Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Bhīṣma · 31 of 50
31. Nine days
Bhīṣma (भीष्म)
Bhīṣma commands through the ninth day. The shape of those days is his superiority and the Pāṇḍavas' inability to touch him without breaking something. Allies fall. Irāvat, Arjuna's son by the nāga Ulūpī, fights and falls on the eighth day. Abhimanyu fights and lives. Bhīma rages and cannot solve a grandfather. Duryodhana comes at night and accuses Bhīṣma of softness, of protecting the five by fighting everyone else. The accusation is not entirely wrong. Bhīṣma is fighting a war he does not believe in, against children he will not kill, for a king he will not abandon.
On the eve of the tenth day the Pāṇḍavas do a thing the poem wants the reader to feel as shame and as necessity at once. They go to Bhīṣma's camp and ask him how he can be made to fall. He tells them. He will not raise his bow against Śikhaṇḍin. Put Śikhaṇḍin in front, and let Arjuna shoot from behind that body. The grandfather supplies the method of his own defeat, because he loves them, and because he is tired, and because Ambā's unresolved life has been waiting since the beginning of the book.
This is not a clean stratagem in a clean war. It is a child asking an elder to collaborate in being struck, and an elder agreeing. The nine days exist so that the tenth will not look clever.
नेपालीमा
नवौँ दिनसम्म भीष्मको आदेश चल्यो। ती दिनहरूको ढाँचा भीष्मको श्रेष्ठता हो। आठौँ दिन उलूपीका छोरा इरावान् मारिए। दुर्योधनले रातमा आएर भीष्म नरम भएको आरोप लगायो। आरोप पूरै गलत होइन। दशौँ दिनको पूर्वसन्ध्यामा पाण्डवहरू भीष्मकै शिविरमा गए, र उनलाई कसरी ढाल्न सकिन्छ भनेर सोधे। उनले उपाय बताए। शिखण्डीसामु धनु उठाउने छैनन्। शिखण्डीलाई अगाडि राख, अर्जुनलाई पछाडि। हजुरबुबाले आफ्नै हारको उपाय दिए। यो सफा युक्ति होइन। नौ दिन छन् ताकि दशौँ चलाख नदेखियोस्।