The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  From every corner word went up that Greatfather had fallen. “Pitamaha has fallen!” Greatfather had fallen from his chariot. It was as though the Father of the Universe, the All-Creator of the world had fallen in the dust. The drums and conches started up uncertainly and died. Victory conches had no meaning on the tenth day.

  I had killed Greatfather. I had violated Dharma in a way that made me feel I had jumped off a cliff and I was falling, falling, falling, falling. The other Dharma, Krishna spoke of, spread no net for me. Once a breach is made in Dharma, chaos rushes in; there is no knowing what will happen next. Perhaps Krishna saw some sense in it all but I could not. Right from my birth my parents had observed the Kshatriya Dharma. When my father shot the rishi-deer he paid the dharmic consequence and died according to the rishi’s curse, while making love to Madri.

  I think what preserved my sanity was seeing Krishna weep. His eyes were brimming when he looked at me. He could not speak. He seemed to want to tell me something. “Let us go to him.” I moved, but he held back and took my arm. I turned to look where he looked. The sun had sunk deeper and there were many colours in the sky, ribbons of mauve and pink and orange streaming in the vastness. A cry escaped me. With a slow and majestic beat of wings, a pair of Manasarovara swans, like boats rowing in an ocean of air, came sailing, one pair, then another. From the swirls of the firmament they came, with stately beats in perfect rhythm. They dipped over the battlefield and glided over to Greatfather.

  Krishna said that they were gods sent in the guise of birds by Mother Ganga. “They have come early though; his spirit will not leave until the sun reaches Uttarayana.”

  “But that is fifty days away.” Must Greatfather then suffer his bed of arrows until the Northern Solstice?

  We found Greatfather lying on the arrows we had shot through him. His eyes were closed. The surgeons hovered over him. All around, assistants carrying instruments, balms, and dressings, opened a path for us.

  Greatfather’s charioteer had straightened him. His palms stretched out and faced skywards. He sent the surgeons off and called to us. He was no longer Devavrata, nor Greatfather. He was not Bheeshma. At last he was what we had only heard of. He was a Vasu returning to the Vasus. His karma was exhausted. His seven brother Vasus waited for him with his Mother Ganga, among the peaks of the Abode of Snow. You would have thought that having saved the crown and kept the peace, having managed the treasury, counselled the kings, and handled Duryodhana in addition to keeping his stern vows, he could have left without harsher tapasya. But he insisted that he keep my arrows as his last bed. I had never seen his yogic power. I gazed in awe at the strange and monstrous sight and could not speak to him nor cry.

  The chariot warriors from both sides now made a thick hedge all around us. The surgeons had closed in again, but he arrested them.

  “Physicians, be at peace. I have attained the Kshatriya goal. These are Arjuna’s arrows that will carry me to heaven. I take them to the end.” The physicians did pradakshina and then retired. I raised my head to find Duryodhana bathed in tears; Karna was beside him. Our eyes met and glanced off each other. Karna’s grief had stripped him naked. This was a man that I had never seen. It was like when we met in no man’s land to decide on the code of battle and had to look away for fear of falling into friendship.

  “Arjuna,” It was Greatfather, “I do not want their silken pillows. Make me a warrior’s headrest.” Krishna held his head while I shot three arrows deep into the ground. We placed Greatfather’s head upon them. When I looked up, Karna had turned his face away. Greatfather’s eyes shifted from side to side.

  “I thank you, Lords of Men, who have gathered for the fall of Bheeshma.” He smiled and courteously enquired about our state of being.

  Then, as he had done throughout his life, he spoke to us of peace. “Duryodhana, my child. Let the fall of your commander be the basis of a century of peace.” The hedge pressed in to hear him. “When I depart let peace delight your people. Let king embrace king, let cousin embrace cousin, let uncle embrace nephew.” The men around let out their breaths, a sigh of wistfulness. Duryodhana wept and bent his head to touch Greatfather’s feet. “Give half your kingdom to the Pandavas.” Duryodhana’s head did not come up but stiffened. There followed a silence of refusal. At last he raised himself to do pradakshina and stood behind Greatfather’s head where he would not be seen by him.

