Bhishmaभीष्म

Bhishma is the most honoured man in the Mahabharata and the one its story punishes most thoroughly, and the epic never once suggests those two facts are in tension.

He was born Devavrata, son of King Shantanu and the river Ganga — the eighth child, and the only one she did not carry to the water and drown. The Ashta Vasus page explains why she drowned the others and why he had to stay: he is Dyaus, the sky father, serving a curse that specified a long human life, great renown, and no children of his own.

He was the crown prince, and he was good at it. Then his father fell in love with Satyavati, a fisherman's daughter, whose father would not give her unless her sons inherited. Shantanu would not ask. So Devavrata went himself, renounced the throne — and when the fisherman pointed out that his sons might still claim it one day, took the further vow that settled everything: lifelong celibacy. No wife, no children, no line.

The gods rained flowers and called him Bhishma — the terrible, the man of the terrible vow — and his father gave him the one boon that would matter: he would die only when he chose to.

What he bought with that was fifty or sixty years of watching the family he had preserved tear itself apart. He raised Dhritarashtra and Pandu. He raised their sons. He sat in the hall when Draupadi was dragged into it and said nothing that stopped it. He commanded the Kaurava army against boys he had taught, for ten days, because he had sworn to serve whoever held the throne of Hastinapura and the throne was held by Duryodhana.

And he told them how to kill him. Shikhandi — who had been born a woman — stood in front of Arjuna, and Bhishma would not raise his bow against him, and the arrows came through.

Then he lay on them. Not dead, because he could not die until he permitted it, and he would not permit it until the sun turned north. Fifty-eight nights on a bed of arrows — and he spent them teaching, which is how the Mahabharata acquired its two longest books.

He is in this encyclopedia because thirty-eight references across eight existing pages kept arriving at a man with no article, and because Bhishma Ashtami is a real observance with a very strange and rather beautiful logic behind it.

The Adi Parva gives the birth, the vow and the whole machinery of the succession crisis; the Bhishma Parva gives the ten days of his command and contains the Bhagavad Gita; the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas are what he says from the ground afterwards, and together they are roughly a quarter of the entire epic.

The curse underneath. The Dyaus and Ashta Vasus pages carry it: eight Vedic deities steal Vasishtha's cow Nandini, and the sage curses them to human birth. Seven are to be released at once; the instigator must serve a full term. Ganga agrees to bear them and free them, marries Shantanu on the condition that he never question her, drowns the first seven as newborns — and is stopped at the eighth, which both ends her marriage and condemns her son to the long sentence.

So Bhishma's celibacy is not only a vow. It is also a curse being served, and the epic lets both explanations stand without choosing. The Vasishtha page notes that this is the second time one of his cows is stolen and the second time it ruins the thief.

Amba. The episode that kills him, and the one modern readers find hardest. Bhishma, who cannot marry, abducts three princesses — Amba, Ambika and Ambalika — from their svayamvara as brides for his half-brother Vichitravirya. Amba says she is already pledged to Shalva; Bhishma releases her; Shalva refuses her as second-hand; and she comes back and demands that Bhishma marry her, since he is the cause. He refuses — the vow. She goes to Parashurama, his own teacher, who fights him for twenty-three days and cannot beat him. And then she performs austerity to be reborn as the instrument of his death, and is, as Shikhandi.

The encyclopedia states plainly what this is: a woman whose life is destroyed by a man's abduction, and who is then refused the only remedy available to her because of a promise he made to somebody else. The Mahabharata does not excuse him. It gives her the last word, and it is his death.

The tarpana tradition. Bhishma Ashtami — Magha Shukla Ashtami — is attested across India and the practice attached to it is documented in the dharmashastra literature.

The Vishnu Sahasranama. The thousand names of Vishnu, in the Anushasana Parva, spoken by Bhishma to Yudhishthira from the bed of arrows at Krishna's prompting. It is one of the most recited texts in Hinduism and is sung daily in a very large number of households — and almost nobody reciting it is thinking about the circumstances of its delivery.

He is almost always lying down.

The bed of arrows. Sharashayya. The defining image: an old man with a long white beard suspended on a dense mat of shafts, body never touching the earth, the broken arrows visible beneath him. Sometimes the warriors of both armies kneel around him; sometimes it is only Krishna and the Pandavas.

