The King on Foot

"After Arjuna had got the ruler of the Sindhus within sight," Dhritarashtra said, "what, O Sanjaya, did the Panchalas, attacked by Bharadwaja's son, do, encountering the Kurus?"

The blind king was asking about the other half of the fourteenth day. Everybody in that hall knew where Arjuna was. He was far out on the field with Krishna driving him, closing on Jayadratha, whom he had sworn to kill before the sun went down. What Dhritarashtra wanted was an account of what had been happening behind that pursuit, at the place where Drona held the line.

"In the afternoon of that day, O monarch," said Sanjaya, "in the battle that took place between the Panchalas and the Kurus, Drona became, as it were, the stake."

He meant it the way a gambler means it. Drona was the thing each side was playing to win or lose. The Panchalas, who had a claim on that old man older than the war itself, cheerfully uttered loud roars and shot dense showers of arrows, desirous of slaying him. That encounter was fierce, awful and highly wonderful, and Sanjaya said it resembled the battle in days of yore between the gods and the Asuras.

All the Panchalas with the Pandavas, once they had Drona's car within reach, took up many mighty weapons, wanting to pierce through his array. The car-warriors came on with the earth shaking under them and their arrowy downpours falling ahead of them, and Sanjaya noticed the one thing about that advance which mattered. They came towards Drona's car without much speed.

They were not charging. They were pressing, a step and a volley and another step, because nobody who had fought the last fortnight believed that a rush at Bharadwaja's son ended well.

And at the head of his own division, from desire of victory, stood the eldest of the Pandavas, King Yudhishthira, who was the one man on that field Drona had promised not to kill.

The afternoon arranged itself into pairs, the way those afternoons did.

Vrihatkshatra of the Kaikeyas started for Drona first, incessantly scattering keen shafts that resembled the thunder in force, and Kshemadhurti of great fame rushed against him, shooting keen arrows by thousands. Dhrishtaketu, that bull among the Chedis, proceeded against Kshemadhurti in his turn, like Mahendra proceeding against the Asura Samvara. And seeing him come with great impetuosity, like the Destroyer himself with wide open mouth, the mighty bowman Viradhanwan went out to meet him.

That is how a line holds. Every man who starts for the commander is caught by somebody else before he arrives.

Dhritarashtra's son Vikarna, endued with great prowess, proceeded against the rushing Nakula. Durmukha covered the advancing Sahadeva with many thousands of swiftly coursing shafts. The heroic Vyaghradatta resisted Satyaki, that tiger among men, making him repeatedly tremble by means of sharp and keen-pointed shafts. The son of Somadatta wrathfully took upon himself the five sons of Draupadi. And the fierce son of Rishyasringa, the rakshasa Alambusha, of awful mien, resisted Bhimasena, who came filled with wrath; and the encounter between that man and that rakshasa, Sanjaya said, resembled the battle in days of yore between Rama and Ravana.

Eight pairs, and the ninth was the one the day turned on.

King Yudhishthira, staying there at the head of his division from desire of victory, was resisted by valiant Drona himself.

There was nobody left between them. The preceptor had come out to stand in front of his eldest pupil, and the pupil, who had learned from him how to hold a bow at all, did not give ground.

Then Yudhishthira, that chief of the Bharatas, struck Drona with ninety straight shafts, and put every one of them into a vital part.

Enraged by the famous son of Kunti, Drona struck him in return in the centre of the chest with five and twenty shafts. Then, in the very sight of all the bowmen there, he struck him again with twenty more, and those twenty went into the king and his steeds and his charioteer and his standard, so that there was nothing on that car the old man had not touched.

Pandu's son, of virtuous soul, displaying great lightness of hand, baffled those arrows with arrowy showers of his own.

It is worth stopping on that, because the picture most people carry of Yudhishthira is of a man who is out of place in a battle. He was not out of place. He was the son of Dharma standing alone against the foremost of all persons acquainted with weapons, and for a while he was answering him shot for shot.

Then that great bowman Drona, filled with rage, cut off the bow of the high-souled king Yudhishthira the just.

What followed took a moment. The son of Bharadwaja speedily covered the bowless king with many thousands of shafts, and Yudhishthira went out of sight inside them the way a man goes out of sight inside a rainstorm.

The army could not see him. That is the whole of the disaster, and it was enough. All thought that Yudhishthira was dead. Some thought that the king had fled before Drona. And many cried out, saying, "Alas, the king hath been slain by the high-souled Brahmana."

They called him high-souled while they said it. Even the men who believed he had just killed their king could not find another word for Drona.

Inside the shafts, king Yudhishthira the just, fallen into great distress, laid aside the bow that had been cut off and took up another, excellent and bright and tougher than the first.

And that hero then cut off, in that encounter, all those shafts shot in thousands by Drona.

Sanjaya, who had watched every arrow of that war, said only that all this seemed exceedingly wonderful, and went on.

Having cut off those shafts, Yudhishthira, with eyes red in wrath, took up a dart.

It was a weapon capable of riving even a mountain, equipped with a golden staff, of awful mien, and it had eight bells attached to it. Taking it up, the mighty son of Pandu uttered a loud roar, and with that roar he inspired all creatures with fear.

