Abhimanyu and the Wheel

On the thirteenth day of the war, Drona, commander of the Kaurava host, devised a plan to win the war at a stroke: to capture Yudhishthira, the Pandava king, alive, and so end the conflict. To do this he arrayed his army in the Chakravyuha, the wheel formation - a vast and intricate spiral of warriors, ring within ring, like a great revolving discus of men and chariots, which only a very few warriors in all the world knew how to penetrate. Once an enemy entered it, the rings would close behind him, and he would be trapped within, surrounded on every side.

To make sure that Arjuna, who alone among the Pandavas could break the formation and rescue their king, would be far from the field, the Kauravas sent the samsaptakas, the sworn warriors of the Trigartas, to challenge Arjuna and draw him away to a distant part of the battlefield. Bound by his honor to answer their challenge, Arjuna rode off to fight them, leaving the main Pandava army to face Drona's wheel without him. And so the trap was set: the deadly formation arrayed, the one man who could break it lured away, and the Pandava host in peril of losing their king. They needed someone who could pierce the Chakravyuha; and there was only one among them who could, and he was a boy of sixteen.

There was one in the Pandava camp who knew the secret of entering the Chakravyuha: Abhimanyu, the young son of Arjuna and Subhadra, a boy of but sixteen years, and a warrior of dazzling promise. He had learned the secret of piercing the wheel formation in a strange way: while he was still in his mother's womb, his father Arjuna had been explaining to Subhadra how the Chakravyuha was entered, and the unborn child had heard and remembered. But Subhadra had fallen asleep, or Arjuna had ceased, before the way out of the formation was told; and so Abhimanyu had learned how to break into the wheel, but never how to break out of it again.

When the Pandava warriors saw their army faltering before Drona's formation and their king in danger, they turned to young Abhimanyu, the only one who could pierce it; and the boy, brave and eager and proud to serve, agreed at once to break open the wheel. He warned them that he knew only how to enter, not how to leave; but the great warriors - Bhima, Yudhishthira, the sons of Drupada, and the rest - promised him that they would follow close behind him through the breach he made, and that together they would fight their way in and out. So the boy, trusting in their promise, made ready to do what no other could, and rode against the deadly formation, with the great warriors pledged to follow at his back.

Abhimanyu charged the Chakravyuha and, with a skill beyond his years, pierced the outer ring of the great formation, breaking open a breach where no other warrior could, and plunging into the heart of the revolving wheel of the enemy. The Pandava warriors rushed after him to follow through the breach he had made, as they had promised, to fight at his side within the formation.

But at the very gate of the breach stood Jayadratha, the king of Sindhu, the brother-in-law of the Kauravas; and Jayadratha had been granted a boon by the great Lord Shiva that, for a single day, he could hold back all the Pandavas except Arjuna himself. And now that boon came into its hour. Jayadratha planted himself in the breach and, by the power of Shiva's boon, held off Bhima and Yudhishthira and all the rushing Pandava warriors, so that not one of them could follow Abhimanyu through the gate. The breach closed behind the boy; the rings of the wheel sealed shut; and Abhimanyu was trapped alone inside the vast formation, cut off from all help, with the whole Kaurava army between him and his kin. The promise made to him could not be kept; the gate had closed; and the boy was alone.

Trapped alone within the Chakravyuha, cut off from all aid, Abhimanyu did not despair, but fought with a valor and a brilliance that astonished both armies. A boy of sixteen, alone in the heart of the enemy host, he ranged through the formation like a lion among wolves, his bow a blur, his arrows falling like rain, breaking chariots and scattering warriors, slaying the foremost fighters of the Kaurava side by the score. He fought the greatest warriors of the age - Drona, Karna, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Duryodhana himself - and held his own against them all, wounding many, driving them back, his courage and his skill the equal of any veteran's.

So great was his prowess that the Kaurava warriors were dismayed and hard pressed, unable to bring down the lone boy who fought like a god in their midst. He slew Brihadbala, the king of Kosala; he routed whole companies; and at last he came against Lakshmana, the beloved son of Duryodhana, and slew him too in fair fight. The death of his son drove Duryodhana to fury and grief, and the Kaurava warriors closed in ever more desperately upon the boy who was wreaking such havoc among them. Alone among legions, sixteen years old, Abhimanyu had become the terror of the whole Kaurava army; and they saw that they could not bring him down by fair means.