The pillow. The detail the artists always keep. Offered a cushion of silk, Bhishma refuses it and asks for a warrior's pillow — and Arjuna shoots three arrows into the ground to prop his head.

The water. Thirsty, he refuses what is brought; Arjuna drives a shaft into the earth and a spring comes up to his mouth. Bhishma Kund at Narkatari in Kurukshetra marks the spot.

Standing, in the war scenes. White-haired, armoured, enormous, on a chariot with the palmyra on the banner; often opposite Arjuna with Shikhandi between them.

At the vow. In narrative painting: a young man before a fisherman's hut, flowers falling.

In modern art and television. He is one of the most familiar faces in Indian popular culture, and the sharashayya is among the most reproduced images from the epic.

Distinguishing him. An old warrior on a bed of arrows is Bhishma and nothing else. Do not confuse the bed with Vishnu on Shesha, which is the same horizontal composition and the opposite idea: one is rest, the other is a man held off the ground by what killed him.

Devavrata. His birth name — the one of divine vow, which turns out to be prophetic.

Bhishma. The terrible, the awe-inspiring — the name the gods give him for the vow, not for anything he did in battle.

Gangaputra / Gangeya. Son of Ganga.

Bhishma Pitamah. Grandfather Bhishma — though he is strictly the grand-uncle of the Pandavas and Kauravas, not their grandfather. The usage is universal and inaccurate.

Shantanava. Son of Shantanu.

Dyaus. What he is, in the Vasu reckoning. His page.

One of the twelve mahajanas of the Bhagavata — the twelve who know what dharma is, with Brahma, Narada, Shiva, Prahlada, Vyasa's son Shuka, Yama and the rest. The Prahlada page lists them.

Not Bhishma the common epithet bhīṣma, which is an ordinary Sanskrit adjective meaning terrible.

Not Bhima, the second Pandava, who is a different person with a similar name — a confusion that is extremely common in English.

The vow. A ferryman's daughter; a king too proud to ask; a son who went and asked for him. He gave up the throne, and then — because the fisherman was a careful negotiator and pointed out that a prince's sons would still have a claim — he gave up having sons.

It is worth noticing what the story is actually about. A young man dismantles his own future so that his father can remarry, and the epic treats this as the most admirable thing anyone in it ever does. Modern readers often find the proportion strange, and the Mahabharata arguably agrees with them: every subsequent catastrophe in the book runs through the hole that vow left in the succession.

Amba. Set out above. She is the price.

The empty throne. Vichitravirya dies childless. Satyavati asks Bhishma to father heirs on the widows; he refuses — the vow — and so Vyasa is called instead, and Dhritarashtra is born blind and Pandu pale, and the entire succession dispute follows from that. Bhishma's integrity is, step by step, the mechanism of the disaster.

The hall. Draupadi is dragged into the assembly and asks a question nobody answers: whether a man who has already gambled himself away had any right to stake her. Bhishma — the greatest living authority on dharma, who will shortly spend two books expounding it — says the question is too subtle for him to answer.

This encyclopedia does not soften it. It is the most damning moment in his life, and he is lying on arrows for a reason. The epic lets him say so: in the Shanti Parva he tells Yudhishthira that he suffered what he suffered because of the company he kept and the wrong he did not prevent.

Ten days. He commands, and fights with complete competence against people he loves, because he has sworn service to the throne and will not distinguish between the throne and the man sitting on it. He also tells the Pandavas, when they ask, exactly how to kill him — which is either the last act of a teacher or the first act of a man who wants it to be over.

Shikhandi. Born a woman, or changed, depending on the recension — Amba returned. Bhishma will not shoot. The arrows come from behind him and he goes down.

A reader should know that Shikhandi is read by many today as a transgender figure, and that the reading is contested among scholars and deeply meaningful to the people who hold it. The Bahuchara Mata page carries India's legal position; the epic's own account is that Bhishma refused to fight someone he had known as a woman, and died of it.

Fifty-eight nights. He will not go while the sun is in the south. So he waits — and teaches: statecraft, dharma, the duties of a king, the nature of giving, the Vishnu Sahasranama. The Shanti and Anushasana Parvas are an old man in agony, refusing to stop being useful.

And then the solstice. At Uttarayana he gives his leave, and goes.

