The story

The boar that charged Arjuna on the mountain was a demon, and the hunter who shot it in the same instant was a god.

Arjuna had come a long way to be shot at. The sage Vyasa had warned Yudhishthira that the coming war would be fought against men who knew every celestial weapon — Bhishma, Drona, Kripa, Karna, Drona's son — and that Arjuna must go to the gods for weapons of his own. So Yudhishthira passed him a secret lore from Vyasa and sent him north with Gandiva and the two quivers that never empty. Draupadi wished him everything Kunti had wished for him on the day he was born.

At a peak called Indrakila, a lean ascetic with tawny matted hair told him that this was a place for brahmins whose anger was spent, and that he should put down his bow. Arjuna would not. The ascetic laughed and showed himself as Indra, Arjuna's own father, and offered him the worlds of heaven. Arjuna refused them. He wanted no godhood and no pleasure, he said, while his brothers lived in the forest and the wrong done to them stood unanswered. Then see Shiva first, Indra told him, and I will give you every weapon I have.

So he stayed on the mountain and made himself thin. For the first month he ate fruit once in three nights, then once in six, then dry fallen leaves once a fortnight. In the fourth month he lived on air, standing on the tips of his toes with his arms raised. The seers of the region complained to Shiva that the man was scorching the mountainside. Shiva sent them home. He knew what Arjuna wanted, he said, and it was not heaven, or power, or a long life.

Then the forest went silent. Shiva came down the slope disguised as a kirata, a mountain hunter, gleaming like a tree of gold, with the goddess Uma beside him in the same dress and a crowd of spirits behind. At that moment a demon named Muka, a son of Diti, came at Arjuna in the shape of a huge boar. Arjuna strung his bow. The hunter called out that he had marked the boar first. Arjuna ignored him, both men loosed, and the two arrows struck together.

Arjuna turned on the stranger: this was not the code of the hunt. The hunter answered, smiling, that the boar had been his and had died by his arrow, and that a proud man should not blame others for his own faults.

So they fought, and the fight is a long stripping-away. The hunter took Arjuna's arrows as a mountain takes rain, without a scratch, and Arjuna began to wonder whether this was Rudra himself. Then the quivers that could not run dry ran dry. He struck with the end of his bow, and the hunter took the bow and swallowed it. His sword broke on the hunter's head. He threw trees and boulders, then fought with his fists, then chest to chest, until the god closed on him and crushed him, and Arjuna fell senseless.

That was the moment Shiva was pleased. No kshatriya equalled him, the god said, and he gave Arjuna the sight to see him as he was. Arjuna saw Shiva with the goddess, fell to his knees, and begged pardon for fighting him in ignorance. Shiva forgave him and told him who he was: in a former life he had been Nara, the companion of Narayana. Then he gave back Gandiva and the quivers, which he had taken by illusion, and offered a boon.

Arjuna asked for the Pashupata, Shiva's own weapon, which the text also calls brahmashiras — the weapon that burns the world at the end of an age. He named the men he meant to face with it: Bhishma, Drona, Kripa, and Karna, the suta's son who was always so harsh of speech. Shiva taught it to him, with the way to call it back, and set one condition. It must never be loosed on a lesser opponent, or it would burn up the world. As Arjuna received it, the earth shook.

The other guardians of the world came next. Yama gave his staff and told Arjuna that Karna, a portion of the Sun, was his to kill. Varuna gave his nooses and Kubera the weapon that makes its bearer vanish. Then Indra's charioteer Matali carried Arjuna up to Amaravati, where his father sat him on his own throne. He stayed five years. He learned the thunderbolt from Indra's own hand, and at Indra's bidding he learned song, dance and music from the gandharva Chitrasena, an art no human court possessed.

Later tellings add one more scene here: the apsaras Urvashi comes to Arjuna, is refused, and curses him to live as a eunuch, which explains his disguise in the thirteenth year. The Critical Edition does not carry that scene. In the constituted text, the year Arjuna later spends as a eunuch dancing-master is a role he chooses for himself.

What this episode settles is the shape of the war to come. The Pandavas go into it with the deadliest weapon in the epic in Arjuna's hands, and with the rule that came with it: power of that size is given on condition that it is held back. Arjuna earned it not with his archery but by fighting until he had nothing left, and then fighting on.

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.
• 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.
• Theme: Divine counsel

Elsewhere in this parva

• Nala and Damayanti — A sage consoles a king who lost everything at dice with the story of another who did, and then teaches him the dice.
• Bhima and the old monkey — Bhima goes to fetch a flower for Draupadi and cannot lift the tail of an old monkey lying across the path, who is his brother Hanuman.
• The cattle expedition — Duryodhana rides out to mock his cousins in exile, is captured by gandharvas, and is freed by the Pandavas, which he cannot forgive.
• The abduction of Draupadi — Jayadratha carries Draupadi off from the forest, leaves with five tufts of hair and a slave's oath, and goes to Shiva for revenge
• Savitri and Satyavan — A princess marries a man fated to die within the year, follows Death into the forest, and talks him out of her husband
• Karna's earrings — Warned in a dream by the Sun, Karna sees through Indra's disguise and still cuts off the armour that made him unkillable
• The yaksha's questions — Four brothers drink before answering and fall beside the lake, and the fifth is asked what a man must be before he may drink

Questions to explore

• Why does Shiva test Arjuna by defeating him rather than by answering his prayers?
• What is the Pashupata weapon, and why is Arjuna forbidden to use it on a lesser enemy?
• Is Urvashi's curse on Arjuna part of the Critical Edition?