The story

Before Krishna left for Hastinapura, Yudhishthira tried to talk him out of going.

Through Sanjaya, Yudhishthira had already asked for five villages — Kushasthala, Vrikasthala, Asandi, Varanavata, and any fifth Duryodhana cared to name — enough for five brothers to live together without the Bharatas destroying one another. Duryodhana had refused even that. Yudhishthira feared that a man who would not part with five villages might not let the envoy leave. Krishna said he knew Duryodhana's wickedness well. But the journey could not be wasted. Either it would win what they wanted, or at the least no one in the world could say the Pandavas had not tried.

The farewells were not what one would expect. Bhima, of all the brothers, begged Krishna to speak gently and not to threaten Duryodhana with war. Draupadi did the opposite. She gathered her long dark hair in her left hand, came to Krishna with her eyes full, and told him to remember this hair, the hair Duhshasana had dragged her by, every time he spoke of peace. If Bhima and Arjuna had grown soft, she said, her old father and her five sons would fight. Krishna promised her she would soon see the women of the Bharatas weeping as she wept now.

Hastinapura poured into its streets to see him arrive; only Duryodhana did not come out. The day before, he had proposed taking the envoy prisoner, and Bhishma had walked out rather than listen. Krishna greeted Dhritarashtra, visited Kunti, then called on Duryodhana — and declined his dinner. Envoys eat, he said, when their mission has succeeded. He ate at Vidura's house instead, and told Duryodhana plainly that whoever hated the Pandavas hated him.

Next morning, with seers led by Narada seated in the hall at his request, Krishna spoke to Dhritarashtra. Peace, he said, depended on two people, the king and himself: let the king restrain his sons, and Krishna would restrain the Pandavas. He asked for their ancestral share. And he said something every person in that hall could place: where dharma is pierced by adharma in an assembly, and those sitting there do not draw out the dart, it is they who are pierced. The Pandavas, he said, were ready to serve the king, and ready to fight. Let him choose.

Dhritarashtra said that he agreed with every word and was not his own master; would Krishna please persuade his son? Krishna turned to Duryodhana and asked him to give half the kingdom and keep the other half in peace. Bhishma and Drona pressed him. Vidura told him he did not grieve for Duryodhana at all; he grieved for his old father and mother, who would wander the earth like birds with clipped wings. Duryodhana answered that he had done nothing wrong; the Pandavas had lost at a game they agreed to play. A kshatriya may break, but he does not bend. And while he lived he would not give up as much land as the point of a sharp needle could pierce.

Krishna's answer was angry and exact. He listed the dice, the hall, the house of lac and the poison. Duryodhana walked out. Then Krishna said something startling to the elders: they should bind Duryodhana, Karna, Shakuni and Duhshasana and hand them to the Pandavas. A family may give up one man to save itself. Gandhari was sent for. She blamed her husband first, for indulging a son he knew to be wicked, then told the son that no one keeps a kingdom who cannot rule his own senses, which bolt like untrained horses under a poor driver.

Outside, Duryodhana, Karna, Shakuni and Duhshasana agreed to seize Krishna then and there. Satyaki read it in their faces, posted Kritavarma with troops at the door, and told the hall. Krishna said he could take all of them himself and give them to the Pandavas, but that he would not do a shameful thing in the king's presence.

Then he laughed aloud. You think I am alone, he told Duryodhana. From his body came gods no bigger than a thumb, bright as flames. Brahma stood on his forehead and Rudra on his chest, the guardians of the world on his arms, and fire came from his mouth. Arjuna stood at his right with the bow, Balarama at his left with the plough, Yudhishthira, Bhima and the twins behind him, the Vrishnis in front with weapons raised. Flames came from his eyes, ears and nostrils, and rays like the sun's from his skin. The kings shut their eyes. Only Bhishma, Drona, Vidura, Sanjaya and the seers could look, because Krishna gave them divine sight.

He withdrew the form, took Satyaki and Kritavarma by the hand, and left. Kunti sent her message for her sons: the time had come for which a kshatriya woman bears children. Not the lost kingdom, she said, and not the exile, hurt her as much as Draupadi weeping in that hall. Then Krishna took Karna up into his chariot and drove out of the city.

Back at Upaplavya he reported that he had tried all four of the ways a king is taught: conciliation, division, gifts — he had come down, at the last, to asking for five villages — and that only the fourth, force, remained. That is what the embassy establishes. The war that follows is not a war nobody tried to stop. Every door was knocked on, in front of every elder who could have opened it, and each stayed shut.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Krishna — Cousin, envoy and charioteer — the one who shapes the war's course without ever lifting a weapon in it.
• Duryodhana — The eldest Kaurava, who never disputes that the kingdom is contested and never concedes that this makes the Pandavas' claim equal to his.
• Dhritarashtra — The blind elder brother passed over for the throne and left holding it anyway, who can always see what his son is doing and never stops him.
• Bhishma — The grand-uncle whose vow of celibacy was meant to secure the succession and instead left it disputed for three generations.
• Drona — The brahmin teacher of both sets of princes, who takes his fee in a king's humiliation and a hunter's thumb, then commands the Kaurava army.
• Vidura — The half-brother kept from the throne by his mother's rank, who gives the correct advice at every turn and is overruled at every turn.
• Gandhari — The queen who covered her eyes for life to share her husband's blindness, lost a hundred sons, and cursed the god who let it happen.
• Yudhishthira — The eldest Pandava, called the king of dharma, who gambles away his brothers, his wife and himself without anyone forcing his hand.
• Draupadi — Won in a contest she had no say in, married to five men on a careless word, and the only person in the hall who asks a question of law.
• 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.
• Theme: Counsel that goes unheeded
• Theme: Divine counsel
• Theme: Kinship and enmity

Elsewhere in this parva

• Krishna chooses sides — Arjuna picks Krishna unarmed over Krishna's whole army, and Shalya is won for Duryodhana by a row of roadside halls
• Vidura's counsel on a sleepless night — A king who cannot sleep sends for the half-brother he has ignored all his life, and is told exactly what to do while there is time to do it
• Krishna and Karna — Krishna offers Karna the throne as Kunti's eldest son, and Karna turns it down for the charioteer's wife who raised him
• The story of Amba — Bhishma explains why he will not fight Shikhandi and, in telling Amba's story, names the one way he can fall

Questions to explore

• Why does Krishna go to Hastinapura when he expects Duryodhana to refuse?
• Why did the Pandavas ask for only five villages, and why would Duryodhana not give even those?
• What is the point of Krishna showing his divine form to a hall that has already refused him?