Gāndhārī on the Battlefield: Strī Parva

In Chapters 16-25 of the Strī Parva, Gāndhārī walks across the Kurukshetra battlefield. Vyāsa has given her divya dṛshṭi (divine sight), and Kṛshṇa walks beside her. She describes the ruined field, with its corpses, scavenging birds and animals, and weeping widows. She mourns each fallen hero by name and speaks to Kṛshṇa as she walks. The survey runs through ten chapters. It ends in Gāndhārī’s curse on Kṛshṇa in Chapter 25.

The vara of divine sight

Before she went out to the battlefield, Vyāsa gave Gāndhārī divine sight for as long as the survey lasted. She needed it because, since her marriage to the blind Dhṛtarāshṭra, she had kept her own eyes bound with a cloth. This was a vow of solidarity and tapas (austerity). With divine sight she could see the field clearly and know each fallen warrior by his face and ornaments. She told what she saw to the grieving groups that followed her.

The battlefield (Chapter 16)

Gāndhārī’s first sight of the field is terrible. She describes:

The earth covered in flesh, blood and bone, turned to red mud
Elephants and horses lying dead among broken chariots and shattered weapons
Countless women, wives, mothers and daughters, moving among the dead and calling the names of their husbands and sons
Scavengers, vultures, crows, jackals and wolves, tearing at the dead
The smell of rotting bodies already rising in the sun

The sight overwhelms her. She sways and at times can hardly go on. Yet she walks on, and all the way she speaks to Kṛshṇa as Mādhava, Vāsudeva and Janārdana. As she names each death she holds him responsible without saying so.

The elegies

Duryodhana (Chapter 17)

Gāndhārī sees her eldest son and pours out the longest and most personally painful elegy of the whole survey. She recalls his childhood, his gifts, his pride, and the warnings she herself gave him, which he refused. Even as she mourns him she cannot wholly push away her knowledge of his faults. The elegy is a mixture of a mother’s grief and the sorrow of one who watched a beloved child choose ruin.

Duḥśāsana (Chapter 18)

Gāndhārī sees Duḥśāsana’s body, its chest split open and its blood drunk by Bhīma. She recalls the dice hall, where Duḥśāsana, in the fullness of his triumph at the gambling, mocked Draupadī and abused the Pāṇḍavas. She tells Kṛshṇa that Bhīma’s killing of Duḥśāsana was payment for the adharma of that day. Yet as his mother she cannot hold back her grief.

Vikarṇa, Durmukhā, Citrasena, Vividingśati and Duḥsaha (Chapter 19)

Gāndhārī goes from one fallen son to the next. She notes the face, the weapons and the manner of death of each. She mourns Vikarṇa, the one son who had spoken for Draupadī in the sabhā. She notes that even the son who had dharma on his side was killed. For each she speaks to Kṛshṇa with the refrain, “See, Mādhava, see what has come to pass.”

Abhimanyu and Uttarā (Chapter 20)

At Abhimanyu’s body Gāndhārī’s grief changes. She mourns not a son of the Kaurava side but a boy of rare quality who was killed unjustly. He was a child, surrounded and slain by many warriors. Uttarā, Abhimanyu’s young widow, is found weeping over his body. She gently takes off his armour and speaks to his body as if he were only asleep. Gāndhārī records Uttarā’s lament in full: its tenderness, its charges against Kṛpa, Karṇa, Saindhava and Droṇa, and its final acceptance of death as the widowed wife’s companion. In this chapter she also mourns Virāṭa, Uttara the Matsya prince, Sudakshiṇa, and Lakshmaṇa, the son of Duryodhana.

Karṇa (Chapter 21)

Gāndhārī’s elegy for Karṇa is one of the most moving of the survey. She recalls that for thirteen years Yudhishṭhira’s heart lived in fear of this one warrior. She notes the irony that Karṇa, who could have changed the outcome of the war, chose loyalty to Duryodhana over his own survival. She names Paraśurāma’s curse. At the decisive moment Karṇa’s chariot wheel sank into the earth, and Arjuna killed him. Karṇa’s wife, the mother of Vṛishasena, is seen collapsed in grief at his side.

Jayadratha and Duḥśalā (Chapter 22)

At Jayadratha’s body Gāndhārī mourns him. She also admits that Arjuna’s killing of him, done to keep the vow made after Abhimanyu’s death, was just. She grieves for Duḥśalā, her own daughter and Jayadratha’s wife, who now wanders the field looking for her husband’s head. This is the only moment in the survey when Gāndhārī faces her own part in the war. She is grieving her son-in-law because of what her sons did. She also mourns Bāhlika, the great elder of the Kuru house.

The wives of Bhūriśravas appear here too, though the main elegy for Bhūriśravas is in Chapter 24. They voice their anger at Arjuna and Sātyaki for the way he was killed. Their anger raises the question whether his death was right by dharma.

Śalya, Bhagadatta, Bhīshma and Droṇa (Chapter 23)

In this chapter Gāndhārī mourns the great commanders and teachers.

Śalya. The king of the Madras, who served as Karṇa’s charioteer while secretly working against him, was killed by Yudhishṭhira. His wives gather around his body but cannot drive off the birds feeding on it.
Bhagadatta. The king of Prāgjyotisha, who fought Arjuna in the most fearful single combat of the war, was killed by Arjuna. Gāndhārī says that in courage and strength no one matched him.
Bhīshma. Gāndhārī describes him on his śaraśayyā (bed of arrows), where he chose to wait for the uttarāyaṇa (the sun’s northward course) before dying. She calls him the Bhāskara (Sun) that has set, the great pillar of dharma of the Kuru house. She grieves that with Bhīshma gone there is no one left to ask about dharma.
Droṇa. Gāndhārī mourns the ācārya (teacher) of all the Kuru warriors. She describes his funeral, with Sāmaveda hymns sung and a pyre made of his own weapons and chariot parts. Kṛpī, Droṇa’s wife, is seen collapsed at the pyre in jaṭā (matted ascetic hair), performing the rites for her husband.

Bhūriśravas and Somadatta (Chapter 24)

The wives of Bhūriśravas make a bitter charge. They say that Arjuna, fighting with all his arms and helped by Sātyaki, killed a man who was in prāyopaveśa (the posture of fasting unto death, taken up in renunciation). They speak to Kṛshṇa directly and demand that he explain this before an assembly of righteous people. Gāndhārī records their anger as just, though she gives no verdict. Somadatta’s wife comforts her husband’s body. She speaks of the mercy of fate that the old king did not live to see this day.

Gāndhārī then mourns Śakuni, the maker of the war through his skill at dice. She admits his cunning but notes that his māyā (trickery) burned the Kauravas along with the Pāṇḍavas’ enemies.

The last mourning and Gāndhārī’s collapse (Chapter 25)

Gāndhārī moves through the rest of the battlefield. She mourns the king of the Kāmbojas, the king of the Kaliṅgas, Jayatsena of Magadha, Bṛhadbala of Kosala (killed by Abhimanyu), the sons of Dhṛshṭadyumna, the five Kekaya brothers, Viṅdānuviṅda of Avantī, Drupada and Dhṛshṭaketu of Cedi. She tells Kṛshṇa that no one on the field of the slain was beyond the reach of the Pāṇḍavas’ strength, and yet that strength saved not one of Duryodhana’s close companions.

At last, worn out by grief, Gāndhārī collapses. Her grief turns to fury. She turns to Kṛshṇa and speaks the curse that is the climax of the Parva, the curse on Kṛshṇa.

Sources

Mahābhārata, Strī Parva, Chapters 16-25