The Chariot from Raivataka

Arjuna had been wandering for a long time. A promise to his brothers had sent him away from home, and his road had brought him down the western coast to Prabhasa by the sea. His friend Krishna came there to meet him and took him home to Dwaraka.

A few days later the Yadava clans held a great festival on Raivataka hill. There was music and dancing on the slopes, and gifts for the brahmins. Balarama walked about with his wife Revati, flushed from the feast. Old King Ugrasena was there, and Akrura, and Satyaki, and all the young men of the clan.

Arjuna and Krishna were strolling together when they passed a girl among her friends. She was lovely, and Arjuna stopped walking.

Krishna saw where he was looking, and smiled.

"What is this? Can a man who lives in the forests be struck by love?" he said. "She is my sister, Bhadra, Sarana's own sister and our father's favourite daughter. If your heart is set on her, tell me, and I will speak to our father myself."

"Who would not be taken with her?" said Arjuna. "If she became my wife, I would want nothing else. Tell me how to win her. I will do anything a man can do."

Krishna thought about it.

"For a warrior's daughter the custom is the swayamvara, where she chooses her own husband from the suitors," he said. "But who knows whom she will choose on the day? For brave warriors there is another custom, and the wise have praised it: the bride is carried off. Take her, then. Carry off my sister."

They sent fast messengers to Arjuna's eldest brother, Yudhishthira, in Indraprastha, and Yudhishthira gave his consent as soon as he heard.

One day Subhadra went up Raivataka to worship at the hill and came down again on the road to Dwaraka. Arjuna was waiting. He had a golden chariot hung with little bells, drawn by the horses Saivya and Sugriva, and he was dressed in armour as if for a hunt. He lifted her into the chariot and drove off towards Indraprastha.

Her guards ran shouting back to the city. In the great hall, Sudharma, the officer of the court blew the war trumpet. The men of the clan left their food and came running, calling for chariots and spears.

Balarama, still in his blue festival clothes, held up his hand.

"Fools! What are you doing, when Krishna sits here saying nothing?" He turned to his brother. "We honoured him as our guest, and he has insulted us. Shall I not strike back, like a snake that has been stepped on? I will rid the earth of the Kurus by myself!"

The hall roared with him. Krishna waited for the noise to end.

"He has not insulted us," he said. "Arjuna knows we do not sell our daughters, and he did not think we would. He thought the swayamvara too uncertain. And who would give a girl away like a cow? He is of the line of Bharata and Shantanu, Kunti's son, and no one in the world could beat him in battle except Shiva himself. If he gets home to his own city after defeating us, our name is gone. Go after him kindly, and bring him back."

So they did. Arjuna came back to Dwaraka and married Subhadra there, and stayed a year among the Yadavas.

When at last he brought her home to Indraprastha, Draupadi was hurt and angry, and he had to win her round. Then Subhadra went in to the women's rooms dressed simply, as a cowherd woman. She bowed to Kunti, who drew her close and blessed her. Then she bowed to Draupadi.

"I am your servant," she said.

Draupadi rose and embraced her. "May your husband have no enemy," she said.

"So be it," said Subhadra.

Krishna and Balarama came after with chariots, cows, horses and elephants as her wedding gifts, and in time Subhadra had a son, fearless and fiery, whom they named Abhimanyu.

The Bhagavata Purana tells of the same marriage, and it begins with a rumour.

Arjuna was at Prabhasa, among the holy waters, when he heard what people in Dwaraka were saying. Balarama meant to give his sister Subhadra to Duryodhana, the Pandavas' cousin. Nobody else in the family wanted it.

Arjuna made up his mind. He took the three-pronged staff of a wandering holy man, and walked into Dwaraka as an ascetic.

He stayed on through the months of the rains, and nobody knew who he was. The citizens honoured him as they honoured every holy man, and Balarama with them. He invited the ascetic to his own house to eat.

That was where Arjuna saw Subhadra, the girl every hero in the land admired, and from then on he could think of nothing else.

The Bhagavata is careful to add that she felt the same. She looked at the strange young ascetic and wanted him for her husband, and she let him see it, with shy smiles and quick glances.

He waited through the rains for his chance. It came with a great festival of the Lord, when Subhadra rode out of the fortress in a chariot to join the procession. Arjuna carried her off, and her parents had agreed to it, and so had Krishna. Guards ran to stop him, and he drove them back from his chariot with his bow, while her relatives shouted after him.

When Balarama heard, he heaved with anger like the sea at the full moon.

Krishna went to him and took hold of his feet. The family gathered round and talked to him gently, and told him how it had all come about. Little by little Balarama grew calm.

In the end he was glad. He sent the couple elephants, chariots, horses and servants for their wedding, and the match he had not made became the one he blessed.