  For a while there was only silence. Then, a sigh: “Krishna.”

  Greatfather seemed to sleep. His chest, heavy with the weight of arrows, slowly rose and fell.

  The news spread fast throughout the land: Greatfather had fallen. Night advanced as young men, young girls, greatmothers, old men, and children came as though the wide world’s creatures had gathered to salute the setting sun that they would never see again. The armourers, musicians, and the cooks and all the artisans, washermen, servants, and physicians came for one last darshan. The soldiers came without their swords. Both sides approached together; all enmity was laid to rest. All filed past and around. Three times the line of people circled and wound out over the darkening battlefield. All night and all my life I was to hear the muffled shuffling in the blood-darkened dust. Greatfather endured it like a god of patience. But in my head I heard him say, “My body is on fire and there is a faintness in the whole of me.”

  His lips said: “Water, Arjuna.” A hundred eager hands began to offer water. “Arjuna. You are the one who knows the water that I need .” “Be silent now”, he said inside my head and showed me where to shoot my arrows. I heard the mantra and sent three arrows deep into the earth, a little to the right of Krishna. Sweet water jetted up from Mother Ganga’s breast to wash his face and fill his mouth. He drank and said so all should hear: “Duryodhana. Make peace before more of your brothers die. Make peace and live in harmony.” His breath came in hard and it hissed out like a wounded snake. Even then, he spoke of peace. “It will be fruitful for the future of your dynasties. Surrender wrath.” Duryodhana’s eyes were dry. After a while, Greatfather sighed. “So be it.” Gradually his hand came up; it was a gesture of dismissal.

  I sat cross-legged near his head and leaned over him. His lips were tightly closed, as were his eyes. I felt a silence gathering in my mind. It was not empty silence. “Arjuna, when I have left this body, spend no time on remorse. You have released me. I have been waiting for this from my birth. We were the Vasus and there were eight of us. We never sought to come to earth but deeds from other lives will sometimes draw us back. We had to come. Our mother Ganga released my seven brothers when they were born. My father swore that he would never question her. He was in love with her and, forgetting he was human, promised.” The ensuing pause was really a sigh. “There is a hunger greater than the hunger for a woman deeply loved. One learns of it after the vow is taken. It is the hunger to have sons. Ganga is a goddess that you cannot bind to human need. When he asked her why she gave his children to the river, her life flowed out of her.” In my thoughts I wandered through his life until he called me back. “The day you called me ‘father’ that hunger was appeased in me.” These words sank shafts of silence into my soul. I could neither speak nor think. There was a sweetness in my mind; my heart was wrapped in silk, and while I stroked his hand I thought of Hastina without him. We were going to kill the sons of Uncle Dhritarashtra, and Eldest’s Dharma would oblige him to serve our Uncle as a son. My heart rebelled. For me, never again the trappings of a king! Never again the gem-encrusted thrones and invitations to play dice! Rather, I would wander as a yati all my life, from pilgrimage to pilgrimage, and at the end climb the Abode of Snow until I shed my form. Better lie on arrows than sleep in golden beds with one eye on the door and an ear listening for the messenger who calls you to the dice game. If only I could go to Dwaraka with Krishna and take Subhadra with me.

  “There is another sort of vow, a purpose that we bring with us to life,” Greatfather spoke aloud. “You are a Pandava, one of five. You cannot cut one finger off without damaging the
hand that you belong to, and yourself. You were born for a purpose. You must not betray it. Krishna himself will tell you that.”

  My mind fell still as if Greatfather had withdrawn. The feeling of rebellion ebbed. And when it was exhausted, his voice within my head hegan again. In Eldest lies the seed. But without Arjuna, it will never prosper. It is better to die doing what it is that you must, than live to do another’s task.

  There was a silence within the silence as though Greatfather’s soul were travelling upward. It pulled me soaring with him. The words were fainter now, as though we had neared a region where words were void and meaningless. But something else grew stronger, a presence to which the gods inclined.