Bhishma Ashtami — Magha Shukla Ashtami, January or February — is the day. Tarpana is offered for him with water and sesame, and the logic of it is the most remarkable thing on this page.

Tarpana for the dead is normally offered by their descendants. Bhishma has none, by a vow he took and a curse he served. So the tradition's answer is that anyone may offer it for him, and on that day people do — across India, and particularly at Kurukshetra. A sentence designed to leave a man with nobody is answered, annually, by strangers standing in as his sons.

Nobody legislated that. It grew, and it has kept going for a very long time.

Bhishma Ekadashi, the day before, is when the Vishnu Sahasranama is recited — because he spoke it from the bed of arrows. By a very wide margin this is his largest living presence: the thousand names are chanted daily in households across India and sung in temples, and the text's own colophon names him.

At Bhishma Kund, Narkatari (Kurukshetra), where the spring Arjuna opened is shown, and where the Ashtami observance is largest.

In the Shanti Parva recitation, and in the dharma literature that quotes him constantly.

In performance. The vow, the hall, and the sharashayya are staples of Indian theatre, dance and television, and his is one of the best-known characters in the country.

He has no temple of his own, which is the usual pattern for this class of figure — the Vyasa, Markandeya and Prahlada pages describe the same thing. DharmSetu records the observances above as religious practice and makes no claim about outcomes.

Bhishma Kund, Narkatari (Kurukshetra district, Haryana) — the tank at the spot where Arjuna is said to have drawn water from the earth for him. The Bhishma Ashtami observance is largest here, and it is the destination on this page.

Jyotisar (Kurukshetra district, Haryana) — where the Gita was spoken, in the book named for him. The Arjuna page carries it.

Brahma Sarovar and the Kurukshetra battlefield sites (Haryana), and the Solar Eclipse gathering there, which is among the largest in north India.

Hastinapur (Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh) — the capital he held together, with a modest archaeological record and large Jain and Hindu temple complexes.

Gangotri and the Bhagirathi headwaters (Uttarkashi district, Uttarakhand) — his mother's; a Chota Char Dham site, and Ganga's page has it.

Prayagraj, Haridwar and the Ganga ghats, where tarpana is offered.

Bhishmak Nagar (Lower Dibang Valley district, Arunachal Pradesh) — a genuine archaeological site traditionally associated with Bhishmaka, Rukmini's father. A different person, and listed only because the names are confused constantly; her page has him.

He has no temple anywhere, and the one place that is really his is a pond with a story about a drink of water.

A vow that worked perfectly and ruined everything. Bhishma keeps his word completely, for sixty years, at enormous personal cost, and the Mahabharata's verdict is that this was a catastrophe. No heir, so the throne goes to a blind man and a pale one; no father's authority, so the cousins are never checked; an oath to the throne rather than to justice, so the greatest warrior alive spends ten days killing his own students for Duryodhana. The epic admires him without reservation and shows, step by step, that his integrity was the mechanism of the disaster. Very few traditions are willing to say both.

The sentence and the vow are the same shape. Dyaus was cursed to a long life, great fame and no children. Bhishma chose a long life, great fame and no children. The epic offers the curse and the free choice as two accounts of one existence and never says which is operative — which is a more sophisticated treatment of fate and will than most of what is written about either.

He could not answer the question. In the hall, Draupadi asks whether a man who has staked himself can stake his wife, and the foremost living authority on dharma says it is too subtle. Two books later he is expounding dharma at length to a captive audience from a bed of arrows. The Mahabharata put those in the same book on purpose. Knowing the law and saying it at the moment it is needed are different capacities, and the epic is merciless about the difference.

And Amba is the one who ends him. A woman he abducted, released, and then refused — because of a promise he had made to someone else — comes back across a lifetime and a rebirth and stands in front of Arjuna, and Bhishma will not raise his bow, and that is that. The tradition could have had him killed by a hero. It had him killed by the consequence of the one thing he would not reconsider.

Strangers offering water to a man with no sons. Of everything here, this is what has lasted. On Bhishma Ashtami, Hindus unrelated to him by any line perform the rite that children perform for a father, because he arranged to have none. A curse meant to end a man without remainder is met, every year, by people volunteering to be the remainder — and it is the warmest thing in a story that contains almost nothing warm.