Abhimanyu

The chariot that drove at Drona’s army was drawn by three-year-old horses in golden trappings, and over it flew a standard bearing a karnikara tree. The warrior standing in it wore golden mail and was, by the epic’s own reckoning, sixteen years old. His charioteer, Sumitra, had tried to talk him out of it moments before. He had been raised in great luxury, the man said, and had never really been to war. Abhimanyu laughed at him and told him to drive.

He was the son of Arjuna, third of the Pandava brothers, and of Subhadra, sister of Krishna, and the Mahabharata gives him two origins at once. The earthly one is plain enough. The other sits in the epic’s first book, in the long list of which gods came down as which heroes. Abhimanyu was Varchas, son of Soma the moon, and Soma did not want to let him go. He agreed only on terms. The boy would stay on earth for sixteen years. He would break an impenetrable circular array in a battle fought while Arjuna and Krishna were elsewhere, send a quarter of the enemy host to the realm of the dead in half a day, and come home to his father at the close of that same day. He would also leave behind one son to carry on the nearly extinct Bharata line. The gods said yes. The whole life was settled before it began, down to the hour it would end.

Because the Pandavas spent thirteen years in exile, the boy grew up in Dvaraka among his mother’s people, and his uncles Balarama and Krishna and his cousin Pradyumna are remembered among his teachers. His marriage came out of one of the odder episodes in his father’s life. Arjuna had spent the last year of exile disguised as Brihannala, a eunuch dance teacher at the court of King Virata, and his pupil had been the king’s daughter, Uttara. When the disguise fell away, Virata offered Arjuna the girl’s hand. Arjuna declined, having been her teacher, and offered his son instead.

In the war on the plain of Kurukshetra, Bhishma ranked Abhimanyu an atiratha, a leader of chariot-leaders, which was generous praise from the enemy’s commander. His day came on the thirteenth. Arjuna had been drawn off to the south by the Samsaptakas, warriors sworn to kill him or die trying, and Drona, now leading the Kaurava host, set his army in a wheel-shaped array that threw every Pandava attack back. Yudhishthira counted the men who knew how to break it: Arjuna, Krishna, Pradyumna and this boy. No fifth could be found. Abhimanyu answered without dressing it up. His father had taught him how to get into such an array. If danger caught him inside, he would not be able to get out. Yudhishthira and Bhima promised to ride through the breach behind him and guard him on every side.

The noise went up as he struck the line: drums, war cries, the clatter of hooves and car-wheels, the tinkling of elephant bells, men shouting “Wait, wait!” The array broke and he was through it. Inside, the epic has him shooting with a great lightness of hand and a knowledge of the body’s vital points, while warriors keep throwing themselves at him the way insects fall into a flame. He cut down the heir of the Asmakas, smiling as he did it. One of his shafts went through Karna’s armour and body and on into the earth, like a snake entering an anthill, and Karna shook like a hill in an earthquake. Shalya fainted on the floor of his own chariot. Duryodhana’s son Lakshmana died under his arrows, and so did Brihadbala, king of Kosala.

Behind him, the breach closed. Jayadratha, king of the Sindhus, had once been humiliated by Bhima and had answered with years of fierce austerities, and Shiva had granted him the power to hold back every son of Pandu except Arjuna. He used it now, at the mouth of the array. Nobody came in after the boy.

Inside the wheel, the Kaurava champions stopped taking him on one at a time. Six great chariot-warriors, led by Drona and Karna, closed on him together, and between them they broke his bow, his chariot and his sword. He picked up a chariot wheel and fought on with it, the ends of his hair streaming, and the epic says he looked like a second Krishna. They cut the wheel into a hundred pieces. He took up a mace and went for Ashwatthama, who jumped down from his own chariot and took three long leaps to get clear, and by then so many arrows stood in the boy’s body that he looked like a porcupine. His last fight was with the son of Duhshasana, his own cousin, mace against mace. Both men fell. The cousin got up first and struck Abhimanyu on the crown of the head as he was rising.

