. A reader encountering this sub-book should recognize it less as a self-contained adventure than as the forge in which the instruments of the later war are made, and should hold onto Ashvasena and Maya as figures whose brief escape from the Khandava fire is not the end of their story but merely its beginning.