Arjuna

The target turned overhead, a small wooden fish fixed to a spinning pole, and the only honest way to see it was to look down, into a basin of oil that held its trembling reflection. One king after another had hefted the great bow, dragged at the string until their arms shook, and stepped back beaten. Arjuna came forward and lifted the bow as though it weighed nothing. He watched the rippling image in the oil rather than the fish itself, drew, and let go. The arrow climbed and went through the eye. He had won Draupadi without once looking straight at the thing he killed, and the hall understood in that moment what kind of archer had been hiding among them.

He was the third of five brothers, the Pandavas, and the only one fathered by Indra, king of the gods. His mother Kunti held a mantra that could summon any deity to give her a child, and for Arjuna she called the lord of storm and thunder. Under the weapons-master Drona he became the finest pupil ever taught, the one who practiced drawing the bowstring in total darkness until his hands no longer needed his eyes, which earned him the name Gudakesha, conqueror of sleep. He could shoot from either hand with equal speed, so they also called him Savyasachi. Partha for his mother, Dhananjaya for the wealth he won, Phalguna, Bibhatsu, Vijaya, Kiritin for the crown he would later wear. A man collects names the way a soldier collects scars.

The Mahabharata rarely lingers on his face. It dresses him instead in the gear of a demigod at war. The diadem on his brow was a gift from Indra, blazing like a second sun. His chariot ran behind four white horses and flew a tall banner on which the monkey-god Hanuman had taken his place, so that even the standard above him could roar. The two quivers at his back never ran dry. His name means bright, or silver, or clear, and the stories treat him as exactly that: a clean line of force, sharpened to a single purpose.

The bow came to him out of fire. When Krishna and Arjuna agreed to help Agni consume the Khandava forest, the god of fire rewarded him with Gandiva, a celestial bow said to hold the strength of many thousands of ordinary ones, first kept by Varuna for an age before it passed into mortal hands. The smell of burning wood, the heat rolling off the treeline, the snakes and spirits fleeing the flames while Arjuna stood at the edge and shot down anything Indra sent to quench the blaze: this was the day he became something more than a gifted prince. The weapon and the man suited each other.

He went up into the mountains alone to win still greater arms. Deep in meditation, he was disturbed by a charging boar and loosed an arrow, only to find a second shaft already buried in the beast. A wild hunter claimed the kill. They fought, and the hunter shrugged off everything Arjuna had, until the archer understood he was wrestling Shiva himself in disguise. For his courage Shiva gave him the Pashupatastra, a weapon that could be released by a thought. Later Indra carried him up to the heaven of the gods, where Arjuna gathered divine missiles and learned music and dance from the celestial Gandharvas. When the apsara Urvashi came to him there and he refused her, treating her as a mother of his line, she cursed him to spend a year as a eunuch. Indra softened the curse so that Arjuna could choose his year. It would prove useful.

In a long wandering exile he gathered a household. He married Ulupi, a princess of the Naga serpent-people, and Chitrangada of Manipura, and then Subhadra, Krishna’s own sister, who bore him Abhimanyu, a son as bright as his father. Years afterward he spent the cursed year disguised as Brihannala, a dance teacher in skirts and bangles at the court of King Virata, instructing the princess Uttara. When raiders drove off the kingdom’s cattle, this dancing-master climbed into a chariot as charioteer to a frightened young prince, recovered his hidden bow from a tree, and turned back an entire army by himself.

Then came Kurukshetra. Krishna took the reins of his chariot and drove him into the gap between the two armies, and Arjuna looked across the field at grandfathers, teachers, and cousins waiting to die, and lowered his bow. He could not do it. Out of that refusal Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita, and Arjuna lifted the bow again. Over eighteen days he brought down the patriarch Bhishma from behind the screen of another warrior, and cut off the head of Jayadratha to avenge Abhimanyu, who had been trapped and killed inside a battle formation he could enter but not escape. At the end he faced Karna, the great rival whose chariot wheel had sunk into the mud, and killed him with the Anjalika arrow. He killed his own elder brother and did not know it until afterward.

His power was simple to state and hard to match: total command of the bow and of weapons no other mortal could safely hold, steadied by the friendship of Krishna at his shoulder. His limits were the ones that belong to men. Grief unmade him when Abhimanyu fell. Pride trailed him like a shadow, the certainty that no archer alive could touch him. When the age finally turned and Krishna left the world, that certainty curdled. Bandits ambushed the women Arjuna was escorting and he found he could not string Gandiva or call back a single celestial weapon; the bow and the quivers returned to the waters they came from. On the last journey, climbing a Himalayan slope with his brothers and Draupadi toward the next world, Arjuna stumbled and fell in the snow. His brother Yudhishthira did not stop. He said only that Arjuna had loved himself too well, and had once vowed to destroy all his enemies in a single day and never done it. The cold took the greatest archer in the world the way it takes anyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Arjuna in Hindu mythology?

Arjuna is the third of the five Pandava brothers in the Mahabharata and the greatest archer of the epic. He is the mortal son of the god Indra and Queen Kunti, and he serves as the central warrior of the Kurukshetra war.

What is Arjuna’s bow called?

Arjuna’s bow is the Gandiva, a celestial weapon given to him by the fire god Agni during the burning of the Khandava forest. It was held by the water god Varuna for an age before it passed to Arjuna and was said to carry the strength of many thousands of ordinary bows, paired with two quivers that never ran empty.

Why did Krishna speak the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna?

Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna at Kurukshetra because Arjuna lost his will to fight when he saw his own kin, teachers, and elders arrayed against him. Acting as Arjuna’s charioteer, Krishna counseled him on duty, action, and the soul, and Arjuna took up his bow again.

Did Arjuna know Karna was his brother?

Arjuna did not know that Karna was his elder half-brother until after he had already killed him. Karna was the firstborn son of Kunti by the sun god Surya, abandoned at birth, and the truth of their kinship was revealed to the Pandavas only after the war.

How did Arjuna die?

Arjuna died on the final journey of the Pandavas, climbing a Himalayan mountain toward the afterlife. By then he had lost his divine powers and could no longer wield the Gandiva, and his brother Yudhishthira said he fell because of his pride and an unfulfilled vow to destroy all his enemies in a single day.

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Krishna, Indra, Shiva, Varuna, Agni, Hanuman, Vayu, Vishnu, Naga, Apsaras, Gandharva, Brahma