The Second Throw

Janamejaya said, "How did the sons of Dhritarashtra feel, when they came to know that the Pandavas had left Hastinapura with the old king's leave, and with all their wealth and their jewels?"

Vaishampayana said: They felt it very bitterly, O king, and Dussasana felt it first.

He stood at the eastern gate and watched it go. Everything that had been won in that long day in the assembly hall was moving out along the Khandava road in the dust: the gold in its jars, the elephants, the horses, the herds, the serving men and women, the five brothers' weapons laid back into the five brothers' own chariots. Draupadi's ornaments had been packed again into Draupadi's own boxes and set on a cart with a driver of her own choosing. Dhritarashtra had given the whole of it back with his own mouth, and had put blessings on top of it, and had told Yudhishthira to go home and rule and to bear his cousins no malice, for the old are foolish and the young are hot.

Dussasana did not wait for the last cart to clear the gate. He went straight to his brother with his counsellor at his heels, and by the time he arrived he was weeping with rage.

"You mighty warriors," he said, "that which we won with so much trouble, the old man has thrown away. Do you hear what I am telling you? He has made over the whole of it to the foes. Every jar of it. He gave them their bows back with his own hands."

Duryodhana said nothing for a long moment. Then he sent for Karna, and he sent for Shakuni son of Suvala, and when the three of them stood together in one room there was no need for any of them to explain anything to the others. They went in haste to the wing of the palace where the blind king sat, and they asked to see him privately, and they were let in.

Duryodhana began pleasantly, the way a man begins who has come to ask for something enormous.

"Have you not heard, O king, what the learned Vrihaspati said when he was counselling Sakra about mortals and about politics? These were his words. 'Those enemies who always do you wrong, whether by stratagem or by force, should be slain by every means.' Every means, father. He did not say by fair means."

"I have heard it," said Dhritarashtra.

"Then hear this also. When a man has taken venomous snakes, full of wrath, and has laid them himself upon his own neck and across his own back, is it possible for him afterwards to take them off? That is what you did this morning. You gave them back their mail and their quivers and you sent them east with your blessing."

He leaned closer, and he began to describe the road, because his father could not see it and he could.

"Arjuna is going along at this moment encased in mail, with his pair of quivers full, taking up the Gandiva again and again in his hands and putting it down and taking it up, breathing hard, casting angry glances all around him. It has been reported to us that Vrikodara ordered his car made ready in haste and rode out on it whirling that heavy mace of his. Nakula is on the road with the sword in his grasp and the half-moon shield upon his arm. And Sahadeva and the king have made signs that testify plainly enough to what is in their minds. They have mounted cars loaded with every kind of arms, they are whipping their horses toward Khandava, and they are assembling their forces."

"They gave me no hard word," said Dhritarashtra. "Yudhishthira touched my feet."

"Yudhishthira touched your feet," Duryodhana agreed. "Persecuted as they have been by us, they are incapable of forgiving us those injuries. Who is there among them, father, who will forgive that insult to Draupadi? Name him to me. Name one."

The old king did not name one.

Having brought his father to the edge, Duryodhana laid the plan down in front of him, complete, with its arithmetic already done.

"Blessed be you. We will gamble with the son of Pandu once more, and this time for exile. We are competent to bring them under our sway that way. Dressed in skins, whichever of us is defeated at dice shall go to the great forest for twelve years. The thirteenth year is to be passed in some inhabited country, unrecognised; and if we are recognised in that year, an exile of another twelve years follows upon it. Either we shall live so, or they shall. That is the whole of the wager, and it is a fair one, for we take the same risk they take."

"And who casts the dice?" said Dhritarashtra.

"This Shakuni knows the entire science of dice," said Duryodhana, and did not elaborate, because nothing in that room needed elaborating. "O bull of the Bharata race, this is our highest duty. And consider the thirteen years themselves. Even if they succeed in keeping such a vow to its last day, we shall in the meantime be firmly rooted in the kingdom, and making alliances, and assembling a vast and invincible host, and keeping every ally content. So that if they reappear at the end of it we shall defeat them anyway. Let this plan recommend itself to you, O slayer of foes."

