Ashwatthama

In a forest on the night after the war, under a banyan tree, two exhausted warriors slept on the bare ground and a third could not. He lay breathing like a snake, the Mahabharata says, and looked up into the branches, where thousands of crows were roosting, each a little apart from its neighbour. Then an owl came. It had green eyes and tawny feathers, a huge beak and long talons, and it came in quietly and began tearing the sleeping birds apart, taking off wings and heads, until the ground under the tree was covered with them.

The man who watched it was Ashwatthama, son of Drona, and he understood it as instruction. The Pandavas could not be beaten in a fair fight. Asleep, they could be killed.

He had been born to Drona, the great teacher of arms, and to Kripi, sister of Kripa. The first book of the Mahabharata says that the moment he was born he neighed like Uchchaihshravas, the celestial horse, and a voice from the sky announced that a child whose cry carried like a horse’s would be called Ashwatthama, the horse-voiced. The same book lists him among the partial incarnations of the gods: he was born of the united portions of Mahadeva, Yama, Kama and Krodha, which is to say of Shiva, of death, of desire and of wrath. He also came into the world with a gem on his head.

He grew into one of the foremost warriors of the Kaurava side, and the war took his father through a lie. On the Pandava side it was proposed that someone tell Drona his son was dead, since he would not fight on without him. Arjuna would not agree to it; the others did. Bhima killed an elephant named Ashwatthama, belonging to the Malava chief Indravarman, and told Drona his son had fallen. Drona did not believe him and asked Yudhishthira. Yudhishthira, afraid of telling a lie and wanting the victory anyway, said that Ashwatthama had been slain and added the word “elephant” indistinctly. Drona gave up the fight, and Dhrishtadyumna killed him.

By the last night of the war almost nobody on the Kaurava side was left. Duryodhana lay dying on the field, and when Ashwatthama, Kripa and Kritavarma found him he called for a pot of water and had Kripa install Drona’s son as commander of an army of three.

Then the owl. Ashwatthama told the other two what he meant to do, and Kripa argued with him about destiny and effort, and they went with him anyway. At the gate of the Pandava camp a gigantic guardian in a bloody tiger skin, with a snake for a sacred thread and thousands of eyes, blocked his way and devoured every weapon he threw at it, and so he turned to Shiva. A golden altar appeared with a fire blazing on it, surrounded by many-headed attendants with the faces of boars, camels, jackals, tigers, crows and snakes, and Ashwatthama climbed onto the altar and offered himself as the sacrifice. Shiva appeared, smiling, and said he had protected the Pancalas out of love for Krishna, but that their time had now run out. He gave Ashwatthama a polished sword and entered his body.

What followed is the tenth book of the Mahabharata, the Sauptika Parva, the Book of the Sleeping Warriors. Ashwatthama went first to Dhrishtadyumna, found him asleep on a silk sheet strewn with flowers, and woke him with a kick. He dragged him down by the hair. Dhrishtadyumna, clawing at him, asked to be killed with a weapon so that he could die as a warrior and reach the worlds of the righteous. Ashwatthama told him there was no such world for a man who killed his teacher, and stamped him to death. The women in the tent could not tell whether the killer was a rakshasa or a man. He went on through the camp with his sword and a shield bright with a thousand moons, killing men who woke confused in the dark, and the five sons of Draupadi died among them. Kripa and Kritavarma waited at the gate so that nobody would get out alive.

The reckoning ended at a weapon. Pursued by the Pandavas, Ashwatthama charged a blade of grass with the brahmashira, a weapon born of Brahma’s own energy, and loosed it, and Arjuna answered with his own. The sages Vyasa and Narada stepped between the two fires. Arjuna could call his weapon back, because he had kept the vow of brahmacharya; a man who had not kept it and tried to recall the weapon would lose his head to it. Ashwatthama had not kept it. He admitted to Vyasa that he could not take the thing back, and that he had loosed it out of fear of Bhima. Vyasa told him to hand over the gem on his head, and Ashwatthama described exactly what he was surrendering: whoever wore that gem feared nothing from weapons, disease or hunger, from gods, danavas or nagas, from rakshasas or robbers. He gave it up. The weapon he could only redirect, and he threw it into the wombs of the Pandava women.

Krishna’s answer is one of the harshest speeches in the epic. The unborn son of Uttara, Arjuna’s daughter-in-law, would die and Krishna would bring him back to life, and he would grow up to rule the Kurus as Parikshit for sixty years, before Ashwatthama’s eyes. As for Ashwatthama, he would wander the earth for three thousand years without a companion and without being able to speak with anyone, with no place among men, the stench of pus and blood coming off him, living in trackless forests and dreary moors, carrying the weight of every disease. Vyasa confirmed it. Ashwatthama’s reply was a single line to the sage: he would live with him among men. Then he walked into the forest while the Pandavas watched. The gem went to Draupadi, who gave it to Yudhishthira to wear.

The epic had already shown the kind of man he was capable of being. Krishna remembers a day in Dvaraka when Drona’s son came to him alone on the seashore and offered to trade the brahmashira for Krishna’s own discus. Told to take any weapon he could lift, he seized the discus with his left hand and could not move it, then with his right and could not move it, and gave up exhausted.

His power, then, was borrowed from every direction: a gem he was born with, a weapon learned from his father, a sword and a presence given by Shiva. His limits came from the same place. He could loose what he could not recall, he could kill men asleep but not the men who beat him awake, and the protective gem went the moment he was cornered. The curse took away the two things a warrior of his birth might have expected at the end, which were a death and an audience.

The curse sets a term of three thousand years. Popular devotion reads it longer. A short Sanskrit verse still recited today names seven cirajīvins, the long-lived ones, and begins with his name, ahead of Bali, Vyasa, Hanuman, Vibhishana, Kripa and Parashurama. Its second line promises that whoever remembers those seven every day, with Markandeya as the eighth, will live a hundred years free of all disease. The first name on the list is the man the Mahabharata sent out to wander carrying every disease there is.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ashwatthama in the Mahabharata?

Ashwatthama is the son of the teacher Drona and his wife Kripi, and one of the leading warriors on the Kaurava side of the Kurukshetra war. After Duryodhana’s defeat he became the last Kaurava commander. He is best known for the night attack on the sleeping Pandava camp in the tenth book of the epic.

Why was Ashwatthama cursed by Krishna?

After killing the sleeping warriors, Ashwatthama loosed the brahmashira weapon against the Pandavas and, unable to recall it, redirected it into the wombs of the Pandava women, aiming at Uttara’s unborn son. Krishna called him a slayer of children. He cursed him to wander the earth for three thousand years, alone, unable to speak with anyone, reeking of pus and blood and carrying every disease.

What was the gem on Ashwatthama’s head?

Ashwatthama was born with a gem on his head. In the Mahabharata he says that whoever wears it has no fear of weapons, disease, hunger, gods, danavas, nagas, rakshasas or robbers. The sage Vyasa made him surrender it after the brahmashira episode, and it was later given to Yudhishthira to wear.

How did Ashwatthama get his name?

The Mahabharata says that when Ashwatthama was born he cried out like the neighing of the celestial horse Uchchaihshravas. A voice from the sky declared that because his cry carried like a horse’s, he would be called Ashwatthama, which the translation glosses as “the horse-voiced”.

Is Ashwatthama immortal?

In the Mahabharata, Ashwatthama is cursed to wander the earth for three thousand years, not forever. A Sanskrit verse still recited in Hindu devotion counts him first among the seven cirajīvins, the long-lived ones, alongside Bali, Vyasa, Hanuman, Vibhishana, Kripa and Parashurama.

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