The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6)

In the poem of the great war once waged by the kings of the Aryas on the Yamuna and the upper Ganges the Tritsus are no longer found on the Sarasvati or the Yamuna. The enemies at this period are the Matsyas and the Bharatas, the former on the Yamuna, the latter further to the east on the upper Ganges. The Tritsus have been forced further to the east, and have become lost among the Koçalas, who are situated on the Sarayu, or have taken that name; at any rate, the name of Sudas appears in the genealogical table of the rulers of the Koçalas, and in the Ramayana, as in other traditions, Vasishtha, who (or whose family) then gained victory by his prayers for Sudas, is the wisest priest among the Koçalas.136 Hence we may conclude that at a later time the Bharatas were more fortunate in their advance to the east. The struggle for their country and throne is the central point in the poem. According to the Mahabharata the rulers of the Bharatas spring from Manu. With Ila, the daughter of Manu, Budha the son of the moon, begot the 'pious' Pururavas, i. e. the far-famed. Pururavas is succeeded by Ayus, Nahusha, and Yayati. From Yayati's elder sons, Anu, Druhyu, Yadu, spring the Anus, the Drahyus, and the Yadavas,137 of whom we already have the two first as confederates of the Bharatas.138 Yayati was followed on the throne by his youngest son Puru. Dushyanta, one of the successors of Puru, married Çakuntala, the daughter of the priest Viçvamitra. To him she bore Bharata, who reduced all nations, and was lord of the whole earth. After Bharata, Bhumanyu, Suhotra, Ajamidha, and Samvarana, occupied the throne of Hastinapura, the chief city of the kingdom on the upper Ganges.139 In Samvarana's reign the kingdom was attacked by droughts, famine, and pestilence; and the king of the Panchalas advanced with a mighty host, and conquered Samvarana in the battle, who fled with his wife Tapati, his children and dependants, to the west, and took up his abode in a forest hut in the neighbourhood of the Indus. There the Bharatas lived for a long time, protected by the impenetrable country. Afterwards Samvarana reconquered the glorious city which he had previously inhabited, and Tapati bore him Kuru, whom the nation chose to be king. Kuru was succeeded on the throne of Hastinapura by Viduratha, Anaçvan, Parikshit, Pratiçravas, Pratipa and Çantanu.

The names which the poem places at the head of the genealogical tree of the rulers of the Bharatas are taken from the Veda. Yayati, like Pururavas, is commended in the Rigveda as a sacrificer. The name of Yayati's son, Puru, is borrowed from a name which in the Veda designates the Bharatas, who in these poems are variously called Purus and Bharatas.140 The tribes of the Anus, and the Druhyus, whom the Rigveda presented to us as confederates of the Bharatas, are in the Epos united with them by their ancestors. We have become acquainted with Viçvamitra as a priest and minstrel of the Bharatas, when they crossed the Vipaça against the Tritsus. In the Epos a descendant of Puru begets Bharata, i. e. the second eponymous hero of the tribe, with the daughter of Viçvamitra. In order to glorify the position of this priest, and secure his blessing for the royal race of the Puru-Bharatas, he becomes, in the Epos, by his daughter, the progenitor of king Bharata, to whom at the same time is ascribed the dominion over the whole earth. Thus far, it is obvious, the Epos goes to work upon the names of the tribes, and changes them into the names of heroes or kings. Apart from any poetical exaggeration, the wide dominion of the mythical king Bharata is, no doubt, an anticipation of the predominance to which the Bharatas attained at a later time on the upper Ganges. At any rate, according to the Epos, Samvarana, the descendant of Bharata, was compelled to return once more to the Indus, and there take up his abode for a long time. The statement that it is the Panchalas who conquer Samvarana is no doubt an invention based on the attitude of the Panchalas towards the Bharatas in the great war (p. 88). With Kuru, the successor of Samvarana, it is