Unable to overcome the lone boy by fair combat, the great warriors of the Kaurava host abandoned the code of war and fell upon him together, all at once, breaking every rule of honorable battle. Drona, Karna, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Brihadbala, and Kritavarma - six of the mightiest warriors in the world, each a master, surrounded the single boy and attacked him together, from every side and from behind, against all the laws of war that forbade many to assail one, or any to strike from behind, or to attack a warrior already engaged with another.

At Drona's own counsel, they struck at Abhimanyu's means of fighting rather than meeting him face to face: Karna, from behind, cut away the boy's bow; others killed his charioteer and his horses, shattered his chariot, and broke his sword and his shield, stripping him one by one of every weapon while six great archers rained arrows upon him from all directions at once. So the flower of the Kaurava chivalry, unable to defeat a boy of sixteen in fair fight, ganged upon him six against one, attacking from behind and disarming him by stealth - a deed of collective dishonor that would stain them all forever, and that showed how far the war had already corroded the dharma of even the greatest men.

Stripped of bow and sword and chariot, disarmed and alone and surrounded, Abhimanyu still would not yield. He took up a wheel from his shattered chariot and held it aloft as a weapon, whirling it like the very discus of Vishnu, and charged his enemies on foot, still fighting, still defiant, a disarmed boy facing the massed might of the Kaurava host with nothing but a chariot wheel in his hands. The great warriors broke even that, shattering the wheel with their arrows; and he seized a mace and fought on yet, refusing to the last to surrender or to flee.

At last, as Abhimanyu fought on the ground with his mace, exhausted and wounded and all but weaponless, the son of Dushasana closed with him in a mace-duel; and as the boy, spent and reeling, rose from a blow, Dushasana's son struck him upon the head with his mace and felled him. So Abhimanyu died, sixteen years old, alone in the heart of the enemy, overwhelmed at last not by any one warrior's superior skill but by the massed and dishonorable assault of many; and he died as he had fought, defiant and unyielding to the end, having sold his life at a price that made the whole Kaurava army tremble. The boy was dead; and a terrible silence fell where he had fought.

When evening came and Arjuna returned from his distant battle with the samsaptakas, he found the camp sunk in grief, and learned the terrible news: that his beloved son Abhimanyu was dead, trapped alone in the Chakravyuha and cut down by six great warriors together against all the laws of war, while the gate was held against his rescuers by Jayadratha. Arjuna's grief was beyond all bearing; he fell senseless, and when he revived he wept without ceasing for his brave young son, and the whole camp mourned with him.

And then his grief turned to a terrible resolve. Learning that it was Jayadratha who had held the gate and sealed the boy's doom, Arjuna swore a dreadful oath before all: that on the morrow he would slay Jayadratha before the sun set, and that if he failed to do so by sunset, he would enter the fire and end his own life. So the death of Abhimanyu set in motion the next day's terrible drama, the hunt for Jayadratha against the sinking sun; and the boy's unjust death became the cause of a fresh and fearful vow. The Kauravas had broken the code of war to kill a child six against one; and now that broken dharma would bring its own reckoning down upon them.

The death of Abhimanyu stands as one of the most heartbreaking and one of the most shameful episodes of the whole war, and it carries its hard lessons.

See, first, the valor of the boy. Abhimanyu, but sixteen years old, alone and trapped in the heart of the enemy host, fought the greatest warriors of the age and held them all at bay, wreaking such havoc that the whole Kaurava army was dismayed by a single child; and when he was disarmed, he fought on with a chariot wheel and a mace, defiant and unyielding to his last breath. His courage is a fire that has warmed the hearts of all who have heard the tale ever since; and it teaches that the measure of a warrior is not his years but his spirit, and that even in a hopeless trap, the brave sell their lives at a price that honors them forever.

And see the wrong that killed him: the abandonment of dharma by the great. Unable to defeat a boy in fair fight, the foremost warriors of the Kaurava side ganged upon him six against one, struck from behind, and disarmed him by stealth, breaking every law of honorable war. The tale teaches how war corrodes the dharma of even the noblest men, how the desire to win tempts the great into collective dishonor, and how such broken faith brings its own reckoning - for the murder of Abhimanyu sowed the deaths of Jayadratha and, in time, of all who shared in it. Honor the boy's valor; and remember, with shame, the dishonor of those who could only kill him by abandoning all honor.