Bhagadatta's duel with Arjuna and his death

Classical

While Arjuna was far away killing the Saṃśaptakas, the dust and noise of the main battle showed that Bhagadatta, king of Prāgjyotiṣa, was destroying the Pāṇḍava line on his armoured elephant. Arjuna told Kṛṣṇa that this was the greatest elephant-fighter in the world, that his animal was impervious to weapons and could take even fire, and that no one but the two of them could stop him. He asked Kṛṣṇa to drive there. Pride in his elephant, and the arrogance of age, would see him sent as a guest to Indra.

Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa found the king crushing the Pāṇḍava ranks. They were attacked from behind by the Saṃśaptakas, who had come back, and Arjuna had to divide his attention for a time. Then he turned on Bhagadatta. The old king shot arrows at Kṛṣṇa made of black iron, and Arjuna cut his bow, killed the man guarding the elephant's flank, and cut each of fourteen lances thrown at him into three pieces. He cut the armour off the elephant and struck the king's standard and umbrella. Bhagadatta, bleeding, hurled lances at Arjuna's head and knocked his diadem askew. Arjuna set it right and said, ‘Look well at this world,’ and Bhagadatta, enraged, took another bow.

Then, with a mantra, Bhagadatta turned his elephant-hook into the Vaiṣṇava weapon, which nothing could withstand, and hurled it at Arjuna's chest. Kṛṣṇa stepped in front and took it on his own breast, where it turned into a victory garland. Arjuna complained that Kṛṣṇa had promised only to drive, and that he had broken his word. Kṛṣṇa answered by explaining that he has four forms and that the earth had once asked for an invincible weapon for her son Naraka, the demon-king who was Bhagadatta's father. Kṛṣṇa had given it to her and the weapon had passed to Bhagadatta. It could kill anyone, even Indra or Rudra, so Kṛṣṇa had taken it on himself. Now the weapon was spent and Arjuna was free to kill Bhagadatta, as Kṛṣṇa had killed Naraka.

Arjuna covered Bhagadatta with arrows and sent a long shaft between the frontal globes of the elephant. It went in to the feathers, like a snake into an anthill. The elephant, which no longer obeyed its master's goad, sank down on its tusks and died with a cry. Arjuna then pierced the king through the chest with a crescent-headed arrow. Bhagadatta dropped his bow and arrows, the cloth that served as his turban fell from his head like a petal from a lotus, and he fell from his elephant like a flowering tree broken by the wind on a mountain top. Arjuna had killed one of the oldest warriors in the war, a man who counted Indra as his friend, and one with whom his own father Pāṇḍu had once been allied.

The death of Bhagadatta left a gap in the Kaurava line that the army never filled. Arjuna rode on, and Kṛṣṇa, with his usual lightness, noted that Vṛṣaka and Acala, the two sons of the king of Gandhāra, were now coming at them. Their brother Śakuni would watch his two brothers die, as the Pāṇḍavas turned back to the field. The story of the old king's fight is the same in outline as the long fight between Bhagadatta and Arjuna during the northern conquest, but the Vaiṣṇava weapon and the death belong only to this day.

Told by Sañjaya → Dhṛtarāṣṭra

Who: Bhagadatta, Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa, Naraka

Bound to

Bhagadatta holds Arjuna for eight days mirror

Krishna absorbs the Vaishnavastra mirror

Day twelve: Suśarmā and the Saṃśaptakas draw Arjuna away origin

Arjuna's conquest of the north mirror

Places: Prāgjyotiṣa, Kurukṣetra

Where this comes from

read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (read via archive.org copy of the sacred-texts text) Drona Parva, Sections XXV–XXVIII

See it on the tree · All stories

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