obvious that a new dynasty begins to reign over the Bharatas. This is obviously the first dynasty, whose achievements were widely felt, to which the Epic poetry could attach itself. Owing to his justice, Kuru is chosen by the nation of the Bharatas to be their king; this, of itself, is evidence of a new beginning. But Kuru is also said to be of divine origin, like Pururavas, the progenitor of his supposed ancestors. Pururavas is the child of the son of the moon and the daughter of Manu; Kuru is the child of Samvarana and the sister of Manu, the daughter of the god of light. Manu was the son of Vivasvat (p. 30); Tapati, the mother of Kuru, is the daughter of Vivasvat.141 The name Kurukshetra, i. e. land or kingdom of Kuru, which adheres to the region between the Drishadvati and the Yamuna, is evidence that the Bharatas, under the guidance of the kings descended from Kuru, first conquered this region and settled in it. When they had been there long enough to give to the country as a lasting name a title derived from their kings, they extended their settlements from the Yamuna further to the north-east. Here, on the upper Ganges, Hastinapura became the abode of their kings of the stock of Kuru, whose name now passed over to the people, so that the Bharatas, who, in the Veda, are called Purus and Bharatas, are now called Kurus after their royal family. With the Bharatas, or soon after them, other Arian tribes advance to the Yamuna; here we meet in the Epos the tribes which, according to the Rigveda, once fought with the Bharatas against the Tritsus, the Matsyas, and the Yadavas, the latter lower down on the Yamuna. Hence we may conclude with tolerable certainty that the Bharatas, under the guidance of the Kurus, succeeded in driving further to the east the tribes which had previously emigrated in that direction – the Tritsus (i. e. the Koçalas), Angas, Videhas, and Magadhas (as they were afterwards called), and that it was the family of the Kurus who established the first extensive dominion among the Indians on the upper Ganges. It is the struggles of the tribes, who once in part united with the Bharatas, and followed them into the valley of Yamuna, against the kingdom of the Kurus which are described in the Mahabharata.

Çantanu, the descendant of Kuru, had a son Bhishma, so we are told in this poem. When Çantanu was old he wished to marry a young wife, Satyavati; but her parents refused their consent, because the sons of their daughter could not inherit the throne. Then Bhishma vowed never to marry, and to give up his claim to the throne. Satyavati became the wife of Çantanu, and bore him two sons. The oldest of these Bhishma placed, after Çantanu's death, on the throne, and, when he fell in war, he placed the younger son, Vijitravirya, to whom he married two daughters of the king of the Kaçis, a people situated on the Ganges (in the neighbourhood of Varanasi or Benares). But the king died without children. Anxious that the race of Kuru should not die out, Satyavati bade the wise priest Vyasa, the son of her love, whom she had borne before her marriage with Çantanu, raise up children to the two widows of Vijitravirya. When the first widow saw the holy man approach by the light of the lamp, with knots in his hair, with flashing eyes, and bushy brows, she trembled and closed her eyes. The second widow became pale with fear; and so it befell that the son of the first, Dhritarashtra, was born blind, and the son of the second, Pandu, was a pale man. Bhishma took both under his care. He married Dhritarashtra to Gandhari, the daughter of the king of the Gandharas, on the Indus; for Pandu he chose the daughter of a prince of the Bodshas, Kunti; and with gold and precious stones, Bhishma also purchased for him a second wife, Madri, the sister of the prince of the Madras. As Dhritarashtra was blind, Bhishma made Pandu king of Hastinapura, and he became a mighty warrior; under him the kingdom was as powerful as under Bharata. But he loved hunting even more than war. He went with his wives to the Himalayas in order to hunt, and there he died at an early age. The blind Dhritarashtra now reigned over the Bharatas. His