Anudyūta Parva

The Anudyūta Parva is the second dice game, the one that decides the fate of the Pāṇḍavas and starts the main timeline of the Mahābhārata. Anu means “after” and dyūta means “dice”. It is told in Chapters 74-81 of the Sabhā Parva.

The Pāṇḍavas had just been set free by Dhṛtarāshṭra and were on their way back to Indraprastha. Duryodhana and Śakuni plotted to call them back. A second game was proposed with a single stake. The loser would live twelve years in the forest and then one year unknown among ordinary people (ajñāta-vāsa). If he was found out in that thirteenth year, the whole cycle would start again. Yudhishṭhira, bound by the kshatriya code, turned back and played, and he lost. The five Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī put on deer-skin clothes and left Hastināpura for the forest, while the whole city wept. The parva ends with the terrible oaths of the five brothers, Droṇa’s anguished warning, Nārada’s prophecy of destruction in the fourteenth year, and the silence of the departing company.

The plot to call the Pāṇḍavas back

As soon as Dhṛtarāshṭra released the Pāṇḍavas and they started for home, Duḥśāsana ran to Duryodhana in grief and anger. Everything they had won with such effort in the dice game had been given away by their father. Duryodhana, Karṇa and Śakuni met in private and decided they could not let this stand.

Duryodhana set out his reasons to Dhṛtarāshṭra very plainly. The Pāṇḍavas would never forgive what had been done to them, above all what had been done to Draupadī. Arjuna with his Gāṇḍīva was a force no army could resist. Bhīma with his gadā (mace) was a force no warrior could stand against. The Kauravas had shamed these men and wronged their wife. The Pāṇḍavas would come back and destroy them. The only way to live was to remove the Pāṇḍavas with a second game whose stake would keep them off the field for thirteen years, long enough for the Kauravas to make their position firm.

Duryodhana spoke of his constant fear of Arjuna with unusual frankness. He said, “Even alone, I see Arjuna everywhere. He appears in my dreams. Even words beginning with ‘a’, such as horses, wealth, goats, fill me with fear of Arjuna.”

Dhṛtarāshṭra held back for a short time. He knew what he was allowing. But the word daiva (fate) kept coming to his own lips. He said, “If fate has ordained this, let the Pāṇḍavas return.” He ordered a messenger sent to stop Yudhishṭhira on the road.

Those who spoke against it

Gāndhārī made one last attempt. She went to Dhṛtarāshṭra and spoke with a clear sense of what was coming. She reminded him that when Duryodhana was born he had cried like a jackal, and the brāhmaṇas had warned that he would destroy the Kuru line. Vidura had said the same. Now Dhṛtarāshṭra’s weakness for his son was becoming the way that destruction came. She asked him to give up the path of adharma, to cast Duryodhana out if he had to, and to save the dynasty. Her words were not heeded.

Droṇa, Bhīshma, Kṛpa, Somadatta, Bhūriśravas, Bāhlīka, Vidura, Yuyutsu, Vikarṇa and Sañjaya all spoke out against the second dice game and cried, “Let peace prevail!” But Dhṛtarāshṭra, driven by Duryodhana’s wish and the force of fate, went ahead.

Yudhishṭhira’s return and the second game

The messenger met Yudhishṭhira on the road and gave him Dhṛtarāshṭra’s call. Yudhishṭhira’s answer is one of the most touching passages of the parva. He said that even though he knew the game meant ruin, and could see clearly what lay ahead, a kshatriya cannot refuse when an elder calls. The narrator Vaiśampāyana adds the example of Rāma going after the golden deer: some things are known to be impossible, yet the mind goes after them when fate commands.

Yudhishṭhira turned back. The Pāṇḍavas went again into the sabhā and took their seats.

Śakuni announced the one stake. The loser would wear deer-skin clothes and live in the great forest for twelve years. In the thirteenth year the loser would live unknown among ordinary people in some inhabited land. If he was recognised in that year, all thirteen years would begin again. After thirteen years the loser would take back his own kingdom.

Yudhishṭhira agreed with a single word. Śakuni threw the dice. The pāśikā (the dice) fell in his favour. He declared, “We have won.”

The five oaths

The Pāṇḍavas heard that they had lost. They began to take off their fine clothes and ornaments and put on the rough deer-skin cloaks of forest exiles. Duḥśāsana mocked them. He called them unmanly, made light of the exile, and made rude gestures. He copied Bhīma’s lion-walk to mock him. Duryodhana again bared his thigh in insult to Draupadī.

