The Guard at Drona's Right Wheel

For most of that night the fourteenth day had been fought blind. Sanjaya had already told the blind king how it was: the world enveloped in darkness and dust, the combatants standing on the field unable to see one another, foremost of Kshatriyas striking at guesses, guided by conjecture and by the personal names men shouted as they came on. Thousands of car-warriors had slaughtered one another that way. Whole divisions had broken and run in all directions with hearts perfectly cheerless, and been cut down as they ran.

Then Duryodhana had ordered lamps, and the foot-soldiers had laid aside their great weapons and taken up burning lights instead, five to a car, three to each infuriated elephant, one large lamp on every horse, and the Pandavas had answered with ten to a car and seven to an elephant, until both hosts stood illuminated on the same plain.

"When the field of battle which had before been enveloped in darkness and dust had thus become illuminated," said Sanjaya, "heroic warriors encountered one another, desirous of taking one another's life."

That was the change. Not that the killing began. The killing had never stopped. What the lamps did was give every man back the face of the man he was about to kill.

Armed with lances and swords, they gazed at one another under the influence of rage, and now the rage had somewhere to fasten. With thousands of lamps blazing all around, and the more blazing lamps of the gods and the Gandharvas on golden stands decked with jewels and fed with fragrant oil, the field looked resplendent like the firmament bespangled with stars. With hundreds upon hundreds of blazing brands the earth seemed to be in a conflagration, as at the universal destruction. All the points of the compass looked like trees covered by fire-flies at an evening in the season of rains.

Elephant went against elephant, horseman against horseman, car-warrior against car-warrior, filled with joy, on that fierce night, at the command of Dhritarashtra's son.

And then Arjuna, with great speed, began to destroy the Kaurava ranks, weakening all the kings.

The old king in the hall could not see the lamps either. What he had was Sanjaya's voice, and at the word Arjuna he interrupted, and the interruption came out of him in a rush of questions that were really one question asked eleven ways.

"When the invincible Arjuna, excited with wrath and unable to brook the feats of the Kurus, penetrated into the army of my son, what became the state of your minds? Indeed, when that scorcher of foes entered into their midst, what did the soldiers think? What steps also did Duryodhana think fit to be adopted then? Who were those chastisers of foes that proceeded in that battle against that hero?"

Then he came to the thing he actually wanted.

"Indeed, when Arjuna, of white steeds, entered our army, who were they that protected Drona? Who guarded the right wheel and who the left wheel of Drona's car? Who were those heroes that protected the rear of that battling hero? Indeed, when Bharadwaja's son proceeded, slaying the foe along his route, who were they that proceeded in his van?"

Dhritarashtra knew already how the story ended. He had been told, long since, that Drona would not come back from this field, and every night he made Sanjaya walk him up to that fact again by a slightly different road.

"That mighty and invincible bowman who penetrated into the midst of the Panchalas," he said, "that tiger among men endued with great valour, who proceeded, as if dancing, along the track of his car, and consumed large throngs of Panchala cars by means of his shafts like a raging conflagration. Alas, how did that Drona meet with his death?"

And then, because grief in that hall always turned at the last moment into a complaint about the reporting, he turned on the reporter.

"Thou always speakest of my foes as cool and unvanquished and cheerful and swelling with might in battle. Thou dost not, however, speak of mine in such words. On the other hand, thou describest them to be slain, pale, and routed, and thou speakest of my car-warriors as always deprived of their cars in all the battles they fight."

Sanjaya did not answer the accusation. He answered the question about the wheels.

Duryodhana had seen what his commander intended. Drona was bent on battle and would not be persuaded to stand off and be safe, and a king who cannot move a man can at least build a wall around him. So on that night, understanding the wishes of Drona, Duryodhana called his obedient brothers to him and named them one by one.

Vikarna, who had once stood up in a full assembly hall and said aloud that Draupadi had not been fairly won. Chitrasena. Suparsva. Durdharsha. Dirghavahu. And all those that followed them.

"Ye heroes of great valour, struggling with resolution, all of you protect Drona from the rear. The son of Hridika will protect his right and Sala his left."

The son of Hridika was Kritavarma, a Vrishni, a warrior of Krishna's own clan and of Krishna's own city, who had come to this war on the other side of it. When Krishna offered Duryodhana the choice between himself unarmed and the whole Narayana host, the host that came was Kritavarma's, and Kritavarma came with it. He was one of the three men who would still be alive at the end of everything. Tonight he was a name in a list, posted to a chariot wheel like a door-guard.