Dhritarashtra sat with his hands on his knees. Then he said the sentence that ended the peace of the world.

"Bring back the Pandavas. Even if they have gone a great way, bring them back. Let them come at once again to cast dice."

The word went out of that room and through the palace, and the palace rose against it. Drona said it. Somadatta said it, and Bahlika, and Gautama the son of Saradwat, and Bhurisravas, and Ashwatthama, and Yuyutsu the king's son by his Vaisya wife, and Vikarna who was Duryodhana's own brother, and Vidura, and last of all Bhishma, who was older than any grief in that house.

Let not the play commence. Let there be peace.

Dhritarashtra, partial to his sons, disregarded the counsel of all his wise friends and relatives, and summoned the sons of Pandu.

Then Gandhari came, who loved her sons and knew exactly what they were, and stood before her husband with her eyes bound as they had been bound for forty years.

"When Duryodhana was born," she said, "Vidura of great intelligence said this to you, and I was in the room, and you have never once repeated it aloud since. He said, 'It is well to send this disgrace of the race to the other world.' The child cried repeatedly and dissonantly, like a jackal. Vidura said it was certain that he would prove the destruction of our race. Take that to heart now, O king of the Kurus."

"That was long ago," said Dhritarashtra.

"O Bharata, do not sink, through your own fault, into an ocean of calamity. Do not give your approval to the counsels of wicked men of immature years. Who is there who will break down an embankment that has already been finished and is holding? Who is there who will go and rekindle a fire that has been put out? The Pandavas have gone home peaceful. Who provokes the peaceful sons of Pritha?"

She went on, and her voice did not rise, which made it worse.

"You remember everything, O Ajamida, and still I will call your attention to this. The scriptures can never control a wicked mind toward good or restrain it from evil, and a person of immature understanding will never act as one of mature years acts. Let your sons follow you as their leader. Do not let them be separated from you for ever. Therefore, at my word, O king, abandon this one wretch of our race. You could not do it before, out of a father's affection. Know that the time has come for the destruction of the race through him. That prosperity which is acquired by the aid of wicked acts is soon destroyed. That which is won by mild means takes root, and descends from generation to generation."

Dhritarashtra listened to the whole of it. Then he said:

"If the destruction of our race has come, let it take place freely. I am ill able to prevent it. Let it be as they desire. Let the Pandavas return. And let my sons gamble again with the sons of Pandu."

The royal messenger rode hard, because the Pandavas had by that time gone a great way, and he came up with them out on the open road with the dust of their own column hanging behind them.

He gave the message exactly as it had been given to him.

"These are the words of your father-like uncle, O Bharata, spoken to you. 'The assembly is ready. O son of Pandu, O king Yudhishthira, come and cast the dice.'"

The brothers had stopped. Nobody said anything. Yudhishthira looked back along the road at the city he had left that morning, and then at the messenger, who was a young man and frightened, and who had done nothing wrong.

"Creatures obtain their fruits, good and ill, according to the dispensation of the Ordainer of creation," Yudhishthira said. "Those fruits are inevitable whether I play or whether I do not. This is a summons to dice, and it is besides the command of the old king. Although I know that it will prove destructive to me, yet I cannot refuse."

A living animal made of gold is an impossibility, and yet Rama suffered himself to be tempted by a golden deer. The minds of men over whom a calamity hangs become deranged and go out of order, and they walk toward the thing that is waiting for them as if they had an appointment with it.

Yudhishthira turned his chariot. His brothers turned theirs, because he was the eldest and the king, and Draupadi's cart turned with them, and the whole column that had been going east went back west toward Hastinapura with the sun in its face. He knew the deception that Shakuni practised. He had watched it work on him for an entire day already. He came back to sit at dice with the man anyway.

They entered the assembly hall a second time, and the sight of them coming in afflicted the hearts of every friend they had in the room. Compelled by Fate, they sat down again at their ease to gamble for their own destruction.

Shakuni was courteous, as he always was.