wife Gandhari had first borne him Duryodhana and then ninety-nine sons; but on the same day on which Duryodhana saw the light Kunti had borne Yudhishthira to Pandu, and after him Arjuna and Bhima. Madri bore twins to Pandu, Nakula and Sahadeva. With these five sons Kunti returned to Hastinapura after Pandu's death. Dhritarashtra received them into the palace, and they became strong and brave, and showed their power and skill in arms at a great tournament, which Dhritarashtra caused to be held at Hastinapura. The martial skill exhibited in this tournament by the sons of Pandu, and a victory which they obtained against the Panchalas, who had defeated Duryodhana, induced Dhritarashtra to fix on Yudhishthira as his successor. But Duryodhana would not allow the throne to be taken from him. At his instigation Dhritarashtra removed the sons of Pandu from Hastinapura to Varanavata at the confluence of the Yamuna and the Ganges. Even here Duryodhana's hatred pursued them; he caused their house to be set on fire, so that they with difficulty escaped from the flames. They fled into the wilderness. As they wandered up and down, they heard that Drupada, the king of the Panchalas, against whom they had fought for Dhritarashtra, had made proclamation, that whosoever could bend his great bow and hit the mark, should win his daughter. In vain did all kings and heroes try their strength on this bow, till Arjuna came. He strung the bow, hit the mark, and so won the king's daughter to wife – whom he shared with his four brothers. When the Kurus discovered that the sons of Pandu were alive and had become the sons-in-law of the king of the Panchalas, they were afraid, and in order to avoid a war between the Panchalas and Bharatas, Dhritarashtra divided his kingdom with the sons of Pandu. As Dhritarashtra's royal abode was at Hastinapura, on the Ganges, the sons of Pandu founded the city of Indraprashtha in their portion of the kingdom (it lay to the south-west of Hastinapura on the Yamuna), conquered the surrounding people, and amassed great wealth in their new city, so that Yudhishthira offered the great royal sacrifice. This aroused the envy and anxiety of Duryodhana. He caused the sons of Pandu to be invited to Hastinapura to a game of dice. As Çakuni, the brother of his mother Gandhari, was very skilful in throwing the dice and always won, Duryodhana hoped to be able to gain back his kingdom from Yudishthira. The sons of Pandu came. Yudishthira lost his kingdom and his goods, his slaves, himself, and finally he lost Draupadi. Duryodhana bade the latter, as a slave, sweep the room; and when she refused, Dushana, one of his brothers, dragged her by her long black hair. Then the blind Dhritarashtra came, and said that his sons had done wrong; the Pandus should return into their kingdom and forget what had happened on this day. When they returned home, Duryodhana induced his father to allow a second game of dice against the Pandus, as he and his brothers were not allowed to take up arms against them; the defeated party was to go into banishment for twelve years. This was done, and Çakuni, who again threw the dice for Duryodhana, was once more victorious. For twelve years the Pandus wandered with Draupadi into the desert, and lived by the chase. In the thirteenth they went in disguise to Virata the king of the Matsyas, and became his servants. Yudishthira was his instructor in the game of dice; Arjuna, clothed as a eunuch, taught dancing and music in the women's apartment; Bhima was cook; Nakula and Sahadeva were overseers of the horses and cattle; Draupadi was the queen's maid. When Duryodhana invaded the land of the Matsyas and lifted their cattle, Arjuna recovered the booty, and in reward, when the Pandus had made themselves known, he received the king's daughter as a wife for his son Abhimanyu. On the day after the marriage a consultation was held how the Pandus could recover their sovereignty, as the time of exile was now over. An embassy was sent to Hastinapura to demand the part of the kingdom possessed by the Pandus. Through Duryodhana's efforts the request was refused. The Pandus and Kurus prepared for war.