Having named the rear and the two flanks, Duryodhana urged forward, placing them at the van, what was left of the brave and mighty car-warriors of Trigarta, the sworn men whose whole remaining purpose in the war was to die somewhere useful.

Then he gave them the reason, which was not a reason about tactics.

"The preceptor is merciful," said Duryodhana. "The Pandavas are fighting with great resolution. While engaged in slaughtering the foe in battle, protect him well, uniting together."

It is worth stopping on that sentence, because it is Duryodhana's own estimate of the man he had made commander after Bhishma fell. Not that Drona was old. Not that Drona was slow. That Drona was merciful, and that the enemy was not, and that the arithmetic of the thing therefore did not work in Drona's favour, and would have to be corrected by other men standing where the arrows came.

Duryodhana went on, and what came out of him was not an order but a whole war laid out end to end, as a man lays out a plan at night when he badly needs it to be true.

"Drona is mighty in battle, is endued with great lightness of hand and great valour. He can vanquish the very gods in battle. What need then be said of the Pandavas and the Somakas? All of you, however, united together and struggling with great resolution in this terrible battle, protect the invincible Drona from that mighty car-warrior, Dhrishtadyumna. Except Dhrishtadyumna, I do not see the man amongst all the warriors of the Pandavas that can vanquish Drona in battle."

He was right. That was the whole horror of it. Dhrishtadyumna had come out of a sacrificial fire for exactly this, born of his father's old grudge with a bow already in his hands, made for the death of Drona the way a weapon is made for a purpose, and everyone on that field including Drona knew it. Duryodhana had identified the one man who mattered, and his answer to him was a hedge of bodies.

"I, therefore, think that we should, with our whole soul, protect the son of Bharadwaja. Protected by us, he is sure to slay the Somakas and the Srinjayas, one after another. Upon the slaughter of all the Srinjayas at the head of the Pandava army, Drona's son without doubt will slay Dhrishtadyumna in battle. Similarly, the mighty car-warrior Karna will vanquish Arjuna in battle. As regards Bhimasena and others clad in mail, I will subjugate them all in fight. The rest of the Pandavas, deprived of energy, will be easily defeated by the warriors. It is evident, my success then will last for ever."

Every link in that chain broke. Ashwatthama did not kill Dhrishtadyumna in battle, but in his sleep, on the last night of the war, and paid for it for the rest of a very long life. Karna did not vanquish Arjuna. Duryodhana did not subjugate Bhimasena. Only the first clause held: protected, Drona did slay the Srinjayas, one after another, for another day.

"For these reasons, protect the mighty car-warrior Drona in battle."

Having said these words, Duryodhana urged his troops forward on that night of terrible darkness. Ashwatthama covered the ruler of the Panchalas with straight shafts, and Drona covered the Srinjayas, and a furious uproar went up.

Sanjaya said afterwards that the battle fought on that night was so terrible and so fierce that its like had never been witnessed by themselves or by those gone before them.

On the other side of the lamps, Yudhishthira had come to the same conclusion by the opposite road.

During the progress of that terrible nocturnal engagement, which was fraught with an indiscriminate carnage, Dharma's son called out to the Pandavas, the Panchalas and the Somakas, and what he ordered was not a manoeuvre. For the destruction of men and cars and elephants, king Yudhishthira commanded his own troops in seven words.

"Proceed ye against Drona only, for slaying him."

This is the eldest Pandava, the man who could not bring himself to lie for another whole day, ordering his entire army to converge on one old Brahmana who had taught him archery as a boy. The night had got that far into him. At the command of the king, the Panchalas and the Somakas rushed against Drona alone, uttering terrible shouts, and the Kauravas, excited with rage and loudly roaring in return, rushed to meet them to the best of their prowess and courage and might.

What happened then was that Duryodhana's hedge did its work. Every road to Drona had a man standing in it.

Kritavarma, the son of Hridika, rushed against Yudhishthira as the king was advancing against Drona, like an infuriated elephant against an infuriated compeer. Against Satyaki, grandson of Shini, advancing and scattering arrowy showers all around, rushed the Kuru warrior Bhuri. Karna resisted Sahadeva as he came on for Drona. Duryodhana himself rushed against Bhimasena, who was advancing on his car like the Destroyer. Shakuni went to meet Nakula, who was conversant with every kind of battle. Kripa resisted Shikhandi. Dushasana, contending vigorously, took Prativindhya, the eldest of Draupadi's five sons, whose steeds looked like peacocks. Ashwatthama resisted Bhima's son Ghatotkacha, acquainted with a hundred kinds of illusion. Vrishasena, Karna's son, resisted the aged Drupada with his troops and followers. Shalya, ruler of the Madras, excited with wrath, resisted Virata. Chitrasena resisted Nakula's son Satanika. The prince of the Rakshasas, Alambusha, resisted Arjuna.

