The story

Arjuna had promised to kill one man before sunset, and the whole Kaurava army spent the next day standing in his way.

The promise was made on the night Abhimanyu died, and it had a second half: if the sun set first, Arjuna would enter the fire himself. The Pandava camp roared when he swore it, and the roar carried. Jayadratha, king of the Sindhus, heard what it meant and went to the assembled kings shaking. Let me go home, he said, or else promise me you can keep me alive. Duryodhana answered with a list of names, his brothers, Karna, Shalya, Ashvatthama and eleven akshauhinis (full army divisions) all sworn to guard him. Drona went further. He would build a formation, he said, that Arjuna would not get across.

Krishna was not pleased either. He told Arjuna that he had sworn on the spot without consulting him, and that the whole world might yet laugh at them both. Then he set about making the vow possible.

Drona's array was enormous, twelve gavyutis long (a gavyuti is a distance of a few miles). At its mouth stood a formation shaped like a cart, and Drona himself stood at the front of it. Behind the cart lay a lotus, and hidden inside the lotus was a needle. Jayadratha waited at the needle's far end, behind more than a hundred thousand men, under orders to stay well back.

Arjuna reached his teacher first. He joined his palms and asked for a blessing. You are like a father to me, he said, and I ask you to guard me as you guard Ashvatthama. Help me keep my vow. Drona smiled and told him that no one would get to Jayadratha without first defeating Drona. Then he buried him in arrows. They fought until Krishna saw the morning draining away and said so: leave him, there is a bigger task. Arjuna drove round his teacher, keeping him on the right as a pupil circles something he honours, and went on past. Drona called after him. Was it not Arjuna's rule never to turn back without beating his enemy? You are my teacher, Arjuna answered, not my enemy. I am your pupil, like a son to you, and no man in the world can beat you in battle.

The day was long, and the epic lets it feel long. By the afternoon the horses were exhausted and full of arrows. Arjuna got down from the chariot and held off the whole enemy on foot while Krishna unyoked them. When Krishna said there was no water for horses on a battlefield, Arjuna struck the ground with a weapon and a pool welled up. Over it he built a house of arrows, with arrows for posts, beams and roof. Then, in full view of the Kaurava army, Krishna drew the arrows out of the horses with his own hands, rubbed them down, walked them, watered them and yoked them again.

Satyaki had forced his way in to support Arjuna, and Bhurishravas brought him down, dragged him by the hair and kicked him in the chest, with his sword raised to take off his head. Krishna urged Arjuna to act. Arjuna, from where Bhurishravas could not see him, cut off the arm that held the sword. Bhurishravas protested that he had been fighting another man. Arjuna answered with the death of his son, a boy struck down with no weapon, no chariot and no armour. Bhurishravas spread out arrows, sat down on them and turned to meditation, choosing death. Satyaki cut off his head while the whole field shouted at him not to.

As the light reddened, Duryodhana told Karna that little of the day was left. Keep Arjuna away until dark, he said, and he will walk into his own fire. Six great warriors closed round Jayadratha. Arjuna broke through them anyway. He killed Karna's horses and his charioteer. Then Arjuna reached Jayadratha, cut down his charioteer and his boar standard, and Krishna told him to hurry, because the sun was going down fast toward the western mountain.

This is the point where the best-known version of the story places its most famous image. In it Krishna veils the sun by his yoga, the Kauravas cheer the sunset, and Arjuna strikes into a false dusk. Even in that version the darkness is an illusion that Krishna withdraws afterwards, not an eclipse, and it can carry no date for the war. But the passage comes from some manuscripts and from later tellings. The Critical Edition does not contain it. The constituted text has no veil over the sun, only a race, and Arjuna wins it while the sun is still in the sky.

Krishna had one more warning. Jayadratha's father, Vriddhakshatra, had heard a voice at his son's birth say that the boy's head would one day be cut off in battle. The old king had answered with a curse: whoever made his son's head fall to the ground would have his own head burst into a hundred pieces. He now sat doing austerities just outside the battlefield. So Arjuna's arrow took Jayadratha's head, and further arrows kept it in the air and carried it out beyond the field. It dropped into the lap of Vriddhakshatra, who was saying his evening prayers and did not notice it. When he stood up, the head rolled to the ground, and his own head split into a hundred pieces.

The vow was kept, and that is the first thing the fourteenth day establishes. The second is what keeping it cost. A teacher was passed by with a bow of respect, a pool was conjured for tired horses, and a man sitting in meditation was beheaded. The day ended without a pause, because when the sun set the fighting simply went on into the dark.

Who appears, and what it argues

• 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.
• Krishna — Cousin, envoy and charioteer — the one who shapes the war's course without ever lifting a weapon in it.
• Jayadratha — The king of the Sindhus who seized Draupadi in the forest, won a boon to hold back four Pandavas, and used it at the gap behind Abhimanyu.
• 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.
• Duryodhana — The eldest Kaurava, who never disputes that the kingdom is contested and never concedes that this makes the Pandavas' claim equal to his.
• 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.
• Theme: The binding vow
• Theme: Divine counsel
• Theme: The impossible choice

Elsewhere in this parva

• Abhimanyu inside the wheel — A boy who knows how to break into a formation and not how to break out of it is sent in first, and the gap closes behind him
• Ghatotkacha's night — Karna spends the one spear that could kill Arjuna on Bhima's rakshasa son, and Krishna dances on the chariot while the Pandavas weep
• The death of Drona — Drona asks the one man who never lies whether his son is dead, hears an answer about an elephant, and lays down his arms

Questions to explore

• Did Krishna really cover the sun with darkness so that Arjuna could kill Jayadratha, or is that a later addition?
• Why did Arjuna cut off Bhurishravas's arm while he was fighting someone else, and how does the epic judge it?
• Why did Jayadratha's head have to land in his father's lap?