Somadatta's End

The fourteenth day was the day of Arjuna's terrible oath, and Droṇa, knowing that Arjuna's failure to reach Jayadratha would mean Arjuna's own death by fire and so an effortless Kaurava victory, hid Jayadratha far in the rear, twelve miles back, behind layer upon layer of formation and the heavy guard of his greatest warriors. And Arjuna advanced like the Destroyer, his hands loosing an unending cloud of arrows, cutting his way through whole divisions toward the hidden king, racing the sun.

In the midst of this a deadly old feud flared between Sātyaki and Bhūrishravas, whose families had been enemies for generations. Bhūrishravas, a peerless swordsman, overpowered the wearied Sātyaki, dragged him across the ground, and raised his sword for the killing blow. And Krishna urged Arjuna to save his devoted disciple; and Arjuna, though it troubled his conscience to strike a warrior not engaged with him, loosed a shaft that severed Bhūrishravas's upraised arm.

And the old warrior, bitterly reproaching Arjuna for striking him from the side unseen, cast down his weapons and sat in a posture of yoga to release his soul; but the impetuous Sātyaki, mad with wrath, rushed forward and struck off the head of the meditating warrior, an act of raw ungoverned passion that the whole field condemned. And here again the story sounds its warning: that once the banks of dharma are breached, the flood of adharma spares no one, and even the wronged and the righteous are swept into cruelty.

As the sun sank fast toward the west and Jayadratha remained out of reach, the Kauravas began to exult, certain now that Arjuna must fail and burn. And then Krishna, master of all appearances, veiled the sun, and made a false and premature dusk; and the Kaurava warriors, believing the day was done and themselves victorious, dropped their guard, and Jayadratha himself came forward, laughing, to watch Arjuna enter the flames.

And in that instant Krishna withdrew the shadow, and the true sun blazed out still above the horizon, and Krishna cried to Arjuna to strike now. And Krishna warned him of one thing more: that Jayadratha's father had long ago pronounced a curse, that whoever made his son's head fall to the ground would have his own head burst into a hundred pieces.

And so Arjuna, with supreme skill, loosed a shaft that struck off Jayadratha's head and kept it aloft on a stream of following arrows, carrying it twelve miles through the air to drop it into the very lap of Jayadratha's father, who sat at his evening prayers in a distant hermitage. And the startled father rose, and the head rolled from his lap to the ground, and his own head burst into fragments, and so the circle of the old curse closed upon its own author, and Arjuna's oath was fulfilled before the setting of the sun.