  The stars were out. The world was waiting. Greatfather moved his lips. “Give me once more to drink.” I gave him water. He drank the spirit of his mother which had come to him. And now I felt her near. It was her mantra that had shot my arrows to release the pent-up water from the ground.

  All night long the sacrificial fires burned; oblations were offered and hymns chanted.

  Morning brought Duryodhana’s messengers with insults:

  Under the leadership of the Holy Brahmin Dronacharya, the Kaurava forces would smash us, every last chariot and its every occupant. The field of Kurukshetra would be littered with our severed arms and legs. Forevermore the name of Arjuna would be cursed for having killed Greatfather, the noblest man who ever lived, who had, for the kingdom and for all the people’s good, denied himself the just rewards of life. Our name would he reviled and equated with the basest treachery. We should prepare ourselves to fall into the gaping jaws of Yama. Our priest should begin to practise all the hymns to death.

  The threats were aimed mainly at me but what I heard above the rest was that Dronacharya had been chosen as the commander. We had never doubted but that Karna would succeed Greatfather. Dronacharya was a fiercer man than Karna. And he had all the astras.

  He was my Guru. And now I had to plan to kill my Guru too. Like all the messengers our cousin sent, this one kept an eye on Bheema lest he be provoked and strike him. But messengers are sacred; we gave orders that he be fed and given good wine which he liked so much that he let the story out: When Duryodhana asked Karna to choose a vyuha for the eleventh day, he said he had been off the battlefield too long to know our battle tactics. Dronacharya would serve Duryodhana better as Commander; so he ceded his position. Tales of Karna’s nobility riled me. I hated having to find any good in him.

  The Kaurava messenger drank so much of our wine that soon he gave us more news than we had bargained for. As far as I could reconstruct the story, Duryodhana had heaped such praise on Karna when he ceded to our acharya that Dronacharya, his pride stung, granted Duryodhana any wish that he might have with great flourish and like a boon-offering god. Its execution would be his opening deed as commander of the Kauravas. Its flamboyance might have made us smile, save for Duryodhana’s command: “Capture Yudhishthira alive.”

  Dronacharya said his work was killing on the battlefield, not playing as a cat with mice. And what did Duryodhana want Eldest alive for? He wanted him, he said, to play another game of dice so that he could send us into forest exile for another thirteen years.

  What the messenger had feared now came to pass. Bheema sprang up to throttle him. We had to pry him off but not before Bheema landed a mighty footblow on his posterior, with Eldest shouting: “He is sacred to us. He is a messenger. I am ashamed of you!”

  8

  It was another battlefield today, a dark and empty cave without its lion. Dharma had departed from it. Its heaviness would have weighed my fighting down but for the sight of Karna’s banner curling in the breeze. Its elephant rope flew high above the other banners and moved with that lazy grace that was a part of Karna’s arrogance.

  Even before the conches sounded I felt a desperate need to shred it. Duryodhana was an evil lout, but without Karna to provoke him and support him none of us would be here and Greatfather would not be lying on a bed of arrows.

  “I cannot wait,” I said to Krishna, “to quench that suta’s banner.”

  “Everybody knows it and that is all that I will let you do for we are going straight to Dronacharya.” I was a tiger balked and exploded.

  “For ten days I have waited and it will look as though I run from him.”

  “Even if the whole world looks at you—which it does not—this war is fought not to protect your vanity but to restore the reign to Eldest. We must see Dronacharya killed before he takes your brother. Eldest’s destiny is not to spend another thirteen years in exile.”

  “If his destiny…”

  “Unless you choose to make it so.”

  “Dronacharya would never stoop to that.”

  “You are an utter infant where Dronacharya is concerned. He does not have to stoop to anything. He simply has to capture Eldest and hand him over. Duryodhana and Shakuni will not hesitate to play another game of dice with him and send him to the forest.”

  I saw that Krishna’s face was closed to me.

  “If Bheema had withheld his blow for another minute, we might have heard their planning,” I insisted.

