The Head That Watched the War

In the line of the Pandavas there was a young warrior of extraordinary power named Barbarika. He was the son of Ghatotkacha, the rakshasa son of Bhima, and so he was Bhima's own grandson - a youth in whom the strength of the Pandavas and the might of the rakshasa race were joined. From his mother and his grandmother he had learned devotion and discipline, and from his earliest years he showed a courage and a martial gift beyond any of his age.

Barbarika gave himself to fierce penance and to the worship of the gods, and by his austerities he won the favor of the great deities. From the Goddess and from Lord Shiva he received a wondrous boon: three arrows, infallible and inexhaustible, that made him perhaps the single most dangerous warrior alive. With those three arrows, it was said, Barbarika could accomplish anything - he could destroy whole armies, and no force on earth could stand against him. Men called him Teen Baan Dhari, the Bearer of the Three Arrows.

The three arrows were no ordinary weapons. The first arrow, when loosed, would mark every single thing that Barbarika wished to destroy - every target, however many, however scattered or hidden. The second arrow would mark everything he wished to protect or to spare. And the third arrow would then destroy, in a single flight, all that the first arrow had marked, and return to his quiver. With these three arrows together, Barbarika held in his hands the power to end any battle in a matter of moments, sparing whom he chose and destroying all the rest.

No army could survive him; no champion could withstand him. He was, in raw power, very likely the mightiest warrior who would come to the field of Kurukshetra - and yet his story is remembered not for the slaughter he caused, but for the sacrifice he made, for he never loosed those arrows in the great war at all. His greatness was proved instead by what he was willing to give up.

When word came that the great war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas was about to begin upon the field of Kurukshetra, Barbarika longed to take part in it, for he was a warrior to his core. He went to his mother and asked her leave to go and fight, and she gave it - but first she asked him a careful question, for she knew his power and feared how he might use it.

"If you go to this war," she asked, "on whose side will you fight?"

Barbarika answered from the chivalry of his heart, not from any calculation. "I will fight," he said, "on the side of whoever is losing. Wherever I see the weaker side being overwhelmed, there I will lend my strength, so that the helpless are never crushed by the strong." It seemed to him the noblest vow a warrior could make - always to defend the losing, never to pile on with the winning. His mother blessed him and let him go, and Barbarika set out for Kurukshetra with his bow and his three arrows, vowing to aid whichever army was being beaten.

But that generous vow carried within it a danger that Barbarika himself did not see - a danger that only one watching mind would perceive in time.

As Barbarika journeyed toward the battlefield, he was met upon the road by a brahmin - a humble traveler in simple robes, who fell into conversation with the young warrior. The brahmin was Krishna himself, come in disguise to take the measure of this mighty youth before he reached the war.

"Where are you going, warrior," asked the brahmin, "and with so small a quiver? You carry only three arrows. Do you mean to go to war with three arrows?"

"These three are enough," said Barbarika. "With these three arrows alone I could destroy the entire host of both armies, and end the whole war in a single moment."

The brahmin smiled, as though doubting. "Three arrows to destroy two great armies? That is a large boast for so few. There is a great tree above us with countless leaves. Show me, then - with one of your arrows, mark every leaf upon this tree. Then I will believe that three of your arrows could do what you say." And as the brahmin spoke, he quietly pressed one fallen leaf beneath his own foot, unseen, to test whether the youth's power was as complete as he claimed.

Barbarika took up one of his three arrows, set it to his bow, closed his eyes a moment in concentration, and loosed it. The arrow flew up among the branches of the great tree, and in a single flight it pierced and marked every leaf upon it, leaf after leaf after leaf, none escaping - and then the arrow came down and began to hover, circling, just above the brahmin's own foot.

The brahmin looked down in surprise. "Why does your arrow hover over my foot?" he asked.

"Because," said Barbarika, "you have hidden one of the tree's leaves beneath your foot. My arrow has marked every leaf, as you asked, and it cannot complete its task while one marked leaf is hidden there. Lift your foot, or the arrow must pierce through it to reach the leaf beneath."

The brahmin lifted his foot, and there indeed was the leaf he had secretly concealed, and the waiting arrow at once marked it and returned. Krishna, in his disguise, now knew beyond doubt that the youth's power was exactly as he had said: that nothing could be hidden from those arrows, and that with them Barbarika could truly destroy whatever he wished, sparing only what he chose. And Krishna saw, in that moment, the terrible problem that this generous young warrior posed.

Krishna asked the youth, still as a brahmin, on whose side he meant to fight. And Barbarika told him proudly of his vow: that he would always fight for whichever side was losing, to defend the weak against the strong.