The armies met in the plain of Kurukshetra, in the ancient territory of the Kuru-Bharatas, between the Drishadvati and the Yamuna. The Bharatas were led by the aged Bhishma, Çantanu's eldest son, with whom was associated his grand-nephew Duryodhana, the oldest son of Dhritarashtra and the bitter foe of his cousins. With the Bharatas were the Çurasenas, whom we afterwards find on the Yamuna, the Madras, the Koçalas, the Videhas and the Angas – who were situated on the eastern affluents of the Ganges, and the northern bank of the river. The Pandus were supported by the Matsyas, the king of the Panchalas, Drupada, with his young son Çikhandin, and his people, the Kaçis from the Ganges, and Krishna, a hero of the Yadavas, with a part of his people; the remainder fought for the Kurus. In front of the army of the Pandus were seen the five brothers on their chariots of war, from which waved their standards. Before the banner of Yudishthira, who stood upon his chariot, slim of shape, in garments of yellow and gold, with a nose like the flower of Prachandala, the two drums sounded; beside him was the long-armed Bhima, holding in his hand his iron club adorned with gold, with dark glance and knitted brows. The third was the bearer of the great bow, Arjuna, with an ape on his banner, the steadfast hero of men, who reverenced the men of old, the destroyer of the troops of the enemy, who banished the fears of the fearful. Last were seen Nakula who fought with the sword, and Sahadeva. Opposite them Bhishma's banner waved from his chariot on a golden palm-stem; it displayed five silver stars. When the armies approached each other Bhishma cried with a voice of thunder to his warriors: "To-day the gates of heaven are opened for the brave; go ye the way which your fathers and ancestors have gone to heaven, by falling gloriously. Would ye rather end life on a sick-bed in pain? Only in the field may the Kshatriya (warrior) fall." Then he seized the great gold-adorned shell and blew for onset. As the sea surges to and fro in a storm when driven by roaring winds, the armies dashed upon each other; from afar the ravens screamed and the wolves howled, announcing a great slaughter, and heaps of carcasses. The heroes fight against the hostile heroes; rarely do they spring down from their chariots, and scatter the "heads of the foot soldiers like seed." The princes mutually cover each other with clouds of arrows; they shoot down the hostile charioteers, so that the horses rage uncontrolled hither and thither in the battle; if the elephants are driven against the chariots in order to overthrow them, the riders shoot them like "peacocks from trees," or they seize the great swords and hew off their trunks, at the root, close by the tusks, so that "the harnessed elephants" raise a great roar. In their turn they tear the warriors from their chariots; they press on irresistibly through the ranks of the warriors, like streams "leaping from rock to rock;" they check the advance of the enemy "as rocks beat back the waves of the sea." Covered with arrows they drop blood, till, deeply wounded in the head and neck, they fall to the ground, or turn raging on their own army. When the heroes have shot forth their arrows, their bows broken, the missiles driven through their coats of mail, so that the warriors "blossom like rose-trees," they leap down from their chariots, seize their great painted shields of hide, raise aloft their war-clubs and rush like buffalo-bulls upon each other. At one time in attack, at another in defence, they circle round each other, and spy out a moment to give a deadly blow. If the shields are destroyed and the clubs broken, they rush like "maddened tigers" to wrestle and fight hand to hand, till one sinks to earth pouring out blood, like a tree of which the root has been hewn through.

