The story

The night after the fire, Bhima carried his whole family through the forest and then sat up alone to guard them.

The Pandavas had fled south from the burning house, steering by the stars, and when the others could go no further Bhima took them all, his mother on his shoulders, smashing a path through the trees. At dusk they reached a great banyan, and the rest fell asleep on the ground. Bhima fetched water in his upper cloth, saw them lying in the dirt, and grieved aloud. His mother, a king's wife, was sleeping on bare earth. A man with no hostile kin, he said, lives like a lone tree honoured in a village. They had kin, and their kin had tried to burn them. Then he kept watch.

A rakshasa named Hidimba lived in a sal tree nearby, a man-eater with yellow eyes and long fangs, and he smelled human flesh. He sent his sister Hidimbi to kill the sleepers and bring them back. She went, saw Bhima awake, and wanted him for her husband the moment she looked at him. She took a beautiful human form, told him why she had come, and offered to carry him off through the sky. Bhima refused. Who would leave his mother and brothers asleep as food for a demon, he asked, to go off with a woman? He would not even wake them; let her brother come.

Her brother came, saw her in human form, guessed what she had done, and rushed at her to kill her. Bhima caught his arm and dragged him away so the noise would not wake the others, and they fought like maddened elephants, breaking trees. The family woke anyway. Arjuna offered to help and told Bhima to hurry, because rakshasas grow stronger in the twilight before dawn. Bhima lifted the demon, whirled him round, and broke him in the middle.

Bhima wanted to kill the sister too, saying rakshasas take revenge through illusions. Yudhishthira stopped him. Even in anger, he said, do not kill a woman; guarding dharma matters more than guarding our bodies. Hidimbi bowed to Kunti and pleaded her case. She had given up her family and her own people for this man, she said, and in a crisis whatever keeps a person alive is lawful. Yudhishthira agreed on terms: she could spend the days with Bhima wherever she liked, and bring him back every night. She roamed mountains and lakes with him and bore him a son. Rakshasa women, the text explains, conceive and give birth at once. The boy was huge and fierce, with a head as bare as a pot, ghata, and so he was named Ghatotkacha. He became devoted to the Pandavas, promised to come whenever they needed him, and went north. The text adds one more line about him, and it casts a long shadow: Indra had brought him into being with Karna in view.

Vyasa met them in the forest and settled them in a brahmana's house in the town of Ekachakra to wait for him. They begged for their food and brought it to Kunti each evening. She divided it in two. Half went to Bhima.

One day, while the others were out begging, Kunti heard weeping in the house. A rakshasa named Baka ruled the country around the town. In return for leaving it in peace he took a fee by turns from every household: a cartload of rice, two buffaloes, and the person who drove them, all of whom he ate. The king who should have stopped it lived elsewhere and did nothing. Now it was this family's turn, and they were too poor to buy a substitute. The husband could not give up his wife or his children. The wife said a woman's highest duty was to give her life for her husband, and that without him she could neither raise their children nor protect their daughter. The daughter said she should go, so that her father could live to keep the family line. Then the little son walked between them, picked up a blade of grass, and said he would kill the demon with it.

Kunti said one of her five sons would go. The brahmana refused: he would rather die himself than let a guest die in his place. Kunti answered that her son was strong and protected by mantras, and asked only that he tell no one. Yudhishthira, coming home, was appalled: how could she give up the son whose arms they all slept under, for someone else's child? Kunti said she had not decided out of weakness. They owed this household a return for its shelter, a kshatriya who saves a brahmana earns great merit, and she had seen what Bhima could do in the house of lac and against Hidimba. As a newborn, she reminded him, he had fallen from her lap onto a mountain and shattered the rock.

Bhima took the cart to Baka's forest, called him by name, and sat down to eat the demon's dinner. Baka charged and pounded his back with both fists. Bhima kept eating without looking up. When he had finished, he rinsed his mouth and stood. They fought with uprooted trees and then hand to hand, until Bhima put a knee in Baka's back and bent him double until he died. Baka's people came running. Bhima made them swear never to kill a human again, and they kept the promise. He left the body at the town gate. The brahmana told the townspeople only that a powerful brahmana with mantras had done it.

These two nights fix Bhima's place in the family. He is the brother who carries them, who eats half of everything, and whose strength is the plain shelter the others sleep under. They also give the Pandavas a son who will matter on the battlefield, and they show Yudhishthira and Kunti already arguing about what dharma asks of a ruler in hiding.

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.
• Kunti — Mother of three Pandavas and, before any of them, of the son she set adrift on a river and had to watch her other children fight.
• Yudhishthira — The eldest Pandava, called the king of dharma, who gambles away his brothers, his wife and himself without anyone forcing his hand.
• Ghatotkacha — Bhima's son by the rakshasi Hidimbi, whose strength at night forces Karna to spend the one weapon he had saved for Arjuna.
• Vyasa — The poet of the epic and the father of its two kings, who keeps walking into his own story to tell its people what is coming.
• Theme: The impossible choice
• Theme: The king's duty

Elsewhere in this parva

• The serpent sacrifice — The Mahabharata is first recited at a king's rite of revenge, while snakes fall into the fire for his father's death.
• Shakuntala and Dushyanta — A king who remembers his forest marriage perfectly well says he does not, until a voice from the sky names his son Bharata.
• The birth of the Kuru princes — A blind heir, a pale one and a renunciant's vow leave the succession contested before any of the cousins can walk.
• The tournament of arms — Drona trains the princes to settle his own grudge, takes Ekalavya's thumb, and watches Karna crowned in Arjuna's arena.
• The house of lac — A guest house built to burn: the first attempt on the Pandavas' lives, and the escape that lets them be thought dead.
• Draupadi's svayamvara — An archery test won by a supposed dead man in disguise, and a mother's careless word that binds five brothers to one wife.
• The burning of Khandava — Arjuna and Krishna help Agni devour a whole forest, drive off Indra and the gods, and let only six creatures escape.

Questions to explore

• Why does Kunti send her own son to fight Baka?
• Who was Ghatotkacha's mother, and why was he born?
• Why does Yudhishthira stop Bhima from killing Hidimbi?