Bhima

A baby slides off his mother’s lap on a mountainside. She has jumped up in fright at a tiger, and she has forgotten the child asleep on her knees. He lands on bare rock. The rock breaks into pieces. The baby is not even scratched, and his father, coming to look, stands and stares at the split stone. A voice out of the empty air has already said what this child will be: the strongest of all strong men.

His mother is Kunti, wife of King Pandu. Pandu lay under a curse and could father no children, so Kunti used a spell that let her call down a god. For her second son she called Vayu, the wind. The boy was named Bhima, “the terrible”. His brothers were Yudhishthira, born of the god of justice, Arjuna, born of Indra, and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva. Together they are the Pandavas, and the long poem called the Mahabharata is the story of their quarrel with their hundred cousins, the Kauravas.

The quarrel starts in the nursery, and Bhima starts it. He is bigger than the other boys and he is not gentle. He holds his cousins under water until they are nearly drowned. When they climb a tree for fruit he kicks the trunk until boys and fruit come down together. He means no harm by it, the poem says, but Duryodhana, the eldest cousin, never forgives him. Duryodhana feeds him poisoned sweets at a river party, ties him up with vines and rolls him into the Ganges.

Bhima sinks to the kingdom of the Nagas, the snake people. They bite him by the thousand, and their venom cancels the poison in his blood. He wakes, snaps the vines and starts throwing snakes about. The Naga king Vasuki comes to see what the noise is. One of the old Nagas turns out to be a relative of Bhima’s on his mother’s side, and the snakes offer him a drink that gives the strength of a thousand elephants in every jar. Bhima drinks eight jars. Then he sleeps for eight days.

After that he is the one the family leans on, sometimes literally. When Duryodhana tries to burn the Pandavas alive in a house built of lac and resin, they escape through a tunnel, and Bhima carries his mother on his back and his brothers on his hips and arms through the dark forest, trees cracking as he pushes through. In that forest a man-eating rakshasa named Hidimba smells them. Bhima kills him with his bare hands, quietly at first so as not to wake the sleepers. Hidimba’s sister falls in love with Bhima on the spot, and their son is the giant Ghatotkacha.

The family hides in a village that pays a grim tax. Every so often one household must send a cartload of rice, two buffaloes and one human being to a rakshasa called Baka. Bhima goes in place of a poor brahmin’s family. He drives the cart to the forest, sits down and eats the rice himself while the monster shouts at him. Then he gets up, wipes his hands and breaks Baka in half. That is Bhima at work. He is fed, and somebody dangerous dies.

He is called Vrikodara, wolf-belly, and the name is earned. Half of whatever the brothers have to eat goes to him. When the Pandavas must spend a year in disguise at the court of King Virata, Bhima hires himself out as the palace cook and part-time wrestler. A general named Kichaka troubles Draupadi, the brothers’ wife, who is passing as a maid. Bhima waits for him at night in the empty dancing hall, in the dark, under a sheet. What is found in the morning is a ball of flesh with no neck or limbs showing.

The centre of his story is a promise. Yudhishthira gambles away the kingdom, the brothers and finally Draupadi in a game of dice. She is dragged into the hall by her hair by Duhshasana, and Duryodhana bares his thigh at her. Bhima swears in front of everyone that he will drink Duhshasana’s blood and break that thigh. Thirteen years later, on the field of Kurukshetra, he does both. He knocks Duhshasana from his chariot with a mace, puts a foot on his throat, opens his chest with a sword and drinks. He says it tastes better than honey, better than wine, better than his mother’s milk. Seasoned soldiers drop their weapons and run, shouting that this is no man but a rakshasa.

On the last day he fights Duryodhana with maces. Duryodhana is the better fighter. Krishna says so plainly, and says Bhima can only win by cheating. Arjuna slaps his own left thigh where Bhima can see. Duryodhana leaps, and Bhima swings low and smashes both his thighs, a blow below the waist that the rules of mace fighting forbid. Then he puts his foot on the fallen king’s head. Krishna’s brother Balarama, who taught both men, has to be held back from killing Bhima for it.

His strength is the wind’s strength, and it comes with the wind’s temper. He kills every one of the hundred Kaurava brothers. He wrestles King Jarasandha for days and breaks him. But the poem takes care to show where the strength stops. On a mountain path he once found an old monkey lying across the way and told it to move. The monkey said it was too tired, and that he could lift its tail aside himself. Bhima tried with one hand, then with both, his eyes rolling and his body running with sweat. The tail did not move. The monkey was Hanuman, another son of the wind and so his elder brother, and the lesson was not subtle.

His end is quiet. The brothers and Draupadi walk north into the Himalaya to die, and one by one they fall. Bhima is the last to drop before Yudhishthira. He asks why. His brother tells him, without turning round: he ate too much, he boasted of his strength, and he never looked to see whether others had enough while he was eating.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Bhima in the Mahabharata?

Bhima is the second of the five Pandava brothers, the heroes of the Hindu epic the Mahabharata. He is the son of Queen Kunti and the wind god Vayu. Bhima is the strongest of the brothers, fights with a mace, and kills all hundred of the Kaurava brothers in the Kurukshetra war.

Why is Bhima called Vrikodara?

Vrikodara means “wolf-belly” and refers to Bhima’s huge appetite. Half of the food the Pandava brothers had went to Bhima. When the brothers hid for a year at King Virata’s court, Bhima worked there as the palace cook.

How did Bhima get his strength?

Bhima was born strong because his father was the wind god Vayu, and as a baby he broke a rock by falling on it. He grew stronger after his cousin Duryodhana poisoned him and threw him into the Ganges. Bhima sank to the kingdom of the Nagas, where he drank eight jars of a drink that each held the strength of a thousand elephants.

How did Bhima kill Duryodhana?

Bhima defeated Duryodhana in a mace duel on the last day of the Kurukshetra war. Duryodhana was the more skilled fighter, so Bhima struck him on the thighs, which the rules of mace fighting did not allow. The blow kept a vow Bhima had made after Duryodhana insulted Draupadi at the dice game.

What is the relationship between Bhima and Hanuman?

Bhima and Hanuman are brothers, because both are sons of the wind god Vayu. In the Mahabharata, Bhima meets Hanuman as an old monkey lying across a mountain path and cannot lift the monkey’s tail, even with both hands. Hanuman then tells Bhima who he is.

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