The End of War

Mahabharata, Shalya Parva. Event 22 of 24.

After Karna's death, the remaining Kaurava commanders fall one by one. Duryodhana, the last survivor, hides in a lake. The Pandavas find him and Bhima challenges him to a mace duel. Bhima strikes Duryodhana's thigh, an illegal blow, but fulfilling his oath from the dice game. The war ends after 18 days with almost total destruction on both sides.

The Last Commanders

After Karna's death, the Kaurava army was in disarray. Their greatest champion was gone, and the soldiers' morale shattered with him. But the war was not over. Two more commanders would lead the Kaurava forces in their final desperate days.

King Shalya of Madra took command on the eighteenth day. Shalya was actually the Pandavas' uncle, Madri's brother, but through a trick by Duryodhana, he had been bound to fight on the Kaurava side. He was a mighty warrior, but his heart was divided, and he lasted barely a day before Yudhishthira killed him in single combat. It was one of the few times the usually peaceful Yudhishthira fought with genuine fury.

Then there was Ashwatthama, the son of Drona. Unlike the other Kaurava commanders who fought out of obligation or loyalty, Ashwatthama was driven by rage. His father, the great teacher Drona, had been killed through deception earlier in the war. The Pandavas had spread the false news that Ashwatthama was dead (they had actually killed an elephant named Ashwatthama). When Drona heard his son was dead, he laid down his weapons in grief, and Dhrishtadyumna cut off his head. Ashwatthama never forgave this, and his thirst for revenge would lead to one of the darkest chapters of the war.

By the end of the eighteenth day, the once-mighty Kaurava army was virtually annihilated. Of the eleven akshauhinis that had marched to Kurukshetra, almost nothing remained. The battlefield was a wasteland of bodies and broken chariots. And Duryodhana, the prince who had started it all, was alone.

“I fight for the Kauravas because I gave my word, but let the gods bear witness: my soul is with the Pandavas. Fate has placed me on the wrong side of this war, and I accept whatever end awaits me.”

Duryodhana's Last Stand

With his army destroyed and his brothers dead, Duryodhana did something no one expected from the proudest prince in the world. He ran. Wounded, exhausted, and alone, he fled the battlefield and waded into a nearby lake. Using a magical ability to breathe underwater, he sank to the bottom and hid there, hoping the Pandavas would not find him.

But hunters who had witnessed his escape told the Pandavas where he was hiding. The five brothers, along with Krishna, rode to the lake. Yudhishthira stood on the shore and called out to Duryodhana, taunting him. Come out and fight, he said. Is this how a Kshatriya prince meets his fate? Hiding underwater like a fish?

The taunt worked. Duryodhana's pride, the same pride that had driven the entire war, would not allow him to be called a coward. He rose from the water, dragging his mace behind him. He was wounded, caked in mud and blood, but his eyes burned with defiance. He looked at the five brothers, all of them relatively unscathed, and proposed a deal: he would fight any one of them in single combat. If he won, the Pandavas would return to the forest. If he lost, the war was over.

Yudhishthira agreed, and Duryodhana chose his opponent: Bhima. It was the obvious choice. They had been rivals since childhood. Duryodhana was one of the finest mace fighters in the world, trained by Balarama, Krishna's own brother. Many believed that with a mace, Duryodhana might actually be Bhima's equal.

“I may have lost my army, but I have not lost my honor. I will fight any one of you. Choose your champion. I need only one victory to prove that Duryodhana never bows, not to the Pandavas, not to fate, not to anyone.”

The Illegal Blow

The mace duel between Bhima and Duryodhana was one of the most ferocious combats in the entire war. Both warriors were enormous, both were master mace fighters, and both had spent a lifetime fueling their hatred for each other. They circled, struck, parried, and struck again. The ground cratered under their blows. The sound of iron hitting iron echoed across the empty battlefield.

For hours they fought, neither gaining a decisive advantage. Duryodhana was technically more skilled; his training under Balarama had been meticulous. But Bhima was stronger and powered by something beyond technique. Every time he swung his mace, he thought of Draupadi being dragged by her hair. Every time he charged forward, he remembered the house of lac, the rigged dice game, the thirteen years of exile.

As the fight dragged on, Krishna caught Bhima's eye and subtly slapped his own thigh. Bhima understood immediately. It was a reminder of two things: Duryodhana slapping his thigh and leering at Draupadi in the court, and Bhima's own oath to break that very thigh.

Bhima charged forward and swung his mace low, smashing it into Duryodhana's thigh. The bone shattered. Duryodhana collapsed to the ground, screaming in agony. The blow was illegal. In mace combat, strikes below the waist were forbidden. Balarama, who had been watching from a distance, was so furious at the violation that he nearly attacked Bhima himself.

But Bhima stood over his fallen enemy and reminded everyone present of what Duryodhana had done. This was not a random act of brutality. It was the fulfillment of an oath sworn on the day Draupadi was humiliated. Every blow had been promised, and every promise had been kept.

“Do you remember the dice game, Duryodhana? Do you remember slapping your thigh at my wife? I swore that day that I would shatter it. Thirteen years I waited. Now my oath is fulfilled.”

The Night Massacre

Duryodhana lay dying on the battlefield, his thigh shattered, surrounded by the corpses of his entire army. But the horror was not yet complete. Three Kaurava warriors had survived: Ashwatthama, Kripa, and Kritavarma. And Ashwatthama, consumed by grief for his father and rage at the Pandavas' deceptions, was about to commit the most terrible act of the entire war.

That night, while the Pandava army slept in their camp, celebrating their victory, Ashwatthama crept in like a shadow. What he did next was not war. It was slaughter. He moved tent to tent in the darkness, killing everyone he found. The sleeping soldiers had no chance. They woke to the sound of screams and the feel of a blade, and then they felt nothing at all.

Ashwatthama's primary targets were the Pandavas themselves, but by a twist of fate, the five brothers and Krishna were not in the camp that night. Instead, Ashwatthama found and killed the five sons of the Pandavas, young men who had fought bravely throughout the war. He also killed Dhrishtadyumna, the Pandava commander, and Shikhandi. By dawn, the camp was a charnel house.

When the Pandavas returned and discovered the massacre, their grief was beyond description. They had won the war but lost their children. Draupadi's anguish was the most devastating of all. She had endured the dice game, the disrobing, thirteen years of exile, and eighteen days of war, only to lose her sons to a coward's attack in the night.

The Pandavas hunted Ashwatthama down. In desperation, he launched the Brahmastra, a weapon of ultimate destruction, aimed at the unborn child in the womb of Arjuna's daughter-in-law, Uttara. Krishna intervened, saving the child who would carry on the Pandava lineage. Ashwatthama was cursed to wander the earth for eternity, alone and in agony, his forehead forever bleeding from where Krishna ripped out his crown jewel.

The war was over. Eighteen days of combat, millions dead, a civilization in ruins. And the victors felt no joy at all.

“My sons. They survived eighteen days of battle. They survived divine weapons and demonic warriors. And they were murdered in their sleep by a coward who did not have the courage to face them awake. What kind of victory is this?”

Characters

Bhima, Duryodhana, Krishna

Previous: The Death of Karna · Next: Gandhari's Curse