Voices in the sky called it what it was: one fighter, alone, killed by six, and an unrighteous act. The Kaurava ranks roared. The Pandava warriors threw down their bows and wept. He lay on the bare earth with a face like the full moon, and the poet compares him to the moon dropped out of the sky, which is exactly what Soma had been promised. At dusk the jackals began to howl, and the sun went down toward the western hills the pale red of a lotus filament. The men walking off the field passed him where he lay, ornaments scattered, like a sacrificial fire that no one was feeding any more.

Arjuna came back from the south that evening to the news. He swore to kill Jayadratha before the next sunset or enter the fire himself, and he kept the oath. Uttara was carrying Abhimanyu’s child. After the war Ashwatthama turned a divine weapon on the wombs of the Pandava women, and the baby was born dead, until Krishna brought him back to life. He was named Parikshit and became king of Hastinapura, so the one son Soma had bargained for survived after all. The whole Mahabharata, as it happens, is recited to Parikshit’s son Janamejaya, which makes the dead boy of the thirteenth day the listening king’s grandfather.

The story most people know about Abhimanyu is not in the epic’s account of that day. Across South Asia it is told that he learned to enter the array while still in his mother’s womb, overhearing Arjuna describe it to Subhadra, and that the lesson broke off before the way out, because Subhadra fell asleep or because Krishna interrupted. In the Drona Parva itself, Abhimanyu simply says his father taught him. The womb story is a later addition, and a good one, because it turns a gap in a soldier’s training into fate. Regional traditions went further still. The Telugu tale of Sasirekha Parinayam gives him an earlier wife, Balarama’s daughter Sasirekha, also called Vatsala, whom the Mahabharata does not know. In the wayang theatre of Java he is Abimanyu, a gentle and upright knight who dies bristling with weapons because of a false oath he swore while courting Utari.

His strength came from the same bargain that made him. He was a god’s son on loan, judged the equal of Arjuna by his elders, and able to do in half a day what the armies around him could not do at all. His limits were written into that bargain too. He knew the way in and not the way out, he had sixteen years and no more, and the men meant to be right behind him never arrived. The array did the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Abhimanyu in the Mahabharata?

Abhimanyu was the son of the Pandava hero Arjuna and of Subhadra, the sister of Krishna. He fought for the Pandavas in the Kurukshetra war and was killed at sixteen on the thirteenth day. The Mahabharata also says he was an incarnation of Varchas, son of the moon god Soma.

How did Abhimanyu die?

Abhimanyu died inside Drona’s circular battle array, the chakravyuha, after breaking into it alone. Jayadratha held back the Pandava warriors who were meant to follow him, and six Kaurava chariot-warriors led by Drona and Karna attacked him together, destroying his bow, chariot and sword. After fighting on with a chariot wheel and then a mace, he was struck on the head by the son of Duhshasana.

Did Abhimanyu learn the chakravyuha in his mother’s womb?

That is a later, very popular addition to the story. In the Mahabharata’s account of the thirteenth day, Abhimanyu tells Yudhishthira that his father taught him how to break into the array but that he could not get out if danger caught him inside. The womb version explains that gap by saying the lesson was interrupted before Arjuna described the way out.

Why did Abhimanyu live only sixteen years?

In the first book of the Mahabharata, the moon god Soma agrees to let his son Varchas be born as Abhimanyu only for sixteen years. Soma’s terms foretell that the boy will break the circular array, kill a quarter of the enemy host in half a day, and return to his father at the close of that day. The same terms promise that he will leave one son to continue the Bharata line.

Who was Abhimanyu’s son?

Abhimanyu’s son was Parikshit, born after his father’s death to Abhimanyu’s wife Uttara, daughter of King Virata. Parikshit was born dead after Ashwatthama turned a divine weapon on the Pandava women’s wombs, and Krishna brought him back to life. He later became king of Hastinapura and was the father of Janamejaya, to whom the Mahabharata is recited.

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