  “According to our sodden friend, Dronacharya agreed to capture Eldest like a god granting a boon before all the generals. When Drupada humiliated him he gave years of his life preparing you to wreak his vengeance. His vanity is almost worse than yours.”

  These were the hardest words I ever had from Krishna. They did not soften me but fed the fire of my rage.

  “Be that as it may, I shall kill Karna.”

  “First Dronacharya.”

  “No.”

  “I tell you that the way to Karna’s death lies over the path of Dronacharya’s corpse. Can you not see he must have sworn to guard the life of Karna with his own?”

  Krishna knew the hearts of men; it was Virata who fought Karna in the first encounter of the day. Dronacharya sped towards us like a fortified citadel spewing arrows right and left. Chariot after chariot followed in his wake. He drew them straight towards Eldest with his energy, a silver cord one could not see, but feel. Karna’s son was near him and would have pierced our lines if Nakula’s son had not stopped him.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Uncle Shalya had descended upon Abhimanyu, who deprived him of his horses and his charioteer. He must have taunted him with words, for Uncle Shalya ran at him, yelling with his mace aloft, his face distorted. Though Abhimanyu laughed, it was no laughing matter, for Uncle Shalya was like Bheema with his mace and one of the three best wrestlers in the land. Instead of shooting him, my son indulged in teasing. He laughed too long, for by the time he drew his arrow to his ear Uncle Shalya had leapt and smashed his bow. Krishna and I were rushing forward but Bheema got there first.

  Word went round and all the fighting stopped. Bheema grabbed Uncle Shalya’s leg and with a wrestling tactic threw him from his chariot.

  “Pick on someone your size!” he shouted as they circled varily. “The Kauravas and you have like ideas on how to treat a nephew.” Uncle Shalya’s face was murderous. He swung wide, Bheema ducked. Uncle came snarling at him. The two continued circling round in moving mandalas. They were so well matched that tension kept the distance between them always equal. Bheema, when he saw that Uncle Shalya had possessed himself, began again.

  “Why not compose a shastra with Uncle Dhritarashtra, on how to treat one’s nephews?” The soldiers murmured in mirth, and Uncle Shalya swung again. His mace was shattered against Bheema’s. Without a glance he took another mace his charioteer held out to him; they circled closer now, mace locked against mace. Uncle Shalya’s hot rage was spent, his face was cold and deadly. The thudding, clanging maces rang like thunderclaps except when they found flesh and bone. I had never liked the mace and liked it least today. Uncle smashed his into Bheema’s right shoulder; then, spinning round, the left. I saw blood leave Bheema’s face. He stood his ground and jeered, “What did Duryodhana feed you to make you strong?” Uncle Shalya jumped into the
air to smash his mace on Bheema’s head. But Bheema dodged and it came dawn on Uncle’s knee; he buckled. Bheema closed in howling but Uncle Shalya tripped him. The men began to bet.

  “Wolf-waisted Bheema!”

  “The Tiger Madra!”

  “You thought to be the commander,” Bheema taunted. “They tricked you too. Did the dice game teach you nothing? You trusted them?” And all the time they wove combat mandalas. “You should have asked us, Uncle, we would have told you. The Kauravas are not completely honest. They have some nasty tricks. Their entertainment is suspect. The houses that they put you in could go up in flames. I would not trust them, Uncle.” The Kauravas were laughing too. Encouraged, Bheema cooed, “Come now, Commander Shalya, take this kiss.” Bheema’s mace found uncle’s angada.

  “Return the kiss,” shouted the Kauravas. Then something happened quicker than my eyes could follow. I heard the noise and saw the gleaming spiral of copper wire binding Bheema’s mace climb, somersaulting up the sky. It had both the beauty of sudden fireworks and a display of acrobatic mountebanks, for Uncle Shalya’s mace also flew twirling up his shoulder and then tumbling, rose and clung a moment to a cloud as it described an arc before it fell. One of our soldiers ran and caught it. He juggled it to loud acclaim.