The Bows in the Shami Tree

Twelve years in the forest were over. The thirteenth the Pandavas had to spend among people without being recognised, and if anyone found them out before it ended, they would go back to the forest for twelve more.

They had chosen to hide in the city of King Virata, but they could not walk into it carrying their weapons.

"Weapons like these will frighten people," said Yudhishthira. "And Arjuna's bow, the Gandiva, is known to every man alive. One look at it and we are found."

Arjuna looked about. Near the burial ground outside the city, on a hill that was hard to climb, stood a great shami tree with heavy branches, in a place where wild animals and snakes lived. "We'll leave them there," he said. "No one comes here."

They unstrung their bows: the Gandiva, Bhima's bow, the bows of the twins and Yudhishthira's. The bows, the long swords and the quivers were wrapped up, and Nakula climbed the tree and tied the bundles high in the branches, where the rain could not reach them.

Then they did something stranger. They hung a dead body in the tree as well, so that the smell would keep everyone off. When shepherds asked what it was, they said, "This is our mother. She was a hundred and eighty years old. Our family's custom is to hang the dead in a tree." The shepherds believed them and kept away.

They went into the city in disguise. Arjuna, who had to live that year as neither man nor woman, became Brihannala, a teacher of dance to the king's daughter, with his hair in a braid and bangles on his arms.

Near the end of the year the Kauravas raided Virata's herds. The king and his army were away fighting elsewhere, and the only one left was his young son Uttara, who boasted in front of the women of the palace about what he would do to the raiders if only he had a charioteer. Draupadi, disguised as a maid, told him the dancing master had once driven Arjuna's chariot.

When they came in sight of the Kaurava army, with Bhishma and Drona and Karna and Duryodhana at its head, the prince's hair stood on end. "I can't fight these," he said. "Let them have the cows. Let the women laugh at me." He jumped from the chariot and ran.

Arjuna ran after him, braid and red skirts flying, while the Kaurava soldiers laughed and then began, uneasily, to tell each other that the runner looked very like Arjuna. He caught the boy by the hair within a hundred steps and dragged him back.

"Then you drive," Arjuna told him, "and I will fight."

He turned the horses towards the shami tree. "Climb up and bring down the bows," he said.

"There is a corpse in that tree," said Uttara. "I am a prince. I will not touch a dead body."

"There are no corpses in it," said Arjuna. "Only bows."

Uttara climbed and cut the wrappings, and the weapons shone out of them like planets coming out of cloud. He held the Gandiva, and his hair stood up again, this time in wonder.

"Whose are these?" he asked.

"Mine," said Arjuna, and told him his ten names. One of them was Vijaya, because he never came back from a battle without winning it.

He strung the Gandiva, drove the Kauravas off, and brought the herds home. On the way back he stopped at the shami tree and put the weapons back where they had been.

In the towns of Maharashtra and Karnataka the story is told more shortly, under the tree itself, on the afternoon of Dasara.

The Pandavas, it goes, came to the edge of Virata's kingdom at the start of their year in hiding and asked the shami to keep their weapons. The tree took them into its branches and held them for a whole year, through the rains, and gave nothing away.

On the tenth day of the bright half of Ashvin the year was over. Arjuna came back, bowed to the tree, worshipped the Goddess, and took his bow down. That same day he went out against the Kauravas and won. Some tellings add that Rama, too, worshipped a shami before he set out for Lanka, and that is why the tree is called dear to Rama.

So on Vijayadashami people walk out to the shami at the edge of town, as Arjuna did. They circle it, offer it water, vermilion, rice and a lamp, and say the verse.

"Shami shamayate papam, shami shatru vinashini. Arjunasya dhanurdhari, Ramasya priyadarshini."

The shami calms wrongdoing, the shami destroys enemies, it held Arjuna's bow, and Rama loved to look at it. Many families add a second verse asking the tree that Rama worshipped to keep the year's journeys free of obstacles.

Then they pick a few leaves to take home or to give away. In Karnataka, where the tree is called banni, people press the leaves into each other's hands and call them gold. In Mysore the great elephant procession of Dasara ends at Bannimantap, the pavilion of the banni tree, which the kings worshipped before they went to war.