Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Śalya · 40 of 50
40. The lake and the thigh
Śalya (शल्य)
The Pāṇḍavas find the lake because hunters say the water has closed over a man, and because Bhīma can be mocked into speech. They stand on the bank and taunt. Duryodhana cannot bear a taunt. He comes out. He asks to fight them one at a time, and he asks that the winner be the winner of the kingdom. Yudhiṣṭhira, whose vice is a challenge, agrees, and agrees that any one of them will do. It is a foolish consent. Duryodhana is the better mace fighter against everyone but Bhīma, and perhaps against Bhīma too.
Bhīma fights him. The mace has its own law, taught by Balarāma to both of them: one does not strike below the navel. Bhīma has a vow from the hall, the thigh, spoken over a dragged wife. At Kṛṣṇa's word, Arjuna slaps his own left thigh where Bhīma can see, a signal, a reminder. In many retellings Kṛṣṇa makes the sign himself. Bhīma breaks Duryodhana's thigh. The king of the Kurus falls, not dead yet, and not a king. This page states the blow the vow named. It does not teach a reader how a thigh is broken.
Balarāma arrives, late, from a pilgrimage he has spent the war on, and he is angry because the rule of his art was broken. He would fight Bhīma for it. Kṛṣṇa answers with the hall, with Draupadī, with the dice. Duryodhana, from the ground, gives the other speech. You won by crookedness. The half-truth about the elephant. The wheel. The thigh. He is not entirely wrong, and the poem lets a fallen man say so. He makes Aśvatthāman the last commander, in the hearing of the three who are left. The eighteenth day ends with a king dying beside a lake, sure that the story will vindicate him, and with three survivors walking away into a night the rules do not cover.
नेपालीमा
शिकारीहरूले पानीले एउटा मान्छेलाई छोपेको बताएपछि पाण्डवहरूले ताल भेटाए। तिनीहरू किनारमा उभिएर गिल्ला गर्न थाले, र दुर्योधन गिल्ला सहन सक्दैनथ्यो। ऊ निस्क्यो। उसले एक-एक गरी लड्ने प्रस्ताव गर्यो, र जित्ने राज्यको स्वामी होस् भन्यो। युधिष्ठिरले माने, र जोसुकै एक जनासँग लड्न पनि माने। भीमले गदा लिए। गदाको आफ्नै नियम छ, बलरामले दुवैलाई सिकाएको: नाभिमुनि नहान्ने। भीमको सभाको प्रतिज्ञा जाँघको थियो। कृष्णको सङ्केतमा अर्जुनले भीमले देख्ने गरी आफ्नो बायाँ जाँघ ठोके। कतिपय कथनमा कृष्ण आफैंले सङ्केत गर्नुहुन्छ। भीमले दुर्योधनको जाँघ भाँचे। यो पृष्ठले प्रतिज्ञाले नाम लिएको प्रहार भन्छ। जाँघ भाँच्ने तरिका सिकाउँदैन। तीर्थयात्राबाट ढिलो आइपुग्नुभएका बलराम आफ्नो कलाको नियम तोडिएकाले रिसाउनुभयो। कृष्णले सभा, द्रौपदी र पासा सम्झाउनुभयो। जमिनबाट दुर्योधनले भन्यो, तिमीहरूले टेढो बाटोले जित्यौ। ऊ पूरै गलत थिएन। उसले अश्वत्थामालाई अन्तिम सेनापति बनायो।