And Dhrishtadyumna, the one man Duryodhana had named, cheerfully resisted Drona himself.

Below the chariots the rest of it went on without names. Elephant riders encountered elephant riders and ground each other by thousands. At dead of night the steeds rushed against one another so hard that they looked like winged hills. Horsemen met horsemen with lances and darts and swords and loud shouts, and large numbers of men slaughtered one another in heaps with maces and short clubs.

Kritavarma, the son of Hridika, excited with wrath, resisted Dharma's son, Yudhishthira, like continents resisting the swelling sea.

Sanjaya chose that image and it is worth keeping, because it says which of the two men was moving. Yudhishthira was the water. He had a direction and a weight behind him and a whole army coming the same way. Kritavarma had one job, which was to be the coast.

The king opened by piercing Hridika's son with five arrows, and then with twenty more, and called out to him.

"Wait. Wait."

It is the standard challenge of that field, the two syllables men shout when they mean stand and fight me and do not go elsewhere, and it is also, from Yudhishthira on that particular night, an order to a man who was already refusing to move.

Kritavarma, excited with wrath, cut off with a broad-headed shaft the bow of Yudhishthira the just, and pierced him with seven arrows. The king took up another bow at once and put ten arrows into the son of Hridika's arms and chest. Thus pierced, the warrior of Madhu's race trembled with rage and afflicted Yudhishthira with seven shafts in return.

Then Pritha's son found the seam. He cut off his enemy's bow, and with it the leathern fence that cased Kritavarma's hands, and while the man stood there disarmed and unguarded he sped five keen shafts whetted on stone. Those fierce arrows pierced through the costly armour decked with gold and went on through and entered the earth like snakes going into an ant-hill.

That was Yudhishthira's best moment of the encounter, and it lasted about as long as it takes to describe. Within the twinkling of an eye Kritavarma had another bow up and had put sixty arrows into the son of Pandu, and then ten more.

So the king laid his large bow down on the floor of his car and took up a dart instead, gold-decked, and sped it at Kritavarma like a snake going through the air, and it pierced clean through Kritavarma's right arm and entered the ground behind him.

A man with a dart through his bow arm ought to be finished. Meanwhile, Pritha's son took up his formidable bow again and shrouded the son of Hridika with showers of straight shafts, and for one moment on that lamp-lit field it must have looked to the Panchalas coming up behind their king as though the road to Drona had opened.

Then brave Kritavarma, that great car-warrior among the Vrishnis, within less than the twinkling of an eye, made Yudhishthira steedless and driverless and carless.

Sanjaya gives it in one breath, in that order, and the order is the whole of it. The horses, the man holding the reins, the car itself. A king who had been advancing on Drona at the head of an army was standing on the ground.

Thereupon the eldest son of Pandu took up a sword and a shield. He of Madhu's race cut off both those weapons in that battle.

Yudhishthira then took up a fierce lance equipped with a gold-decked staff and sped it, quickly, at the illustrious son of Hridika. And here Ganguli's text puts in the detail that turns a defeat into a humiliation. Hridika's son, smiling the while, and displaying great lightness of hand, cut off into two fragments that lance hurled from the arms of Yudhishthira, as it coursed impetuously towards him.

Smiling the while. With a dart-wound through his right arm.

He then covered the son of Dharma with a hundred arrows. Excited with wrath, he cut off the king's coat of mail with showers of shafts, and Yudhishthira's armour, decked with gold, cut loose from his body by Hridika's son, dropped down off him, said Sanjaya, like a cluster of stars dropping down from the firmament.

His armour gone, his car gone, his weapons gone one after another, afflicted with the shafts of Kritavarma, Dharma's son quickly retreated from battle.

That is the sentence. The commander of the Pandava army, who had ordered every man he had to go for Drona and nothing else, got no closer to Drona than one Vrishni posted at the right wheel, and left the field on foot with his gold lying behind him in the dirt.

And Kritavarma did not pursue him. There is no boast recorded, no speech over the wreck of the chariot, nothing thrown after the retreating king. The mighty car-warrior Kritavarma, then, having vanquished Yudhishthira, the son of Dharma, once more began to protect the wheel of Drona's car.

He went back to his post. The lamps went on burning on the elephants and the horses, and the Panchalas came on again behind their broken king, and somewhere ahead in that lit darkness Drona was still killing Srinjayas one after another, exactly as Duryodhana had promised, with his right wheel guarded.