Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Bhīṣma · 32 of 50
32. The tenth day
Bhīṣma (भीष्म)
Śikhaṇḍin is placed in front. Arjuna is behind. Bhīṣma will not shoot at the body he takes to be Ambā's. Arrows find him anyway. He falls, and he does not die. The bed he lies on is the arrows themselves. He has the boon of choosing his hour, and he chooses the sun's northern course, which has not come. The war will go on for eight more days of fighting, and for a long teaching after that, and he will be alive for all of it, looking up.
Both armies stop. Teachers and grandsons stand around him. He asks for water. Arjuna shoots the earth, and water comes up, as the poem tells it. The page records the gesture as filial, a student giving his grandfather a drink on the field where he helped to fell him. It does not turn the shot into a skill to learn.
Duryodhana has lost the commander who would not kill the five, and he is about to gain commanders who will try. Karṇa, released from his vow by Bhīṣma's fall, comes to the bed and is reconciled enough to be blessed. The old slight is not undone. It is postponed. Bhīṣma tells him to fight, since fight he will. The Kuru side's second commander is already in Duryodhana's mind. Droṇa, the teacher who asked for a war against Drupada as his fee, is about to be paid in a currency he did not choose.
नेपालीमा
शिखण्डीलाई अगाडि राखियो, अर्जुन पछाडि थिए। भीष्मले अम्बा ठानेको शरीरमा धनु उठाएनन्। वाण लागे। उनी ढले, र मरेनन्। वाणहरू नै उनको ओछ्यान हुन्। सूर्य उत्तरतिर नलागुन्जेल मर्ने छैनन्। दुवै सेना रोकिए। पानी माग्दा अर्जुनले भूमिमै वाण हाने, र पानी आयो, कविताले भनेजस्तै। यो पृष्ठले त्यसलाई शिष्यले हजुरबुबालाई गरेको सेवा भन्छ। सिक्ने सीप बनाउँदैन। कर्ण शय्यामा आए, र आशीर्वाद पाए। अब द्रोण सेनापति हुनेछन्।