Then something happened that is easy to read past. Beholding that dart upraised by king Yudhishthira the just, all creatures, as if with one accord, said, "Good be to Drona!"

Not good be to the king. The whole field, both armies, the same men who had been crying out a moment earlier that their king was dead, looked at the raised dart with the bells on it and wished well to the man it was aimed at. That is what the preceptor was to the people who were trying to kill him.

Hurled from the king's arms, the dart went out like a snake just freed from its slough, illumining the welkin and all the directions cardinal and subsidiary, like a she-snake with a mouth of fire.

Drona stood and watched it come. Then that foremost of all persons acquainted with weapons invoked into existence the weapon called Brahma.

The Brahma weapon reduced that dart of terrible mien into dust in the air, and it did not stop there. It came on towards the car of the illustrious son of Pandu.

And king Yudhishthira, of great wisdom, baffled that weapon of Drona, thus coursing towards him, by himself invoking the Brahma weapon.

Then he did the thing his brothers were never quite sure he could do.

Piercing Drona himself in that battle with five straight shafts, Yudhishthira took a sharp razor-faced shaft and cut off the large bow of Bharadwaja's son.

Drona, that grinder of Kshatriyas, threw the broken bow aside. He did not take up another. He picked up a mace and hurled it with great force at the son of Dharma, and there is no mistaking what that means. The teacher had come to the end of the elegant part of his art and was throwing iron at a man he had once made stand in a courtyard with his elbow raised until it was right.

Beholding that mace impetuously coursing towards him, Yudhishthira, filled with rage, took up a mace of his own and threw it.

The two of them met in mid-air over the ground between the cars, encountered each other, produced by their collision sparks of fire, and fell down on the earth.

Nothing was decided by it. Two maces lay in the dust, the two men stood looking at each other, and it had cost each of them a weapon he did not have a second of.

Then Drona, filled with fury, went back to the shafts.

Four excellent arrows of keen point slew the steeds of Yudhishthira. A broad-headed shaft cut off the king's bow, which Sanjaya said had stood on that car like a pole erected to the honour of Indra. Another shaft cut off his standard. Three more afflicted the Pandava himself.

It took about as long as it takes to say, and it was done by an old man who had spent the whole afternoon being pressed by an army, and it emptied the car of everything that made it a car.

Then king Yudhishthira, speedily jumping down from that steedless car, stood weaponless and with arms upraised.

The account gives it one plain line and moves on, and it is one of the most exposed moments in the whole war. The eldest of the Pandavas, the son of Dharma, the man the entire Pandava cause existed in order to crown, was standing on the field of Kurukshetra on his own two feet with nothing in his hands and both arms lifted, in front of the greatest living master of weapons.

Beholding him carless, and especially weaponless, Drona stupefied his foes, rather the whole army.

Not only the Pandavas. Sanjaya says the whole army, the Kaurava side with it, went numb at what it was watching. Every man there knew the vow. Drona had promised Duryodhana that he would seize Yudhishthira and bring him in alive, and had said plainly that it could be done only if Arjuna were drawn away from the king's side. Arjuna was somewhere out in the dust hunting the ruler of the Sindhus. The condition had been met at last. The old man had the king in front of him on foot with empty hands.

Firmly adhering to his vow, and endued with great lightness of hands, Drona shot showers of sharp shafts and rushed towards the king, like a furious lion towards a deer.

That is the image the text chooses, and it does not soften it. Not a teacher walking up to a pupil. Not a captor coming for a prisoner he has undertaken to keep alive. A lion going at a deer.

Beholding Drona, that slayer of foes, rush towards him, cries of Oh and Alas suddenly rose from the Pandava army.

And many cried out, saying, "The king is slain by Bharadwaja's son."

Loud wails of this kind were heard among the Pandava troops. They had said it once already that afternoon, when the arrows hid him, and they had been wrong. They were about to be wrong a second time, and on both occasions they were wrong only by a very small margin.

Because while the wailing was going on, somebody had brought a chariot up behind the king.

Meanwhile, king Yudhishthira, the son of Kunti, getting up on the car of Sahadeva, retreated from the field, borne away by swift steeds.

That is the whole of the ending. There is no rescue by Arjuna, no counter-charge, no weapon out of the sky. The youngest of the five, who had his own duel with Durmukha going on not far away, put his car where his eldest brother could reach it, and the eldest brother climbed up onto another man's chariot with nothing in his hands and let the horses take him out of there.

He had lost the first bow and the second bow, the dart with the bells, the mace, the horses, the standard and the car. He had met a Brahma weapon with a Brahma weapon, which few men living could do, and he had cut the bow out of Drona's hands, which fewer still could do. None of it was enough. At the end of it the son of Dharma ran, in front of both armies, and lived.

Sanjaya reported all of it to a blind king in a hall at Hastinapura without a word of judgment on either man, which was his habit. He had already said the only thing that needed saying about that afternoon, before any of it happened. In the battle between the Panchalas and the Kurus, Drona became, as it were, the stake.