The story

By the evening of the eighteenth day, the man who had led eleven armies onto the field was walking away from it alone, on foot, with a mace on his shoulder.

The last command had gone to Shalya, king of the Madras. He was the maternal uncle of Nakula and Sahadeva, and he had left his own sister's sons on the other side to fight for Duryodhana. He held the command for one day. Krishna told Yudhishthira that this opponent was his, and the gentlest of the brothers threw a spear with all his strength. The epic says Shalya roared to meet it the way a sacrificial fire leaps for poured ghee, and fell with his arms spread toward Yudhishthira, as if the earth had risen to hold him. Before the day ended, Sahadeva killed Shakuni, the man who had thrown the dice.

Duryodhana looked around and saw no one left beside him. He left his dead horse and went east on foot. He met Sanjaya and gave him a message for his blind father: tell him I have gone into the lake. Then he walked into the Dvaipayana lake and, by a power of illusion, held the water still around him and lay down inside it.

Hunters who brought meat to Bhima's kitchen stopped there to drink and overheard the three survivors of his army calling to him from the bank. They went straight to the Pandava camp for their reward.

Yudhishthira stood at the edge of the still water and mocked him. Where was the pride now? Duryodhana answered from under the surface. He had not run from fear but from exhaustion. Then he said something stranger. His brothers and friends were dead, and he had no wish to rule an earth stripped of its warriors, which he compared to a widow. Let Yudhishthira have it. He would go to the forest in deerskin.

Yudhishthira refused the gift. A kshatriya does not take a kingdom as charity, he said, and this was the man who would not give up as much land as a needle's point could cover. When Duryodhana asked to fight them one at a time, since one man against many was not fair, Yudhishthira took him at his word and made an offer. Choose any one of us and any weapon. Kill him and the kingdom is yours.

Duryodhana rose out of the water, streaming water and blood, and chose the mace. Krishna turned on Yudhishthira in anger: the man had spent thirteen years practising against an iron figure of Bhima, and none of the five could be sure of beating him. Bhima answered that his own mace was heavier by half.

Then Balarama arrived from a pilgrimage of forty-two days. Both fighters had learned the mace from him, and he had come to watch his pupils. The epic pauses for many chapters to follow his journey. The duel then moved to Samantapanchaka, holy ground south of the river where death in battle was said to lead to heaven.

They fought like two bulls until both were so red with blood that the text compares them to kimshuka trees in flower. Arjuna asked Krishna which was the better fighter. Krishna said their teaching was equal, Bhima was stronger, and Duryodhana had worked harder at the art. Fighting fairly, Bhima would not win. But Bhima had sworn in the dice hall to break Duryodhana's thighs, and he should keep that vow now. Arjuna struck his own thigh with his hand where Bhima could see it.

As Duryodhana leapt up to slip past him, Bhima swung low and broke both his thighs. The earth shook, dust and blood rained down, and a great meteor fell.

Bhima set his left foot on the fallen king's head and threw back the taunts Duryodhana had once aimed at Draupadi. Yudhishthira stopped him. This was a king and their kinsman, he said, and he wept.

Balarama raised his arms and cried shame. A mace may not strike below the navel; the science of the weapon said so. He lifted his plough and ran at Bhima, and Krishna caught him in his arms. Krishna gave his reasons: the Pandavas were their own cousins, a kshatriya must keep his vow, the sage Maitreya had once cursed Duryodhana to exactly this, and the age of Kali had come. Balarama was not persuaded. Bhima would be known as a crooked fighter, he said, and Duryodhana, who fought straight, would reach the lasting worlds. He left for Dvaraka.

When the Pandavas cheered, Krishna told them it was not right to kill a fallen man again with words. Duryodhana pushed himself up on his hands and turned on Krishna. He listed the tricks of the war: Bhishma brought down from behind Shikhandi, Drona told a lie about an elephant, Karna shot while his wheel was stuck. Krishna answered with Duryodhana's own record of poison, fire and Draupadi in the hall. Duryodhana had the last word. He had studied, he had given, he had ruled the earth to the ocean and stood on the heads of his enemies, and he had died as a kshatriya should. Who had ended better? He would go to heaven with his friends. They would stay behind and grieve.

Flowers fell on him from the sky, and the Pandavas were ashamed. Krishna then said plainly what the war had been. Duryodhana and the great warriors on his side could not have been killed in a fair fight. He had devised the means, as the gods had done against their own enemies.

That admission is where the war ends, and it does not end in a verdict. The victors are ashamed, the teacher has left in anger, and the loser has had the last word. The Pandavas went back to camp. Duryodhana lay alone on the ground with his thighs broken, and that is where his three survivors would find him that night.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Duryodhana — The eldest Kaurava, who never disputes that the kingdom is contested and never concedes that this makes the Pandavas' claim equal to his.
• 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.
• Yudhishthira — The eldest Pandava, called the king of dharma, who gambles away his brothers, his wife and himself without anyone forcing his hand.
• 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.
• Balarama — Krishna's elder brother, who taught both Bhima and Duryodhana the mace, took no side, and raged at the blow that ended the war.
• 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: Divine counsel
• Theme: The impossible choice

Questions to explore

• Why does Yudhishthira stake the whole victory on a single duel?
• Was Bhima's blow to the thigh a broken rule or a kept vow?
• Why do flowers fall on Duryodhana after he is struck down?