The Head That Watched the War

Barbarika was the son of Ghatotkacha, and so the grandson of Bhima. From the time he was a boy he had worshipped the Goddess, and she gave him three arrows that never missed. With the first he could mark everything he meant to destroy. With the second he could mark everything he meant to save. With the third he could destroy all that was marked, and the arrows would come back to his quiver.

When he heard that the Pandavas and the Kauravas were gathering at Kurukshetra, he went to his mother.

"Let me go and see the war," he said.

"Go," said his mother, "but promise me one thing. Fight for the side that is losing."

He promised, and set out on his blue horse with his bow and his three arrows.

On the road a Brahmin was sitting under a peepal tree. It was Krishna, though Barbarika did not know it.

"Where are you going with only three arrows?" asked the Brahmin. "Is that all you take to a war?"

"One is enough," said Barbarika. "The other two are for show."

The Brahmin laughed. "Then show me. Mark every leaf on this tree."

Barbarika closed his eyes and loosed the first arrow. It went through every leaf on the tree, marking each one, and then it began to circle the Brahmin's foot. Krishna had picked a leaf while they were talking and hidden it under his sole.

"Lift your foot," said Barbarika, "or my arrow will go through it."

Krishna lifted his foot. Then he asked the question that had brought him there. "Which side will you fight for?"

"For the side that is losing. I promised my mother."

Krishna saw what that meant. Whichever army was losing, Barbarika would join it and turn the battle. Then the other side would be losing, and he would have to change sides again, until he alone was left standing on the field.

"I am a Brahmin and I have come to beg," said Krishna. "Will you give me what I ask?"

"Ask," said Barbarika.

"Your head."

Barbarika understood then that no Brahmin would ask for such a thing. "Tell me who you are," he said, "and I will give it."

Krishna showed him his own form. Barbarika folded his hands. "Then I have one wish. I came all this way to see the war. Let me see it to the end."

"You will see it," said Krishna.

Before the armies met, the war needed the head of the bravest warrior on the field as its first offering, and Barbarika gave his own. Krishna set the head on a hill above Kurukshetra, and it watched for eighteen days.

When the war was over, the Pandavas argued about which of them had won it. Bhima said he had. Arjuna said he had. Krishna said, "Ask the one who saw it all."

They went up the hill. "I saw only one thing," said the head. "Krishna's discus, going through the armies, and nothing else fighting at all."

Krishna was moved. "In the age that is coming," he told him, "you will be worshipped by my own name. People will call you Shyam, and whoever has lost everything will find a refuge in you."

The Purana gives Barbarika a mother of great power, Kamakantakata, the daughter of the demon Mura, whom Ghatotkacha won in Pragjyotisha with a riddle she could not answer. Their son grew to manhood the moment he was born, and his hair stood up so wildly that his father named him Barbarika. Krishna gave him a second name, Suhridaya, Good Heart, and sent him to a holy place where the river meets the sea, to worship the Goddesses there. In three years he had their favour.

When the Pandavas reached Kurukshetra, Yudhishthira asked his warriors how long each would need to destroy the enemy. Arjuna said he could do it alone.

"Let Arjuna and Krishna stand and watch," said Barbarika. "I will finish the Kaurava army in a muhurta, a little over an hour."

"How?" asked Krishna.

Barbarika strung his bow and shot one arrow filled with ash the Goddess had given him. The ash fell on the weak spot of every soldier in both armies, sparing only the five Pandavas, Kripa and Ashvatthama. "Now I will shoot at those spots," he said, "and they will all die."

Krishna let fly his discus and cut off Barbarika's head.

The Pandavas wept. Then the Goddess appeared and told them why. In an earlier age, when the gods agreed to be born on earth to lift its burden, a yaksha named Suryavarchas had boasted that he could do it alone. Brahma cursed him: at the start of that great war, Krishna would kill him. Barbarika was that yaksha. The Goddess sprinkled the head with nectar so it could never die, and at its own request it was set on a hilltop to watch.

At the end, asked who had won, the head said it had seen one figure fighting: five faces on the left and one on the right, matted hair and a crown, ash and sandal paste, the moon and the Kaustubha jewel. Half Shiva, half Vishnu.