The Sun That Set

On the evening of the thirteenth day, when Arjuna learned that his son Abhimanyu had been slain - trapped in the Chakravyuha while Jayadratha, king of Sindhu, held the gate against his rescuers - his grief turned to a terrible oath. Before all the host he swore: 'Tomorrow, before the sun sets, I shall slay Jayadratha, who sealed my son's doom; and if I fail to kill him by sunset, I shall enter the fire and end my own life.' So Arjuna bound himself by a dreadful vow that staked his very life upon a single day's deed.

When the Kauravas heard of this vow, they resolved to save Jayadratha by simply keeping Arjuna from reaching him until the sun went down; for if Arjuna failed, he would die by his own oath, and the Pandavas would lose their greatest warrior. So Drona arrayed the whole vast Kaurava army to shield Jayadratha, placing him far at the rear behind layer upon layer of the mightiest warriors and the deepest formations, with orders to hold Arjuna off for a single day. Jayadratha himself, terrified, wished to flee; but Drona and Duryodhana assured him that the whole army would stand between him and Arjuna, and that he had only to survive until sunset. So the fourteenth day dawned upon a single, desperate question: could Arjuna cut through an entire army to reach one hidden man before the sun should set?

On the fourteenth day, Arjuna, with Krishna as his charioteer, flung himself against the Kaurava host to cut his way to Jayadratha before sunset. Drona had built a vast and deep array, formation behind formation, the whole army marshaled to bar Arjuna's path; and the fighting was the fiercest of the war. Arjuna drove his chariot like a thunderbolt through the enemy ranks, breaking through one formation only to find another beyond it, slaying warriors by the thousand, his bow never still, fighting his way deeper and deeper into the endless wall of the enemy toward the hidden king of Sindhu.

The day wore on, and Arjuna fought without rest, cutting through array after array; and his very horses grew exhausted and parched and wounded under the relentless effort. At one point Krishna unyoked the weary horses in the midst of the battle, and Arjuna held off the whole enemy host alone with his arrows while Krishna gave the horses water and drew the arrows from their flesh and rested them, and then yoked them again - so desperate and so unceasing was the drive. Hour upon hour Arjuna pressed on, slaying multitudes, breaking through the deep defenses; and yet Jayadratha was still far off, hidden behind the last and strongest of the Kaurava warriors, and the sun was sinking toward the west.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun slid lower, despair began to creep into the Pandava cause. For all Arjuna's superhuman efforts, for all the multitudes he had slain and the formations he had broken, Jayadratha was still guarded by a wall of the mightiest warriors, and remained beyond Arjuna's reach; and the sun was now low in the west, the day almost spent. It seemed that the Kauravas' plan would succeed: that they would keep Jayadratha alive until sunset, and that Arjuna, having failed his vow, would have to enter the fire and die, and the Pandavas would lose him.

The Kauravas, seeing the sun descend with Jayadratha still safe, began to rejoice, sensing victory; for every moment that passed brought Arjuna's failure and death nearer. And the Pandava warriors grew sick with dread, watching the sun sink and their greatest hero still far from his target, knowing that if he did not reach Jayadratha in moments, he would be lost to them by his own terrible oath. The whole war seemed to hang upon the last sliver of daylight; and it seemed that the daylight would run out before Arjuna could reach his foe. It was then that Krishna, who orders all things, took a hand in the matter.

Then Krishna, by his divine power, wrought a stratagem to draw Jayadratha out of his hiding. He caused a sudden darkness to fall over the field, veiling the sun as though it had set, so that all the host believed the sun was down and the day was over. 'The sun has set,' the cry went up; 'Arjuna has failed his vow!' And the Kauravas were filled with joy, believing that Jayadratha was saved and that Arjuna must now die by his own oath; and in their triumph they relaxed their guard.

And Jayadratha himself, who had cowered all day behind the army in terror of Arjuna, now came forward in his relief and exultation, lifting his face in joy that the dreaded sun had set and he had survived - coming out from the protection of the warriors who had shielded him, to gloat over Arjuna's failure and look upon the hero who must now die. So Krishna's false dusk drew the hidden king out of his shelter and into the open, exposed at last, his face turned upward in triumph. And in that very moment, Krishna spoke to Arjuna: 'There is Jayadratha, come forth at last; the sun has not truly set; strike now, while you can see him, before the true sunset comes. But take heed of his father's boon, and aim with care.'