"The old king has given you back all your wealth," he said. "That is well. That is as it should be. But listen to me, O bull of the Bharata race, for there is one stake of great value left. Either you defeat us at dice, and then we, dressed in deer skins, shall enter the great forest and live there twelve years, passing the whole of the thirteenth in some inhabited region unrecognised, and if recognised return to an exile of another twelve. Or we vanquish you, and then you, dressed in deer skins, shall go with Krishna of Panchala and live twelve years in the woods and pass the thirteenth unrecognised in some inhabited region, and if recognised, another twelve. And on the expiry of the thirteenth year, each is to have his kingdom surrendered to him by the other. With this resolution, O Yudhishthira, play with us. Cast the dice."

A sound went through the hall. Men who had sat silent through the whole of the first day raised up their arms where they sat, and out of the sheer strength of their feeling they said aloud to one another what none of them would say to the throne.

"Alas. Shame on the friends of Duryodhana, that they do not apprise him of his great danger. Whether the king understands this of his own sense or does not, it is our duty to tell him plainly."

And not one of them stood up.

Yudhishthira heard all of it. Out of shame, and out of a sense of what his order required of him, he sat down at the dice again, knowing perfectly well what would follow.

"How can a king like me, O Shakuni, always observant of the usages of his own order, refuse when he is summoned to dice? Therefore I play with you."

"We have many kine," said Shakuni, "and horses, and milch cows, and goats and sheep beyond counting, and elephants, and treasuries, and gold, and slaves both male and female. All of these were staked by us before. But now let this be our one stake: exile into the woods. Being defeated, either you or we shall dwell twelve years in the woods and the thirteenth unrecognised in some inhabited place. You bulls among men, with this determination will we play."

The proposal about the stay in the woods was uttered once. Only once. The son of Pritha accepted it, and Shakuni took up the dice, and cast them, and said:

"Lo. I have won."

The vanquished sons of Pritha prepared for their exile into the woods. They did it there, in the hall, in front of everyone, one after another in due order of age, casting off their royal robes and attiring themselves in deer skins.

Dussasana watched them do it and could not contain himself.

"The absolute sovereignty of the illustrious king Duryodhana has commenced," he announced to the hall. "The sons of Pandu have been vanquished and plunged into great affliction. Now we have attained the goal, by broad paths or by narrow ones, it does not matter which. Today we have become superior to our foes in prosperity and in duration of rule, and men will praise us for it. The sons of Pritha have been plunged by us into everlasting hell. They who were so proud of their wealth, who laughed in derision at the son of Dhritarashtra, will now go into the woods, defeated and deprived by us of everything."

He walked along the line of them as they changed.

"Put off those variegated coats of mail. Put off those resplendent robes of celestial make. Attire yourselves in deer skins, according to the stake you accepted from the son of Suvala. They who always used to boast that they had no equals in all the world will now know themselves for what they are: grains of sesame without the kernel. Look at them. In that dress they seem like wise and powerful persons installed in a sacrifice, and yet they look like persons who have no right to perform sacrifices at all, going about in such a guise."

Then he turned toward Draupadi, who had come back into that hall a second time and was standing at the side of it, and he raised his voice so that she could not pretend not to hear.

"The wise Yajnasena of the Somaka race, when he bestowed his daughter, the princess of Panchala, upon the sons of Pandu, acted most unfortunately for her. These sons of Pritha are eunuchs. And O Yajnaseni, what joy will be yours, beholding in the woods these husbands of yours dressed in skins and threadbare rags, deprived of their wealth and their possessions? Elect a husband. Whomsoever you like, from among all those present here. These Kurus assembled are forbearing and self-controlled and possessed of great wealth. Elect one of them as your lord, so that this great calamity may not drag you down into wretchedness. The sons of Pandu now are like grains of sesame without the kernel, or like show-animals encased in skins, or like husks of rice with nothing inside them. Why should you wait upon the fallen sons of Pandu any longer? Vain is the labour spent on pressing a sesame grain that has no kernel in it."

Bhima came at him the way a Himalayan lion comes at a jackal, and stopped, because he could not deviate from the path of virtue, and had to make do with words.