And Krishna understood at once the doom hidden in that noble promise. For Barbarika was so powerful that his three arrows could decide the war in an instant. If he joined the losing side, that side would at once begin to win - and then, by his own vow, he would be bound to switch and fight for the other side, which was now losing. And so he would switch again, and again, destroying first one army and then the other, swinging back and forth by the iron logic of his vow, until at last he had annihilated both hosts entirely and stood alone, the only warrior left alive on the field of Kurukshetra. His generosity, joined to his power, would not save the weak at all - it would erase everyone, both armies, leaving no victory, no war, nothing but Barbarika and a field of the dead.

Krishna saw that for the war to have any meaning, this unstoppable youth could not be allowed to fight at all. And he saw, too, that there was a greatness in Barbarika that fitted him for a higher role than slaughter.

So the brahmin spoke to Barbarika of charity, of how a brave man gives without flinching whatever is asked of him by a brahmin in need, and he asked the youth whether he was truly so generous as his fame declared. Barbarika answered without hesitation that he would give a brahmin anything that was asked of him - anything at all.

"Then I ask," said the brahmin, "for your head. Give me, in charity, your own head."

The young warrior was startled, for it was the strangest and most terrible gift ever asked. But he did not refuse, for he had given his word, and a warrior's word was worth more than his life. Yet he asked the brahmin to first reveal who he truly was, for he sensed that no ordinary brahmin would ask such a thing. Then Krishna showed Barbarika his divine form, and the youth understood that it was the Lord himself who asked for his head.

Barbarika bowed, accepting his fate gladly, but he asked one thing in return. "I have come all this way longing to see the great war," he said. "Grant me this: that even though I give you my head, I may still be allowed to watch the whole of the battle of Kurukshetra to its end." And Krishna, moved by the youth's courage and devotion, granted it.

So Barbarika, grandson of Bhima, mightiest of the warriors who would never fight, gave up his head in willing sacrifice before the war began - the first and greatest offering laid down upon the field of Kurukshetra. It was said that he gave his life so freely, and was so pure in his courage, that he was honored above all the warriors of the war for the sacrifice he made without a moment's hesitation.

And Krishna kept his promise. The head of Barbarika, still living by the Lord's grace, was set upon the height of a hill overlooking the whole field of Kurukshetra. From that high place, with eyes that did not close, Barbarika's head watched every day of the eighteen days of the war - every charge and every fall, every duel of the great champions, every turn of the terrible tide - seeing the whole of it from beginning to end, exactly as he had wished. The young warrior who could have destroyed both armies in a moment instead became the war's truest and most complete witness.

When the eighteen days were over and the Pandavas stood victorious upon the emptied field, the brothers fell to disputing among themselves, as victors will, over who had been the greatest hero of the war - whose strength and skill had truly won the day. Bhima claimed it, and Arjuna, and each pressed his deeds. To settle the matter, they remembered the head of Barbarika upon the hill, which had watched everything from first to last, and they went to ask it who had really won the war.

And Barbarika's head gave them an answer that humbled them all. "I did not see what you think you saw," it said. "Throughout the war I beheld only one warrior upon that field. I saw the discus of Krishna whirling everywhere, reaping the armies like a harvest; I saw the divine power moving through the battle, devouring the hosts. The deaths you credit to your own arrows and maces were not truly your doing. It was Krishna alone who fought and Krishna alone who won. You were the instruments; he was the hand. There was no victor on that field but the Lord."

The brothers fell silent, their pride quieted, for the witness who had seen all could not be argued with, and they understood that their triumph had never been their own.

Because of his unmatched sacrifice and the purity of his devotion, Krishna blessed Barbarika with a boon that has outlasted the war by ages. He declared that in the age to come, the dark age of the world, Barbarika would be worshipped under Krishna's own name - that he would be called Shyam, and that those who remembered him and prayed to him with sincere hearts would have their prayers answered and their troubles lifted. And so the head of Barbarika, the warrior who gave everything and fought nothing, came to be revered as Khatu Shyam, the loser's friend, the lord who stands by the defeated and the weak - the very thing the young warrior had vowed in life to be.

So ends the tale of Barbarika, mightiest of warriors and greatest of givers, who could have destroyed two armies with three arrows and instead laid down his own head before the war began. He teaches that the highest courage is not in the slaying but in the giving; that a noble vow must be weighed with wisdom, lest its very generosity bring ruin; and that the truest victor in any struggle may not be the one the world crowns, but the unseen power that moved through it all. And his living head, set upon a hill, remains the witness who saw that there was only ever one warrior upon the field.