The Blood Vow

This is the tale of how Bhima fulfilled, upon the field of Kurukshetra, the most terrible vow of the whole war - a vow born years before in the hall of the dice game, in the hour of Draupadi's deepest humiliation. For when the Pandavas had lost everything at the rigged dice, Dushasana, the brother of Duryodhana, had dragged Queen Draupadi by her hair into the assembly hall, a lone woman in a single garment, and had sought to strip her naked before all the court, mocking and reviling her, while the elders sat silent and the Pandavas sat bound by their word, helpless and shamed.

In that hour, watching his beloved wife so abused, Bhima had risen in a fury that shook the hall, and had sworn two dreadful oaths before all present: that he would one day break open the chest of Dushasana, the hands that had dragged Draupadi, and drink the blood of his heart; and that he would shatter the thigh of Duryodhana, upon which Duryodhana had insolently bidden Draupadi sit. These were savage vows, born of a savage wrong; and Draupadi herself had vowed that she would leave her hair unbound, hanging loose and disheveled as Dushasana had left it, until the day it could be bound again with hands wet with his blood. So the wrong of the dice hall planted the seeds of a terrible reckoning, to be reaped years later upon the field of war.