The story

When the Pandavas walked out of the dice hall into exile, dressed in deerskins, Duhshasana danced around Bhima shouting "Cow! Cow!"

It was the last of a long run of insults that day. Duhshasana had dragged Draupadi into the assembly by her hair and pulled at her clothes in front of the court. Now he jeered at her husbands as they left. He called them eunuchs, sesame seeds with no oil in them. He told Draupadi to choose a better husband from among the Kauravas. Bhima, who had already sworn once in the hall, swore again on his way out. If I do not split open your chest in battle and drink your blood, he said, may I never reach the worlds of the righteous. Arjuna, beside him, said that good men's resolve is not known by their words. In the fourteenth year they would see.

That was thirteen years before the day this episode tells. Drona was dead. Karna commanded the Kaurava army, and on this day Shalya drove his chariot. In the middle of the fighting, Duhshasana came at Bhima alone.

He came fearlessly, the text says, and he fought well. The two of them traded arrows in a fight the epic calls more than human. It describes them as two players gambling with their lives for stakes, and after the dice hall the image is not an accident. Bhima cut down Duhshasana's bow and his standard, struck him on the forehead, and took his charioteer's head off. Duhshasana picked up another bow and drove his own horses. He did something the text calls hard to do. He cut Bhima's bow with a razor-headed arrow, wounded his charioteer, and drove a volley of arrows into Bhima himself.

Bhima threw his mace. It hit Duhshasana and carried him the length of ten bows across the field. It killed his horses and his charioteer, and the falling mace smashed his chariot to pieces. Duhshasana lay on the ground with his armour and ornaments torn away, writhing in pain.

Then Bhima remembered. The text says it in so many words: he recalled the hostility Dhritarashtra's sons had shown them. He jumped down from his chariot and stood with his eyes fixed on the fallen man. He drew a sword, set his foot on Duhshasana's throat, cut open his chest and drank the warm blood.

He tasted it again and again, and spoke as he drank. Not his mother's milk, he said, not honey or ghee, not the finest wine, not water from heaven, not milk and curds churned together, nothing had tasted as good as his enemy's blood. Then he turned to the dying man. I am drinking your blood from your throat, he said. Now say it again. Cow. Cow.

The men who saw it fell down in terror. Some dropped their weapons and screamed with their eyes shut. Others ran, saying that this was no human being. The epic does not soften any of it, and it does not let the reader look away either. This is what the vow in the assembly hall meant, spoken out loud in front of everyone.

Bhima was not finished speaking. He named the debt he was collecting, and it was older than the dice game. He listed the time he was thrown into the river at Pramanakoti as a boy, the Kalakuta poison, the snakes set to bite him, and the burning house of lac. He went on to the kingdom taken by dice and the years in the forest. We have known nothing but suffering, he said, because of Dhritarashtra and his sons. Then, smiling, he turned to Krishna and Arjuna. What I swore about Duhshasana, he told them, I have done today. The second victim of this sacrifice will be Duryodhana. I will kill him, stand on his head in front of the Kauravas, and then I will have peace. And he roared and danced, drenched in blood, as Indra danced when he had killed Vritra.

Many readers expect a further scene here, in which Bhima carries the blood to Draupadi so that she can wash her hair and bind it again. That image belongs to later tellings, above all the stage. The constituted text does not have it. In the Critical Edition the oath is Bhima's, made in the hall, and the scene ends on the battlefield with Bhima and the two men he speaks to.

Ten of Duryodhana's brothers came at Bhima together to avenge Duhshasana, and he killed all ten. Karna, seeing it, was shaken. Shalya, who had needled him since morning from the driver's seat, now steadied him. The kings were fleeing, he said. Duryodhana was dazed with grief. The whole weight of the war rested on Karna. Go and meet Arjuna.

This is the episode in which the dice hall is paid for in its own coin. The words Duhshasana mocked them with come back to him as he dies, and the oath sworn over Draupadi's humiliation is kept to the letter. The epic gives the scene its full horror and spares no one, not Bhima, not the onlookers, and not the reader. One oath has been kept, and the other is still waiting for Duryodhana.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Bhima — The strongest of the brothers, whose two vows in the assembly hall turn a property dispute into something that can only end in bodies.
• Duhshasana — Duryodhana's brother, who dragged Draupadi into the assembly by her hair and paid for it on the battlefield exactly as Bhima had sworn.
• Krishna — Cousin, envoy and charioteer — the one who shapes the war's course without ever lifting a weapon in it.
• Arjuna — The archer the whole war is arranged around, who arrives at its opening unable to lift his bow because of who is standing on the other side.
• Karna — Kunti's first son, given away at birth and raised by a charioteer, who spends his life being told his skill does not outrank his upbringing.
• Shalya — The Pandava twins' uncle, won to the Kaurava side by hospitality on the road, who drives Karna's chariot and talks him toward defeat.
• Theme: The binding vow
• Theme: Dice and dispossession

Elsewhere in this parva

• The death of Karna — Karna's wheel sinks into the earth and he appeals to the rules of war, and Krishna answers with what Karna did in the dice hall

Questions to explore

• Why did Bhima vow to drink Duhshasana's blood?
• Did Bhima really wash Draupadi's hair in Duhshasana's blood?
• Why does the epic describe the killing of Duhshasana in such horrifying detail?