Then, one by one, the five brothers swore their oaths before the whole assembly.

Bhīmasena stood half-turned back toward the assembly and said: “I will kill Duryodhana with my gadā on the battlefield. I will split open Duḥśāsana’s chest and drink his blood. Let anyone who doubts these words watch. This is truth.”

Arjuna said that he would kill Karṇa in battle. Karṇa had mocked and shamed them, and had argued that Draupadī did not deserve protection. Arjuna said: “In the fourteenth year, if Duryodhana does not honour our return with our kingdom, these words will come true. If they fail, let the Himālaya (Himavat) move from its place, let the sun lose its light, let the moon lose its coolness.”

Sahadeva swore to kill Śakuni, the maker of the dice game, who had used his knowledge of dice as a weapon. He said that the prince of Gāndhāra had been proud of his loaded dice, and now he would face the truth of Sahadeva’s arrows instead.

Nakula swore to kill all the sons of Dhṛtarāshṭra who had taken part in Draupadī’s humiliation, and to leave the earth empty of them, following Yudhishṭhira’s command and walking in Draupadī’s footsteps.

Draupadī spoke not an oath but a śāpa (a curse). She said that the wives of those who had stood by and laughed would, in the fourteenth year, weep with their husbands’ blood on their own bodies, with their sons dead and their families ruined, and would offer water to the dead with loose hair.

The assembly heard every oath in silence.

The departure from Hastināpura

Yudhishṭhira took leave one by one of Bhīshma, Droṇa, Kṛpa, Vidura and all the elders. He covered his face as he walked, unable to look straight at those he was leaving, because his gaze in its anguish might harm those it fell on. Bhīma walked with his long arms stretched wide, showing them to the assembly, arms that would one day break Duryodhana. Arjuna scattered sand from his hands as he walked, and the grains fell exactly and one by one, like a shower of arrows he would one day let fly. Nakula smeared dust on his face and body so that no woman’s heart would be troubled by his great beauty on the road through the city. Sahadeva covered his face. Draupadī, in a single garment, with her hair loose and weeping, followed them out.

Dhaumya, the Pāṇḍavas’ purohita, walked in front. He held darbha grass in his hand and chanted the sāmans of Deva Yama, the funeral hymns, the hymns of death. They pointed ahead to the end of the Kaurava line that would come in fourteen years. The narrator says: “When the Bhāratavaṃśa were all destroyed, the gurus of the Kurus would chant the Yama-sāmans thus.”

The people of Hastināpura poured out of their homes to watch. They climbed to the tops of buildings, onto towers and gopuras (gateway towers), and into trees, to any high place from which they could see. The streets were so full that no one could move. Women pulled aside the screens of their windows to look out. The city, the narrator says, became like a city without a festival: silent, sorrowful and without colour.

Droṇa’s warning and Nārada’s prophecy

After the Pāṇḍavas left, Droṇa spoke to the gathered Kauravas and their allies with controlled sorrow. He made clear what lay ahead. The Pāṇḍavas were protected by dharma and by divine grace. The brāhmaṇas called them amara, those who cannot be killed. He himself was still bound to serve the Kauravas, but he held no illusions about the outcome.

He spoke at length about Dhṛshṭadyumna, Drupada’s son, who was born from the yajña fire, the son whom fate had ordained to kill Droṇa himself. Dhṛshṭadyumna had been born with armour and bow already in place. The prophecy at his birth had named Droṇa as the one he was meant to kill. Droṇa’s open fear of his own death at this boy’s hands was a rare moment of weakness in a man who had trained the greatest archers of the age.

He ended with a direct appeal. The ease and victory they were enjoying now was like the shadow of a palm tree in the cold season, pleasant for the moment but short. They should perform great yajñas, give great gifts, and enjoy the good things of life, because in fourteen years it would all end.

After Droṇa spoke, Nārada appeared before the assembled court with a company of ṛshis and gave one terrible prophecy: “In fourteen years, because of Duryodhana’s crime, the Kauravas will be destroyed through the force of Bhīma and Arjuna.” Then he rose into the sky and was gone.

The end of the Sabhā Parva

The Sabhā Parva closes with Dhṛtarāshṭra’s last talk with Sañjaya. In going over these events, the king shows that he knows all that was done was wrong. He had seen the omens. He had heard Vidura. He knew that Draupadī’s śāpa and Bhīma’s oaths were not idle words. Yet he could not act against his son’s wishes.

With this the Sabhā Parva ends, and the Araṇyaka Parva begins.

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Anudyūta Parva, Chapters 74-81