Thus, for nine days, the contest went on between the two armies. The army of the Kurus had the advantage; no one ventured to meet the aged Bhishma. Then Krishna, the driver of Arjuna, advised him to mount the chariot of Çikhandin, the young son of Drupada, the prince of the Panchalas, on the following morning and to put on his armour. The aged Bhishma would not fight against Çikhandin; he held it beneath him to fight against children. When he saw Arjuna approach him with the ensigns of Çikhandin, and in his armour, he cried out, "Attack me as you will, I will not fight with you." Then Arjuna laid the smooth arrows of reed, furnished with feathers from the heron and points of iron, on the string of the bow, and covered Bhishma with arrows as a cloud in summer pours its rain on the mountain. The invincible old man looked up with astonishment, and cried: "Like a row of swarming bees, arrow hisses after arrow through the air. As the lightning of Indra travels to earth, so do these arrows fly. They are not the arrows of Çikhandin. Like thunder-bolts shattering all they pierce through my mail and shield into my limbs. Like poisonous snakes darting their tongues in anger, their arrows bite me and drink my heart's blood. They are not the arrows of Çikhandin; they are Yama's messengers (p. 63); they bring the death I have long desired; they are the arrows of Arjuna." Head foremost, streaming with blood, Bhishma fell from the chariot. Delighted at this victory, Arjuna cried aloud with a clear lion's cry, and the army of the Pandus shouted for joy and blew their shells. Duryodhana's warriors were seized with panic; their tower and defence was gone. Drona, whom the sons of Pandu had once instructed in the use of arms, now led the army of the Kurus; and a second time they gained the advantage. Bhima sought in vain to overcome Drona; then the brother of Draupadi attacked him, and at Krishna's advice, Yudishthira and Bhima called to Drona that his son Açvatthaman had fallen. Deceived by this craft, Drona allowed his arms to drop, and Draupadi's brother smote off his head. After his fall, the Kurus were led by Karna, the prince of the Angas. He passed as the son of a waggoner; his real father, the sun-god Surya, appeared to him in the night, and warned him against Arjuna; he would meet his death. Glory was sweet to the living, when parents, children, and friends surrounded him with pride, and kings celebrated his courage; but what was honour and glory to the withered man who had become ashes? – it was only the flowers and the chaplets placed on his corpse to adorn it. Karna answered: He had no friend, no wife nor child; he feared not death, and would gladly sacrifice his body in the battle; but Arjuna would not conquer him. On the next morning he prudently besought Çalya, the prince of the Madyas, to guide his horses, since Krishna, the best of charioteers, guided the horses of Arjuna. At the instance of Duryodhana, Çalya undertook to do this, but his heart was angered at the degrading thought that he was guiding the horses of a waggoner, and he guided them so that while Karna was fighting against Arjuna, and had wounded him with his arrows, the chariot sank in a marsh. As Karna sprang down in order to draw the chariot out, Arjuna, at Krishna's instigation, shot a deadly arrow into the hero's back. Then one hero of the Kurus fell after the other. On the eighteenth day of the struggle, Duryodhana and Bhima met. As two raging elephants goad each other for the possession of a female elephant, so did these princes meet with their battle-clubs, whirling round sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, each seeking the unprotected part of his opponent, and brandishing his club in the air. Duryodhana has the advantage. He has retired before a stroke of Bhima's club, which has thus spent itself on the ground; seeing the unprotected state of his opponent, he has dealt him a mighty blow on the breast. Then, on Krishna's advice, Bhima dealt a blow at Duryodhana's thigh, broke the bone, and the two fell to the earth. The army of the Pandus shouted for joy, but Duryodhana spoke with his dying voice: "We have always fought honourably, and, therefore, the honour remains with us. You have won by craft and dishonour, and dishonour attends your victory. In honourable fight you would never have conquered us. In the garments of Çikhandin, Arjuna slew Bhishma when defenceless. To Drona ye cried in subtlety that his son was dead, and slew him as he dropped his arms. Karna, Arjuna slew by a shameful blow from behind; by dishonour Bhima brings me to the ground, for it is said, 'In battle with the club it is dishonourable to strike below the navel.'" Red with rage, Bhima stepped up to the king-lion who lay outstretched, with his club beside him, beat in his skull with his foot, and said: "We have not laid fire to burn our enemies, nor cheated them in the game, nor outraged their wives; by the strength of our arms alone we destroy our enemies." On the evening of the eighteenth day of the battle, all the brothers of Duryodhana, all the princes who fought for the Kurus, and all the warriors of the Kurus were dead. The victors blew their shells, called Yudishthira to the king, and obtained as booty numberless treasures in gold and silver, in precious stones, in cloths, skins, and slave-women. Then all is sunk in deep slumber. But three warriors of the army of the Kurus have escaped into the forest; Açvatthaman, the son of the slain Drona, Kritavarman and Kripa. Sorrow for his father made rest impossible for Açvatthaman; on the branches of the fig-tree under which he lay he saw a troop of crows asleep; an owl softly flew up and slew one crow after the other. Açvatthaman set out with his companions and penetrated into the camp of the Pandus. First he slays the brother of Draupadi who had killed his father; then he throws fire into the camp, and slays the five sons of Draupadi, and all the Matsyas and Panchalas. Then he hastens to the place where Duryodhana lies. "Thou art still living," he says to Duryodhana; "listen, then, to a word which will be pleasing to thine ear: all the Panchalas, all the Matsyas, all the sons of Draupadi are dead." Only the four brothers, the sons of Pandu, Krishna and his charioteer, escaped this nocturnal massacre.

