Drona Parva

Duryodhana's reckoning was simple — Yudhishthira cannot refuse a summons to dice.

So more than winning the war, he wanted to run the old trick again, the one that had already worked once.

Drona set the condition that Arjuna had to be taken off the field first, or Yudhishthira could not be reached.

Out of that condition came the day Arjuna was drawn to the other side and the chakravyuha was formed.

The samshaptakas were warriors who had vowed either to kill Arjuna or die.

Their job was not to kill Arjuna. Their job was to keep him busy, and in that they succeeded.

Arjuna could not refuse a challenge. That was the whole plan of the day — to use the rule itself as the trap.

On the day Arjuna was far off, a formation was made whose way in was known on the Pandava side only to Arjuna and Krishna.

Jayadratha is the one who tried to carry off Draupadi in the Vana Parva and was humiliated by Bhima.

He did austerities afterwards. The boon was that for one day he could hold back the Pandavas — but not Arjuna.

And that day turned out to be exactly the day Arjuna was not on the field.

Which is why Arjuna's anger fell not on Drona or Duryodhana but on Jayadratha. He was the one who held the gate.

The text states the incompleteness and does not explain it. Abhimanyu says it and moves on.

The story of hearing it in the womb gives that incompleteness a clean reason — Subhadra fell asleep partway, so the rest was not heard.

Which is why it is so popular. It explains away something that nags.

The text leaves it open, and open it sits heavier.

Abhimanyu had married Uttara at the end of the Virata Parva.

At his death Uttara was pregnant, and Parikshit was born of that pregnancy.

After the war the throne of Hastinapura goes to Parikshit — so the whole line continues through that one child.

Which makes Abhimanyu's death more than grief. There will be another attack on that womb, and it becomes the Mahabharata's largest stake.

Jayadratha's father had a boon that whoever made his son's head fall to the ground would have his own head split.

Krishna had told Arjuna beforehand, so Arjuna held the severed head in the air with arrows.

He carried it far off and dropped it into the lap of the father, who was sitting in penance nearby.

The father started up and the head rolled from his lap to the ground, and by the terms his own head split. Boons often turn round like this in the Mahabharata.

Bhima had killed an elephant named Ashwatthama, so the sentence was not technically false.

Yudhishthira said — Ashwatthama is dead, the elephant. He said the second part quietly, and conches were sounded at the same moment.

Drona heard only the first part and put down his bow. The whole war turns behind that one sentence.

It is said that Yudhishthira's chariot, which until then had run a little above the ground, came down in that instant. That was his punishment.

There was no way left to stop Drona. He was outweighing a whole army by himself that day.

Krishna said he would put down his weapons only if he thought his son was dead, and that it had to come from Yudhishthira's mouth.

Bhima killed the elephant to give the sentence a way of being true, so that Yudhishthira would not be lying outright.

The text does not accept the defence. The punishment comes anyway, and the real Ashwatthama lives to do the worst thing in the book.

Ghatotkacha was the son of Bhima and Hidimba, and night was held to be his time.

That night he did so much damage to the Kaurava army that Duryodhana told Karna to use the weapon.

The Pandavas were plunged in grief. Krishna stood up on the chariot in delight, and Arjuna took it badly.

Krishna's reason was plain — as long as that shakti was in Karna's hands, Arjuna was not safe for a day. Ghatotkacha took it on himself and used it up.

Drona had his students take Drupada prisoner as his teacher's fee, and then released him after taking half his kingdom.

Drupada did not forget the humiliation. He held a sacrifice, from which Dhrishtadyumna and Draupadi are held to have come.

So the Pandavas' commander and the Pandavas' wife both come out of that one old enmity.

But when it is completed, the revenge does not look like what was intended. Drona did not die fighting — he was sitting in meditation with his weapons down.

The narayanastra's rule ran backwards — whoever faced it had it grow more terrible against them.

Krishna told everyone to put down their weapons, get off their chariots and lie on the ground.

Bhima refused and went on fighting alone. The full force of the weapon came onto him, and Arjuna and Krishna took his weapons away by force.

The weapon went quiet. Ashwatthama's anger did not — and that becomes the Sauptika Parva.

It is among the very few weapons in the Mahabharata whose answer is not force.

A whole army putting down its weapons and getting down is a strange sight in itself, and the text tells it without a joke in it.

Bhima's refusal is entirely in character — he does not put down weapons under any circumstances.

Which is why saving him took force. He was not saved by his own consent.

Drona was commander of the Kaurava army from the eleventh day to the fifteenth — five days.

The largest part of the war is finished inside those five days, and this is one of the longest parvas in the Mahabharata.

The fourteenth day alone is so long that it runs on into the night — Jayadratha's killing and Ghatotkacha both belong to that one day and night.

Some rule breaks in every major event, and by the end it becomes hard to count which side broke more.

Rules had been settled before the war — equal weapons, no striking the unarmed, not many against one.

With Abhimanyu they all broke at once. The chariot broken, the driver killed, the bow cut, the sword broken, and at the end he fought with a wheel.

After this the Pandava side was not so strict about the rules either. Drona's killing, Karna's killing and Duryodhana's killing all have something broken in them.

The Mahabharata does not show this as coincidence. What breaks first becomes the permission for what breaks next.