Day twelve: Suśarmā and the Saṃśaptakas draw Arjuna away

Classical

After the failure of the eleventh day, Droṇa told Duryodhana that Arjuna was impossible to catch with a weapon in his hand and that Yudhiṣṭhira was safe so long as he stood next to him. If Arjuna could somehow be tempted away to another part of the field, Droṇa said, he would seize Yudhiṣṭhira in front of Dhṛṣṭadyumna. The Trigarta king Suśarmā and his brothers volunteered. They were furious with Arjuna: he had humiliated them often, though they had done him no harm, and they could not sleep for brooding over it. They swore to kill him or die in the attempt.

Their oath is one of the most terrible in the epic. Suśarmā and his brothers Satyaratha, Satyavarman, Satyavrata, Satyeṣu and Satyakarman lit fires, put on garments of kuśa grass, bathed in clarified butter and used their bowstrings as belts. After giving gold and cows to brāhmaṇas, they swore before the fires that they would go to the worst of hells, the place for drinkers of wine, for killers of cows and brāhmaṇas, for betrayers, if they left the field without killing Arjuna or turned back in fear. Ten thousand chariots went with them, and more from the Mālavas, Madrakas and Lalithas. They are called the Saṃśaptakas, the ‘sworn ones’.

They rode out to the southern end of the field and called Arjuna to battle. Arjuna said to Yudhiṣṭhira that he never refuses a challenge, and that Suśarmā was calling him to a great battle. He asked leave to go and kill them all. Yudhiṣṭhira reminded him that Droṇa had vowed to seize him. Arjuna replied that the brave Satyajit would guard him and that if Satyajit fell, the king should leave the field. Yudhiṣṭhira embraced Arjuna and blessed him, and Arjuna went out to meet the Trigartas like a hungry lion going to a herd of deer.

On the field, Droṇa had formed his army into a Garuḍa array with himself at the mouth, and the Pāṇḍavas stood against it in a half-moon. Arjuna reached the Saṃśaptakas, who gave a joyful shout, and blew Devadatta so hard that they stood motionless, with their horses and elephants frozen, passing water and vomiting blood. Then they recovered and shot back. Arjuna cut their arrows down and killed Sudhanvan, whose head fell from his shoulders. The Saṃśaptakas fled; Suśarmā rebuked them, reminded them of the shame of fleeing after such an oath, and they came back to the fight with the Nārāyaṇa cowherds, who had been given to Duryodhana by Kṛṣṇa.

In a longer battle Arjuna used the Tvaṣṭṛ weapon, which created thousands of images of Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa on the field. The confused Saṃśaptakas, each thinking another was Arjuna, killed one another. Meanwhile, Droṇa attacked the Pāṇḍavas in earnest, to seize Yudhiṣṭhira. Dhṛṣṭadyumna and Satyajit led the defence. Arjuna slew the Trigartas by thousands, but could not reach Yudhiṣṭhira, and this absence is why the Pāṇḍavas lost their best defender when the Kauravas turned to the next stratagem, the circular array. On the twelfth day, as on the days that followed, Arjuna was fighting twenty miles from the thing that mattered.

Told by Sañjaya → Dhṛtarāṣṭra

Who: Suśarmā, Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa, Droṇa, Yudhiṣṭhira, Satyajit, Dhṛṣṭadyumna

Bound to

Karṇa meets the fallen Bhīṣma; Droṇa made commander and the promise to seize Yudhiṣṭhira origin

Bhagadatta's duel with Arjuna and his death origin

Day thirteen: the wheel array and the death of Abhimanyu origin

Gita Mahatmya: the parrot, the prostitute and the sinful Brahmin mirror

Places: Kurukṣetra, Trigarta

Where this comes from

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

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