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Skandha 1, adhyaya 9 · Saptah day 1
Lying on iron shafts at Kurukshetra, the grandsire answers Yudhishthira's grief, gazes at Krishna's battle-scarred face, and departs.
At the close of chapter eight of the first book (1.8.46–52), the newly crowned King Yudhishthira walks across the silent, bone-strewn plain of Kurukshetra and is crushed by remorse. Thinking that millions of kinsmen, teachers, and allies have been slaughtered solely to put him on the throne of Hastinapura, he cries out that his heart is so hardened by ignorance that not even a lifetime of royal sacrifices could wash away the stain of killing boys, brahmanas, friends, and uncles for the sake of a few years in a mortal body. Neither the arguments of his brothers nor the words of Vyasa and **Lord Krishna** himself can quiet his guilt.
So in chapter nine (1.9.1–49), Krishna leads Yudhishthira and his brothers in royal chariots back to the battlefield to the one man who can speak to them with unassailable authority: their grandsire **Bhishma** (Devavrata, the son of King Shantanu and the river goddess Ganga). Bhishma, the eldest patriarch and supreme warrior of the Kuru house — whose sole surviving future heir is the unborn **Parikshit** whom Krishna has just shielded in Uttara's womb — had been felled by Arjuna's arrows during the war and now lay stretched upon a spiked bed of iron shafts (*shara-talpa*) like a fallen demigod (1.9.1–3). Blessed long ago by his father with the power to choose the hour of his own death (*ichchha-mrityu*), Bhishma had held onto his breath through weeks of excruciating pain, waiting for the auspicious northern course of the sun (*uttarayana*) and for the sight of Krishna before his dying eyes.
Hearing that the patriarch of the Bharatas was preparing to cast off his mortal frame, the greatest brahmana and royal sages of the universe descended to Kurukshetra with their disciples (1.9.4–8): Parashurama (Bhishma's own ancient teacher in arms), Narada, Dhaumya, Vyasa, Brihadashva, Bharadvaja, Vasishtha, Indrapramada, Trita, Gritsamada, Asita, Kakshivan, Gautama, Atri, Kaushika, and Sudarshana, along with Shukadeva and other purified souls including Kashyapa and Angiras. Bhishma, who knew both the laws of dharma and how to honor every rank according to time and place, welcomed the sages as best he could from his bed of arrows (1.9.9).
Above all, Bhishma knew the secret majesty of Krishna (1.9.10). He recognized that the cousin standing modestly beside the Pandavas was in truth the Supreme Lord of the universe, hiding his divinity behind a human appearance through his own yoga potency (*atmamayaya*). So Bhishma worshipped Krishna both inwardly in his heart and outwardly with his eyes. When the five Pandava brothers sat down silently beside the bed of arrows with heads bowed in humility and eyes brimming with tears of affection, Bhishma's own eyes overflowed with grief and pity as he spoke to them (1.9.11–12).
Looking at the weeping brothers and their widowed mother Kunti, Bhishma marvels at the mystery of human suffering (1.9.13–17). How hard and painful was the life these five righteous princes had been forced to endure! Though they had high-souled brahmanas, dharma itself, and Lord Achyuta (Krishna) as their protectors, they had lived through one mortal crisis after another. After King Pandu died in the forest, Kunti was left with five tiny boys like a cloud blown by the wind, weeping again and again because of the Kuru cousins (1.9.13–14).
Everything that happens in this world, Bhishma tells Yudhishthira firmly (1.9.14–16), stands under the control of inescapable Time (*kala*), just as the clouds in the sky are driven by the wind. Where the son of Dharma (Yudhishthira) is king, where Bhima swings his club and Arjuna carries the Gandiva bow, and where Krishna himself stands as the well-wishing friend, how could misfortune ever touch them unless Time itself — which is a form of the Lord — ordained it? No human intellect can fathom the play Plan (*chikirsitam*) of the Lord; even great philosophers who set out to measure his ways end up bewildered (1.9.16). Therefore, O best of kings, Bhishma urges Yudhishthira (1.9.17), recognize that this entire slaughter was the work of Providence, cease grieving over what could not be avoided, and govern the helpless subjects of your kingdom with care.
