The story

The war was over. That is the first thing to hold on to about this book: everything in it happens after the fighting has been decided.

Duryodhana lay on the ground at the end of the eighteenth day with his thighs broken, and three men of his army were still alive to find him — Ashvatthama, Kripa and Kritavarma. Ashvatthama, Drona's son, made him a promise there, and Duryodhana, who could still speak, made him commander of an army that no longer existed.

What Ashvatthama was carrying was not only the defeat. His father had been killed on the field after being told, in the middle of the battle, that Ashvatthama was dead — a statement made true by an elephant of that name and by Yudhishthira, who said the words and then added, too quietly and too late, that he meant the elephant. Drona had put down his weapons on hearing it and was killed where he sat, by Dhrishtadyumna, the man born to kill him.

The three survivors went into a forest and lay down under a banyan tree. Kripa and Kritavarma slept. Ashvatthama did not.

What he watched in the branches above him was an owl. It came in the dark on a colony of sleeping crows that had mobbed it by day, and it killed them one after another where they roosted, without a fight, because they were asleep and it was not.

He woke the other two and told them what he intended.

Kripa argued with him, and the argument is set out at length because the epic wants it on the record. Kripa's case is not squeamish; it is procedural. Wait for morning. Take counsel. Put it to Dhritarashtra and Gandhari and Vidura, and do what they decide. Nothing done at night against sleeping men can be defended afterwards, and a man who does it will not be able to live inside his own account of himself.

Ashvatthama heard him out and refused. Kripa and Kritavarma went with him anyway, and took the gates.

At the entrance of the camp the epic puts something enormous and shining that would not let him pass, and burned up every weapon he threw at it. He stopped and worshipped Shiva there, offering himself, and the god was satisfied and gave him a sword, and after that nothing in the camp could stand in front of him.

He found Dhrishtadyumna first, asleep, and would not use the sword on him — a sword is how a warrior dies, and he had decided this man would not have that. He killed him with his hands and feet. Shikhandi died next. Then the five sons of Draupadi, who were sleeping in their own quarters and woke to it, and then the Panchalas and the Somakas through the rest of the camp, while Kripa and Kritavarma held the gates and cut down what ran out and set fires at the entrances.

The five brothers were not in the camp that night, and neither was Krishna. That is the only reason there is anything after this chapter.

Draupadi was told at dawn. She had lost five sons in one night, and what she said was that she would sit and fast to death unless the jewel that Ashvatthama had been born with was taken off his head and brought to her.

Bhima went first, and Arjuna and Krishna after him. They found Ashvatthama on the bank of the Ganga among ascetics, and when he saw them coming he took a blade of grass and turned it into the Brahmashirsha weapon and released it at the Pandavas. Arjuna released his in answer. Vyasa and Narada stepped between the two weapons and told both men to draw them back.

Arjuna could withdraw his. Ashvatthama could not — he had the release and not the recall, which is the same half-knowledge that killed Abhimanyu, arriving on the other side of the war — and instead of letting it fall on nothing he turned it on the wombs of the Pandava women, so that the line would end even if the men lived.

It struck the child Uttara was carrying. Krishna said the child would live, and that Ashvatthama would not die: he would walk the earth for three thousand years, alone, spoken to by no one, with the wound where the jewel had been never closing.

The jewel was taken and carried back, and Draupadi, holding it, asked that he be let go. He was their teacher's son.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Ashvatthama — Drona's son, who outlived the war by one night and used it to walk into the winners' camp and end their line while it slept.
• Duryodhana — The eldest Kaurava, who never disputes that the kingdom is contested and never concedes that this makes the Pandavas' claim equal to his.
• Krishna — Cousin, envoy and charioteer — the one who shapes the war's course without ever lifting a weapon in it.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Theme: The binding vow
• Theme: The impossible choice

Questions to explore

• Kripa tells Ashvatthama to wait until morning and take counsel, and is overruled within a page — is this the epic's counsel-unheeded pattern again, or something worse than that?
• Ashvatthama takes his instruction from an owl killing sleeping crows; does the text offer nature as a justification, or as the moment he stops reasoning as a human being?
• Draupadi has lost five sons in one night and asks that the man who killed them be let go — is that mercy, or the epic saying that the killing has to stop somewhere?