Then the dead were buried on the field of Kurukshetra: the sons of Pandu knelt before Dhritarashtra, and Vyasa reconciled the old king with the sons of his step-brother; but Gandhari cursed Krishna, who by his devices had brought her sons to death. Then the Pandus made their entrance into Hastinapura, and Yudishthira was consecrated king under the guidance of Krishna. He treated the old king as a son treats his father, but the latter could not forget the death of Duryodhana and his other sons: he went with Gandhari into the jungles on the Ganges, and with her he perished, when the jungle was set on fire. At Vyasa's command Yudishthira offered a sacrifice of horses, and then obtained the dominion over the whole earth. Following the course of the sacrificial horse (chap. VIII.) Arjuna conquered for him the Magadhas on the south bank of the Ganges, the Chedis, the Nishadas, the Saindhavas, i. e. the inhabitants of the Indus, and the Gandharas, beyond the Indus.142 Afterwards all the conquered kings presented themselves at this sacrifice of the horse in Hastinapura, and acknowledged Yudishthira as their lord. He sat on the throne of Hastinapura for 36 years, and then heard that the curse which Gandhari had pronounced upon Krishna was fulfilled. At a great festival of the Yadavas the reproach was made against Açvatthaman that he had basely slain the heroes in their sleep, after the great battle. Then there arose a strife among the princes of the Yadavas. They seized their weapons and mutually slaughtered each other. Distressed at the loss of his people Krishna retired into the wilderness, and there he was slain by the arrow of a hunter who took him for an antelope. The death of the hero to whom he owed his victory filled Yudishthira and his brothers with deep sorrow. On Vyasa's advice they determined to withdraw with Draupadi into the forest. All her sons had fallen in the great battle; but the wife of one (Abhimanyu), who was the daughter of the king of the Matsyas, had borne a son, Parikshit, after the death of her husband. When he had been consecrated at Hastinapura, the sons of Pandu went on a pilgrimage to the east, to the Himalayas, and beyond this to the holy mountain, Meru. Draupadi was the first to succumb, then Nakula and Sahadeva; last of all Arjuna and Bhima fell exhausted. Yudishthira climbed on, till Indra met him with his chariot, and carried him with his body to the imperishable world, the heaven of the heroes; there he would again behold his brothers and his wife, when their souls had been freed from the earthly impurity still adhering to them. For Bhima had trusted too much to his bodily power, and had eaten too much. Arjuna had loved battle too well, and had been too harsh against his enemies; Sahadeva was too proud of his wisdom, Nakula of his beauty; and Draupadi had loved Arjuna too dearly. But Parikshit reigned in Hastinapura 60 years. He died from the bite of a snake. Hence his son, Janamejaya, caused all the snakes to be burned in one great fire of sacrifice. On this occasion he asked Vyasa how the strife had arisen in old times between the Kurus and the Pandus, for Vyasa had been a witness: "I would hear from thee, Brahman, the story of the fortunes of the Kurus and Pandus." So the king concludes. Then Vyasa bids Vaiçampayana repeat the great poem which he had taught him. Janamejaya was succeeded by Çatanika, Açvamedhadatta, Asimakrishna, and Nichakra, in his sway over the Bharatas, Nichakra changed the place of residence from Hastinapura to Kauçambi lower down the Ganges. And after Nichakra 24 kings of the race of Pandu reigned over the Bharatas.