Then Bhishma tells Yudhishthira plainly who has been standing beside them all along (1.9.18–23): this Sri Krishna is the ancient, primeval Lord Narayana himself, bewildering the world through his own Self-maya while walking among the Vrishnis as if he were an ordinary prince. Lord Shiva, Devarshi Narada, and the divine sage Kapila know his secret power across time — the very man whom Yudhishthira had treated casually as a maternal cousin, a dear friend, an envoy, a counselor, and even a charioteer! Because the Supreme Soul sits equally in every being without ego or partiality, he never takes offense at being given humble chores, yet notice his special tenderness for those who love him entirely: seeing that Bhishma was about to leave his body, Janardana has come personally to stand before his dying eyes (1.9.21–22). When a dying yogi fixes his mind with devotion upon Krishna and chants his name with his voice, he casts off all karmic bondage and leaves desire behind (1.9.23). May that four-armed Lord, whose smiling face has eyes as red as the morning sun inside a blooming lotus, stand wait beside me until I cast off this body (1.9.24)!
With his mind steadied by that speech, Yudhishthira bowed before the grandsire in the presence of all the sages and asked him about the duties of the different classes and stages of life (*varna-ashrama*), charity, kingship, liberation, women's dharma, and devotion — questions Bhishma answered in detail with illustrations from history (1.9.25–28).
While Bhishma was completing those teachings on dharma (which form the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas of the Mahabharata), the auspicious solar period that mystics await arrived: the sun turned north into *uttarayana* (1.9.29). At once, the man who knew the thousand paths of speech fell silent on worldly subjects, withdrew his mind from everything else, and fixed his wide-open eyes without blinking upon the four-armed figure of Krishna standing in front of him in shimmering yellow silk (1.9.30). By that pure sight alone (*vishuddha-ikshanat*), all his bodily pain from the piercing iron arrows vanished at once, his remaining senses ceased their restless flickering, and as he prepared to leave his body, he sang his final prayer to the Lord of all prayers (1.9.31).
In verses 1.9.32–42, Bhishma pours all the accumulated thinking, austerity, and martial valor of his life into the feet of Krishna — who has no material origin, yet takes delight in playing through his *maya*. And what form of Krishna does the dying warrior choose to meditate upon? Not the calm, jewel-decked king of Dvaraka, nor the silent four-armed Lord of Vaikuntha, but **Partha-sakha** — Arjuna's charioteer in the middle of the battlefield of Kurukshetra!
In verses 1.9.34–38, Bhishma paints a battle portrait that no other devotee in the Bhagavatam could have painted. He remembers Krishna sitting on the front of Arjuna's chariot with his dark Bluish-lotus face beaded with sweat, his curly hair tossed and greyed with the dust kicked up by the hooves of galloping war-horses, and his skin pierced and bleeding from the sharp arrows of Bhishma himself, which had split his armor cleanly open! When Arjuna's soldiers were falling back under Bhishma's assault, Krishna obeyed his friend's word at once, reined in the white horses between the two armies, and shortened the lifespan of the enemy warriors with a single glance (1.9.35). Out of compassion, when Arjuna's mind was clouded with misplaced grief at the sight of his kinsmen's faces, Krishna swept away his ignorance with the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita (1.9.36).
Most moving of all is the memory in 1.9.37–38. Krishna had sworn a solemn vow before the war never to touch a weapon on the battlefield; yet when Bhishma attacked Arjuna so fiercely that Arjuna was in danger, Krishna broke his own promise to keep his devotee's promise intact! Throwing off his upper cloth, he leaped down from the chariot seat like a lion springing upon an elephant, snatched up a chariot wheel, and charged toward Bhishma with the earth trembling beneath his stride — while Bhishma shot arrows that tore his armor and left his body streaming with blood. Even in that moment of violent collision (*atata-yinam*), Bhishma saw that the Lord was rushing toward him out of fierce love, and now on his deathbed he prays that his mind may rest solely in that savior who handed him salvation on the battlefield (1.9.38–39).
Remembering too how Krishna had served with the utmost humility as the royal messenger and charioteer at Yudhishthira's Rajasuya sacrifice, and how the gopis of Vraja had attained oneness with him simply by imitating his graceful strides and loving glances in the Rasa dance (1.9.40–41), Bhishma concludes that the single Lord who looks different inside every living body has now stood directly before his eyes, freeing him from the dualities of false ego (1.9.42). Having merged his mind, speech, and gaze wholly into Krishna, his breathing stopped and he became entirely still (1.9.43). Knowing that Bhishma had merged into the unlimited Supreme Brahman, the assembled kings and sages fell as silent as birds at the close of day (1.9.44); then drums sounded from the sky and men and gods rained down flowers while Yudhishthira performed the funeral rites for the grandsire's body and returned to govern Hastinapura in righteousness with his uncle Dhritarashtra and Queen Gandhari beside him (1.9.45–49).
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