The Bed of Arrows

On the tenth day of the war, a little before sunset, Bhishma fell from his chariot.

Arjuna had come at him from behind Shikhandi, whom Bhishma would not fight, and had filled him with arrows until there was not two fingers' breadth of his body without one. When he fell, the arrows held him up. He lay on them a hand's breadth above the earth, the old grandfather of both armies, and all the fighting on the field stopped.

As he fell he looked at the sky and saw that the sun was in its southern course. That was no time for a warrior to die. And he heard voices in the air above him.

"Why should Bhishma, the greatest of men, give up his life while the sun is in the south?"

"I am alive," Bhishma answered. His father Shantanu had given him the gift of dying only when he chose to, and he chose to wait.

His mother Ganga heard of it in her waters. She sent great sages to him, taking the shape of swans, from the lake of Manasa in the mountains. They came flying over Kurukshetra and circled round him as he lay.

"Will the great Bhishma leave the world in the southern course of the sun?" they asked each other.

Bhishma looked up at them. "While the sun is in the south I will not go," he said. "When it turns to the north I will go to my old home. I hold my life in my own hands, and I will keep it until then."

The swans flew back to the north. The two armies left their weapons where they were and came and stood round him, Kauravas and Pandavas together.

His head was hanging down, because no arrow held it. "My head hangs," he said. "Give me a pillow."

The kings ran to bring him pillows, soft ones, of fine cloth. Bhishma smiled. "Those are not fit for a hero's bed," he said, and turned his eyes to Arjuna. "You know what kind of pillow I need, my son."

Arjuna, weeping, took three arrows and drove them into the ground under his grandfather's head, so that it rested on them.

"That is the right pillow," said Bhishma. "This is how a warrior should lie on the field."

In the night the soldiers dug a trench round him and set a guard. In the morning he was burning with thirst. They brought him cool water and food in fine vessels, and he refused them all.

"I am done with the food of men," he said. "Arjuna."

Arjuna strung his bow, said a mantra over an arrow, and shot it into the ground beside Bhishma's right side. Out of the earth came a jet of water, cool and pure as nectar, and it fell into Bhishma's mouth. It was his mother's water, the people said who watched, the Ganga herself come up to give her son a drink.

Then Bhishma told the kings to make peace, which they did not, and the war went on around him for eight more days.

The war ended. Yudhishthira was crowned in Hastinapura, and in all the weeks of his mourning he went out again and again to the field where Bhishma lay, and Bhishma taught him how a king must rule, how a good man must live and how a soul is set free.

After fifty nights in the city, Yudhishthira saw that the sun had stopped moving south and had begun to move north. He remembered the time his grandfather had named. He set out from the city with priests and Bhishma's sacred fires, with Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, his mother Kunti, his brothers, Krishna and Vidura, and with clarified butter, sandalwood and silk for the funeral.

They found Bhishma on his bed, with the sages Vyasa and Narada beside him.

"You have come," said Bhishma, and took Yudhishthira's hand. "The thousand-rayed Sun has begun his journey north. I have lain here fifty-eight nights, and on these sharp arrows they have felt like a hundred years. This is the month of Magha, and its bright half is a quarter gone."

He spoke last words to Dhritarashtra and to the Pandavas. Then he turned to Krishna and asked his leave to go. Krishna gave it.

Bhishma fell silent. He drew his breath up, joint by joint, and wherever it left, the arrows fell out of the wounds and the wounds closed. At last it went out through the top of his head, like a great meteor rising into the sky. Flowers fell, and drums were heard in heaven.

They burned him on the bank of the Ganga. When the Pandavas offered him water, the river goddess rose out of the stream, weeping for her son, and it was Krishna who comforted her.