Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Droṇa · 33 of 50
33. Droṇa's command
Droṇa (द्रोण)
Droṇa takes the command on the eleventh day and holds it through the fifteenth. He promises Duryodhana a thing Bhīṣma would not promise. He will try to take Yudhiṣṭhira alive, and end the war by capturing the king whose deposition would scatter the allies. The formations of these days are built for that capture. Yudhiṣṭhira is kept from him by brothers who understand that losing the king is losing the war's reason.
The days are costly and the page will not pretend to a roster. Great fighters fall while Droṇa commands. Bhagadatta, Bhūriśravas, and others have their hours in the poem, and this chronicle does not assign them a day it has not pinned down. What it will not blur is the sequence the tradition is stable about. The thirteenth day is the circle and the boy. The fourteenth is Jayadratha and the sunset, and the night of Ghaṭotkaca. The fifteenth is the word Aśvatthāman, spoken by a man who does not lie.
Droṇa is the best teacher in the poem and one of its wrecks. He is fighting for the side that humiliated his favorite pupil's wife, against the house of Drupada, his old rival and his favorite pupil's father-in-law, a house he himself taught the princes to hate. Dhṛṣṭadyumna, born to kill him, is on the other side and visible. Everyone can see how this command ends. They fight five days toward it.
नेपालीमा
द्रोण एघारौँ दिनदेखि पन्ध्रौंसम्म सेनापति भए। उनले युधिष्ठिरलाई जीवित समात्ने वचन दिए। दिनहरू महँगा छन्। यो पृष्ठले नक्कली दिन-सूची बनाउँदैन। भगदत्त, भूरिश्रवा, अरूको घडी कवितामा छ। तेह्रौँ दिन वृत्त र बालक हो। चौधौँ जयद्रथ र सूर्यास्त, र घटोत्कचको रात। पन्ध्रौँ अश्वत्थामा भन्ने शब्द हो, झूट नबोल्ने मान्छेको मुखबाट। द्रोण कविताका श्रेष्ठ गुरु हुन्, र भग्नावशेष पनि।