Day fourteen: Droṇa's cart-and-lotus array hides Jayadratha

Classical

On the morning of the fourteenth day Yudhiṣṭhira woke to music, bathed, worshipped the fire and gave gifts to thousands of brāhmaṇas. He then asked Kṛṣṇa, before his assembled allies, to help Arjuna's vow come true, calling him a boat in the ocean of the Kurus. Kṛṣṇa answered that there was no bowman in all the worlds equal to Arjuna. Meanwhile, Droṇa, on the Kaurava side, arranged his troops, and warriors shouted for Arjuna and Govinda and Bhīma.

Droṇa told Jayadratha to take his place behind him, together with Bhūriśravas, Karṇa, Aśvatthāman, Śalya, Vṛṣasena and Kṛpa, with a hundred thousand horse, sixty thousand chariots, fourteen thousand elephants and twenty-one thousand foot soldiers, twelve miles behind the front. There, he said, not even the gods under Indra could attack him, and he should take comfort. Jayadratha went to the place with his Gandhāra troops and many horses of the Sindhu breed.

Droṇa then formed the main array, which Ganguli renders as part cart, or śakaṭa, and part circle. It was forty-eight miles long and twenty miles wide at the rear. Behind it was another array in the shape of a lotus, and inside the lotus a third one called the needle. At the mouth of the needle stood Kṛtavarman. Next to him were the king of the Kāmbojas and Jalasandha, then Duryodhana and Karṇa, with thousands of heroes behind to guard the head of the cart. Behind them all, on one side of the needle, stood Jayadratha, with a vast force around him.

Droṇa himself took the entrance of the śakaṭa, with the lord of the Bhojas behind to protect him. Dressed in white armour and a fine headdress, with broad chest and long arms, he stood stretching his large bow like the Destroyer in wrath, on a car with a red altar and a black deerskin. The Kauravas rejoiced to see it, and Siddhas and Cāraṇas stared in wonder. People thought that the array looked ready to devour the earth with her mountains and seas. Duryodhana, seeing it, was glad. Durmarṣaṇa stood at the head of the troops and said he would take on Arjuna alone, like a continent against the sea.

On the Pāṇḍava side, Arjuna arrived at the hour called Rudra, to the cawing of ravens and the howling of jackals, with meteors falling and the earth trembling. Śatānīka and Dhṛṣṭadyumna arranged the Pāṇḍava divisions. Before leaving, Arjuna asked Sātyaki, with Pradyumna as second choice, to stand guard over Yudhiṣṭhira, as he himself would. He said that omens promised him victory and that he would go where the Sindhu king waited. Sātyaki agreed and went to the king, and Arjuna set out toward the array, which he had vowed to pierce at Droṇa's own van.

Told by Sañjaya → Dhṛtarāṣṭra

Who: Droṇa, Jayadratha, Duryodhana, Karṇa, Kṛtavarman, Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa, Yudhiṣṭhira, Sātyaki

Bound to

The night before: Kṛṣṇa's promise, Arjuna's dream journey and the Pāśupata weapon origin

Jayadratha slain: the darkened sun and the head in his father's lap origin

Jayadratha's boon from Śiva: why one man could hold back four Pāṇḍavas boon

Places: 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 LXXXII–LXXXVIII (the array is described in LXXXVII)

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