Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Droṇa · 35 of 50
35. Before sunset
Droṇa (द्रोण)
The fourteenth day is Arjuna cutting a road toward Jayadratha, and the Kuru army spending itself to keep the road from arriving before dark. Kṛṣṇa drives. The poem makes the day a single long reach. Near the end the light fails, or seems to. One telling, the one the tradition argues over, says the sun is covered so that Jayadratha, sure the vow has failed, lifts his head, and the sun is still in the sky, and Arjuna's arrow takes him. Whether the dark was a stratagem is part of what the day means. A vow kept by a deception is a vow the poem does not let the reader celebrate cleanly. Jayadratha dies. The forest's spared king is not spared a second time.
That night the war does not stop. Ghaṭotkaca, Bhīma's son by Hiḍimbā, the child of the forest marriage in the first parva, fights in the dark where a rākṣasa is stronger than the rules of daylight. He is breaking Duryodhana's host. Karṇa is told to use the one weapon Indra gave him, the weapon he has been saving for Arjuna. He uses it. Ghaṭotkaca falls. The page says that the weapon was spent on him, and that he fell. It does not describe the shot.
The Pāṇḍavas grieve. Kṛṣṇa is glad, and he says so, which shocks them. The weapon that was meant for Arjuna is gone. A son of the forest has bought the archer's life by ending. Hiḍimbā's marriage, which looked like an episode, was a death being postponed to the night it would be useful. The poem is ruthless about usefulness, and then it lets Bhīma be a father anyway.
नेपालीमा
चौधौँ दिन अर्जुन जयद्रथतिर बाटो काट्दै थिए। अन्त्यमा घाम ढलेको जस्तो भयो। एउटा कथनमा घाम ढाकियो, जयद्रथले प्रतिज्ञा असफल भयो ठानेर टाउको उठायो, अनि घाम अझै आकाशमै थियो। छलले पूरा भएको प्रतिज्ञालाई कविताले सफा ठानेर मनाउन दिँदैन। जयद्रथ मर्यो। त्यो रात घटोत्कच अँध्यारोमा लडे। कर्णले इन्द्रको एकपटकको अस्त्र उनैमाथि खर्च गरे। घटोत्कच ढले। यो पृष्ठले वाण हान्ने तरिका लेख्दैन। पाण्डव शोकमा थिए। कृष्ण खुसी हुनुहुन्थ्यो, किनकि अर्जुनका लागि राखिएको अस्त्र सकियो।