The Master of Arms

Droṇa came quietly to Hastināpura and lodged in the house of his kinsman Kripāchārya. And one day the young Kuru princes, the sons of Dhritarāshtra and the sons of Pāṇḍu together, were at play with a ball on the city's edge, when the ball rolled into a deep well; and worse, as they peered down, Yudhishthira's ring slipped from his finger and fell in too. They stood helpless around the well, seeing ball and ring shining far below and no way to reach them.

A dark-skinned brāhmaṇa stood watching with a gentle smile. Princes of the Bharata line, he said, trained in the royal arts, and you cannot lift a ball from a well? Watch. He took a blade of grass, and speaking words of power over it, cast it like an arrow into the well, and it pierced the ball; and he cast another that joined to the first, and another, building a chain of grass blades, and by that chain drew the ball up.

Then he borrowed a bow and shot an arrow that struck through the ring and rebounded, carrying the ring back into Yudhishthira's astonished hand.

The princes bowed and asked who he was. Describe these deeds to Bhīshma, said Droṇa; he will tell you. And Bhīshma, hearing of the chain of grass, knew at once that the son of Bharadvāja had come, and brought Droṇa to the palace with honour, and made him the supreme teacher of arms to all the princes. So the wound of Drupada's hall became the great preceptor of Hastināpura, and the poor brāhmaṇa who had been turned from a king's door now held the training of a whole royal generation in his hands.