Kālarātri in the Mahābhārata
Kālarātri, “the Night of Destruction”, is the fearsome feminine form of the great destruction, who appears when death comes on a huge scale and cannot be undone. In the Sauptika Parva of the Mahābhārata (the book of the night attack), she appears as a dark woman dressed in crimson, with red garlands and loose, wild hair, carrying a noose. She moves through the camp of the Pāñcālas during Aśvatthāmā’s slaughter by night, dragging the slain warriors by their necks towards the realm of Yama, the ruler of death.
She is not apart from the ordinary course of fate but its visible face. The narrator of the Sauptika Parva makes clear that she had been seen in the dreams of both armies all through the war, marking those who were already destined to die. Kālarātri is also a name of the fierce Devī: the night form of Mahādevī, the Great Mother.
Her Appearance in the Sauptika Parva
During Aśvatthāmā’s slaughter of the sleeping Pāñcāla camp, warriors who were still alive for a few moments in the carnage began to see a dark figure moving through the chaos. The Sauptika Parva (Chapter 8) describes her.
She was black (kṛshṇa-varṇā) in form, clothed in crimson, garlanded with red flowers, smeared with red substances and wearing red garments. Her hair was wholly loose and wild. She held a noose (pāśa) in her hand. She moved without hurry, slipping her nooses around the necks of the slain, warriors, horses and elephants alike, and leading them away from the field towards Yama’s realm. The dead walked with her on the path of no return.
She was followed by the spirits of those just killed, among them pretas (spirits of the dead) with their hands bound. She sang as she walked: a terrible, haunting song that went with her gathering of souls.
Seen Since the Start of the War
The narrator of the Sauptika Parva stresses that Kālarātri’s presence was nothing new. From the very first day of the war at Kurukshetra, warriors on both sides had seen her figure in waking visions and in dreams. She was always there: watching, waiting, not yet fully shown. Those whom fate had marked for death in this war had already been seen with her in their visions. The deaths of their bodies only carried out what the order of the universe had already decided.
Seen this way, Aśvatthāmā’s slaughter is more than a personal act of revenge. He was the instrument; Kālarātri was the reality. The Pāñcāla warriors were already counted among the dead in the great reckoning of the universe before Aśvatthāmā’s sword touched them.
What Kālarātri Means
Kālarātri is one of the names of Mahādevī in her most terrifying form: she who appears at pralaya, the dissolution of the ages, and at times of death on a great scale. The name is made of kāla (time, and also death, and also black) and rātri (night). So she is “the Dark Night of Time”, or “Night in the form of Death”.
In the tradition of the Devī Māhātmya and in the Śākta Purāṇas (the Purāṇas devoted to the Devī), Kālarātri is the form the Devī takes when she is wholly in the mode of destruction: beyond tamas (inertia), beyond rajas (restless activity), the very ground of the dissolution of the universe. In this passage of the Mahābhārata she does not destroy; she gathers. She is the one who reaps, not the one who kills: the one who comes after. Aśvatthāmā killed; Kālarātri received what was killed and carried it onward.
Sources
- Mahābhārata, Sauptika Parva, Chapter 8