But there was a peril in the slaying of Jayadratha, and Krishna warned Arjuna of it. For long before, Jayadratha's father, a king and an ascetic, had performed great penance and obtained a boon for his son: that whoever should cause Jayadratha's head to fall to the ground upon the earth, that person's own head would instantly burst into a hundred pieces. So if Arjuna simply struck off Jayadratha's head and let it fall to the earth, Arjuna himself would die by the power of the father's boon. The slaying had to be done in a way that the head should never touch the ground.

Krishna told Arjuna the only way: he must strike off Jayadratha's head with such a shot, and a succession of arrows, that the severed head would be carried through the air and away from the battlefield, without ever falling to the ground there - carried all the way to the place where Jayadratha's father sat, far off, in the evening worship of his penance, and dropped into his very lap. Then the father, startled, would let the head fall from his lap to the ground; and the boon would recoil upon the father himself, whose own head would burst, by the very curse he had laid to protect his son. So Arjuna must not merely kill Jayadratha, but send his head flying into his father's lap; and he made ready for that most precise and fateful of shots.

Arjuna laid upon his bow a powerful arrow, and another behind it, and loosed them with all his skill and all his strength, in the instant before the true sun should set. The arrow struck off the head of Jayadratha; and the following arrows caught the severed head and bore it up and away through the air, carrying it on and on, far from the battlefield, over the miles, toward the place where Jayadratha's father sat at his evening devotions - and dropped it gently into the old man's lap as he sat in prayer.

The father, feeling something fall into his lap and not knowing what it was, rose in surprise, and the head rolled from his lap and fell to the ground. And in that instant, by the very boon he had himself obtained - that whoever made Jayadratha's head fall to earth would have his own head burst - the old king's own head burst into a hundred pieces, and he died. So the curse he had laid to protect his son recoiled upon himself, and slew the father by the very means meant to save the son; and Jayadratha was slain without Arjuna coming to any harm. Arjuna had fulfilled his terrible vow at the very last possible instant, and avenged his son Abhimanyu, whose death Jayadratha had sealed.

With Jayadratha slain and his head sent flying to his father's lap, the false dusk lifted and the true sun showed for its last moment before setting; and the Pandavas rejoiced, for Arjuna had kept his dreadful vow at the very edge of ruin, slaying his foe in the last instant before the day was truly done. The death that he had sworn upon himself, should he fail, was averted; the boy Abhimanyu was avenged; and the Kauravas, who had thought themselves victorious moments before, were cast down into grief and dismay.

The whole day's terrible drama, with a hero's life staked on a single deed against an entire army, had been brought to its resolution only by the power and the wisdom of Krishna: by the false dusk that drew the hidden enemy out, and by the warning of the father's boon that guided the fatal shot. Without Krishna, the rash vow would have destroyed Arjuna; with Krishna, it was fulfilled. So the slaying of Jayadratha is a tale of valor staked to the utmost, of vengeance for a murdered son, and above all of the divine wisdom that guided a desperate vow safely through to its fulfillment when human effort alone would have failed.

The slaying of Jayadratha carries its lessons, woven through with vengeance, valor, and the hand of the divine.

See, first, the peril of the rash vow. Arjuna, in his grief, staked his very life on slaying one man before sunset, against a whole army marshaled to prevent it; and but for the wisdom of Krishna, that vow would have destroyed him. The tale warns against vows made in the heat of grief or anger that stake more than we can be sure to deliver; for such vows bind us to deeds that may lie beyond our power, and put our lives and all that depends on us at the mercy of chance. Be slow, then, to swear what you may not be able to fulfill.

And see how the wrongs of the past return upon their doers, and how the divine wisdom guides the righteous through. Jayadratha had sealed the unjust death of the boy Abhimanyu, and had long ago tried to abduct Draupadi; and his end, when it came, was the harvest of his own deeds. The very boon his father laid to protect him recoiled to slay the father, and could not save the son. And through it all, it was the wisdom and grace of Krishna - the false dusk, the warning of the boon - that carried Arjuna's desperate vow to its fulfillment when his own strength had reached its limit. The tale teaches that human effort, however heroic, is brought to its goal by the grace and wisdom of the divine; and that the wrongs men do return upon them in the end, by ways they do not foresee.