"Wicked-minded villain. Do you rave in language that only the sinful use? Do you boast like this in the middle of kings, you who have been advanced by the skill of the king of Gandhara and by nothing else of your own? As you pierce our hearts here with these arrowy words of yours, so shall I pierce your heart in battle, and I will recall every word of this to your mind while I am doing it. And those who from anger or from covetousness are walking behind you as your protectors, them also I shall send to the abode of Yama, with their descendants and their relatives."

Dussasana looked at him. Bhima was standing in a deer skin with his royal clothes at his feet, and he had not lifted a hand, and everyone in the hall had seen that he had not lifted a hand.

So Dussasana abandoned all sense of shame, and began to dance around the Kurus, in and out among the seated kings, calling out as he went:

"O cow. O cow."

Bhima said, "Wretch. Do you dare to use words like these? Whom does it become to boast, having won wealth by foul means? I tell you this. If Vrikodara, the son of Pritha, does not drink your life-blood, piercing open your breast in battle, let him never attain to the regions of the blessed. And I tell you truly, by slaying the sons of Dhritarashtra in battle, before the very eyes of all the warriors, I shall pacify this wrath of mine soon enough."

He said it in a room that contained Bhishma, and Drona, and Vidura, and the blind king on his seat, and not one of them contradicted him, because every man there had just watched what had been done and knew that it was a debt now, and that debts of that kind are collected.

As the Pandavas were going out of the assembly, Duryodhana, from an excess of joy, got up and mimicked with his own steps the rolling lion-walk of Bhima, so that the hall could laugh at it.

Bhima half turned in the doorway.

"Do not think, you fool, that by this you gain any ascendency over me. I shall slay you soon, with all your followers, and I shall answer you then, recalling all of this to your mind."

And then, suppressing his rage and following in the steps of Yudhishthira, he spoke the thing out fully as he walked from the Kaurava court, so that the whole room heard it, and the whole room afterwards remembered where it had been standing when it was said.

"I will slay Duryodhana. Dhananjaya will slay Karna. And Sahadeva will slay Shakuni, that gambler with dice. I repeat in this assembly these proud words, which the gods will assuredly make good if ever we engage in battle with the Kurus. I will slay this wretched Duryodhana in battle with my mace, and prostrating him on the ground I will set my foot upon his head. And as regards this other wicked person, Dussasana, who is so audacious in his speech, I will drink his blood like a lion."

"O Bhima," said Arjuna, "the resolutions of superior men are not known in words only. On the fourteenth year from this day, they shall see what happens."

"The earth shall drink the blood of Duryodhana," said Bhima, "and of Karna, and of the wicked Shakuni, and of Dussasana who makes the fourth."

"O Bhima, I will do as you direct," said Arjuna. "I will slay in battle this Karna, so malicious and jealous and harsh of speech and vain. For the doing of what is agreeable to Bhima, Arjuna vows that he will slay in battle, with his arrows, this Karna with all his followers. And I will send to the regions of Yama all those other kings who from foolishness fight against me. The mountains of Himavat might be removed from where they stand, the maker of the day might lose his brightness, the moon might lose her coldness, but this vow of mine will be cherished for ever. And all of this shall assuredly happen, if on the fourteenth year from this, Duryodhana does not with proper respect return us our kingdom."

Then Sahadeva, the handsome son of Madri, waving his mighty arms and sighing like a snake, with his eyes red, said, "You disgrace of the Gandhara kings. Those whom you think defeated are not really defeated. Those are sharp-pointed arrows whose wounds you have run the risk of in battle. I shall certainly accomplish everything that Bhima has said concerning you, and concerning all your followers. If therefore you have anything to do, do it before that day comes. I shall slay you in battle soon enough, if you stand your ground in the light, according to Kshatriya usage."

And Nakula, the handsomest of men, said last, "I shall certainly send to the abode of Yama all those wicked sons of Dhritarashtra who, desirous of death, impelled by Fate, and moved by the wish to do what is agreeable to Duryodhana, have used harsh and insulting speeches toward this daughter of Yajnasena at the gambling match. Soon enough shall I, at the command of Yudhishthira, and remembering the wrongs done to Draupadi, make the earth destitute of the sons of Dhritarashtra."

Having pledged themselves so, those tigers among men, all of them long-armed, walked back across the hall and went to king Dhritarashtra to take their leave of him before going into the woods.