The story

Bhishma had just ranked every warrior in both armies when he added that there was one he would not fight: Shikhandi, the son of Drupada. Duryodhana asked him why.

Bhishma answered with a story. He had once gone looking for brides for his half-brother, the young king Vichitravirya. The king of Kashi was holding a svayamvara for his three daughters, Amba, Ambika and Ambalika. Bhishma drove there in a single chariot, lifted the three girls into it, announced who was taking them, defeated every king who rode after him, and brought them home to Satyavati.

As the wedding drew near, Amba, the eldest, told him she had already chosen the king of the Shalvas in her heart, and he had chosen her, secretly, without her father's knowledge. How could a man who knew dharma keep in his house a woman whose heart was set on another? Bhishma consulted Satyavati and let her go with an escort.

The king of the Shalvas would not have her; she had been carried off by another man, and gone gladly. She told him she had been taken weeping and by force. He let her go the way a snake leaves an old skin. Go, he kept saying; I am afraid of Bhishma, and you belong to Bhishma.

Outside his city she weighed whom to blame: herself, her father for making her a prize of valour, the king of the Shalvas, fate. She settled on Bhishma as the root of it, and resolved to repay him, by austerity or by battle.

At a hermitage she refused to go home to her father, whose family would now despise her. Her mother's father, the royal sage Hotravahana, arrived, took her trembling onto his lap, and sent her to his friend Parashurama. Parashurama, who took up arms only at the bidding of brahmins, offered to command Bhishma by word alone. She asked him to kill Bhishma, and he went with her to Kurukshetra.

Bhishma came out to honour his old teacher, who ordered him to take Amba back. Bhishma refused. She had told him she belonged to Shalva and he had let her go; he would never give her to his brother now. Nothing would make him abandon a kshatriya's dharma. He had learned the bow from Parashurama, but a teacher who goes astray must be corrected.

They fought on Kurukshetra for twenty-three days. In a dream, eight radiant brahmins gave Bhishma a weapon called prasvapa, the sleep-bringer. When he fitted it, Narada and voices in the sky forbade him to dishonour his teacher, and he put it away. Neither would be first to withdraw, until Parashurama's ancestors appeared and made him lay down his bow, saying that fighting is the kshatriya's dharma, not the brahmin's. Bhishma bowed to him, and Parashurama told Amba he had done all he could. She should seek Bhishma's protection. She said she would bring him down herself.

On the banks of the Yamuna she lived six months on air, a year standing in the river without food, and another on one fallen leaf, standing on the tip of a toe. Twelve years passed so. Ganga met her and warned her that if she died in this vow she would become a crooked river, full only in the rains. Half of her, the text says, became the river Amba in the country of the Vatsas, and half remained a maiden.

She told the ascetics she was now neither woman nor man, and resolved to become a man for Bhishma's sake. Shiva appeared and promised that she would kill Bhishma, become a man, and remember everything in another body, born in Drupada's family. Then she built a pyre by the Yamuna and entered it, for Bhishma's death.

Drupada, childless, had worshipped Shiva for a son to avenge himself on Bhishma, and was told he would have a child who would be female and then male. A daughter was born. The queen announced a son, and the child was raised as one, named Shikhandin, and trained in arms by Drona. Drupada married the child to the daughter of Hiranyavarman, king of the Dasharnas. The bride discovered the truth, and Hiranyavarman threatened to kill Drupada and Shikhandin.

Shikhandini, seeing her parents' grief, went to starve herself in a forest belonging to the yaksha Sthunakarna, a follower of Kubera, who offered her a boon. She asked to be a man until the danger passed. He agreed to an exchange for a time: he took her female form and she took his male one, on the promise to return. Young women sent to examine Shikhandin reported a man, and Hiranyavarman went home. Kubera, finding Sthunakarna too ashamed to come before him, cursed him to stay as he was until Shikhandin died in battle. Shikhandin came back at the agreed time, honest to the bargain, and was told to go.

Bhishma told Duryodhana he had known all of it through spies and through Narada. Shikhandin is Amba, the eldest daughter of the king of Kashi, born in Drupada's family. And his vow is known to the world: he will not loose an arrow at a woman, or at one who was a woman before. If Shikhandin comes at him bow in hand, he will not strike.

That is what the tale sets in place. Bhishma names his own limit before the war begins, so when the Pandavas need to know how he can fall, the answer has already been given, by him.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Bhishma — The grand-uncle whose vow of celibacy was meant to secure the succession and instead left it disputed for three generations.
• Shikhandi — Born a daughter, raised as a son, made a man by a yaksha's exchange, and the one warrior Bhishma would not raise his bow against.
• Duryodhana — The eldest Kaurava, who never disputes that the kingdom is contested and never concedes that this makes the Pandavas' claim equal to his.
• Theme: Tales within the tale
• Theme: The binding vow

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's embassy to Hastinapura — Krishna goes to Hastinapura to ask for peace, is refused even a needle's point of land, and shows the hall who he is
• 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

Questions to explore

• Why did Bhishma refuse to take Amba back after the king of the Shalvas rejected her?
• Why did Bhishma and Parashurama fight, and how did the duel end?
• What does the Mahabharata actually say about how Shikhandi became a man?