Bhagavatham Stories

After the devastating eighteen-day Kurukshetra War that had determined the fate of the Kuru dynasty and the legitimacy of the Pandava rule, the victorious Pandavas returned to their camp to rest. The war had been absolutely brutal - thousands upon thousands of warriors had fallen, entire dynasties had been wiped out, and the battlefield was now covered with the bodies of the slain. The Pandavas had won, but the victory tasted like ashes in their mouths because of the immense cost in blood and tragedy. That night, after the exhausted warriors had fallen into sleep, during the darkness when vigilance was lowest, Ashvatthama, the son of the great warrior Dronacharya, entered the Pandava camp with murderous intent in his heart and rage burning in his consciousness.

Ashvatthama was consumed by an overwhelming combination of emotions - anger at his father's death (Drona had been killed by the Pandavas in deception), grief at the defeat of the Kaurava side to which his loyalties had been bound, and pride wounded by the collapse of everything he had fought for. But worse than these natural emotions was his fall into a state of absolute darkness of consciousness. He had lost all sense of honor, all recognition of dharma, all hesitation about committing heinous acts. He crept through the sleeping camp like a demon looking for his enemies, thinking that if he could kill the Pandavas in their sleep, he could reverse the outcome of the war and bring victory to his side. What he didn't know, or what his darkened consciousness refused to acknowledge, was that the true victors had earned their victory through righteousness and protected divine will.

In his rampage through the camp, Ashvatthama committed one of the most cowardly and offensive acts recorded in the Bhagavatam. He slaughtered the five sleeping sons of Draupadi - innocent boys who had never done him any personal harm and who posed no military threat to him. He killed Parikshit's father, Abhimanyu, and many other noble warriors. These victims were completely defenseless, asleep and at his mercy. This massacre represented the absolute nadir of warrior conduct - what could be more dishonorable than killing sleeping children? The act was not an achievement of courage but a monument to cowardice and the complete absence of martial ethics.

When Draupadi learned that all five of her beloved sons had been brutally murdered by Ashvatthama while they slept, she was overwhelmed with a grief so profound that it seemed to break the very structure of her being. These were the fruit of her womb, young princes of the Kuru line, who should have been protected and nurtured to become the next guardians of dharma. But Draupadi was not an ordinary woman - she was the wife of the five greatest warriors of the age, the mother of these slain children, and a great devotee of Krishna. Instead of crying out for revenge in the way ordinary people might, instead of cursing Ashvatthama and demanding he be hunted down and killed immediately, Draupadi went silent, her grief too deep for words. Her tears flowed endlessly, and this silent sorrow moved even the most hardened warriors to tears. Even Bhima, who was famous for his strength and his fearlessness in battle, found his mighty heart broken by the sight of his wife's grief.

Arjuna, the foremost warrior of the age and the possessor of the divine Gandiva bow, saw his wife's grief and immediately stepped forward with a solemn vow. He declared that he would bring Ashvatthama before Draupadi - either alive if possible, or as a corpse if necessary. This was not a vain boast but a statement of absolute determination backed by unparalleled martial skill. Arjuna took it upon himself to restore some measure of justice and restore honor to his family. He personally consoled Draupadi with words of assurance and devotion, promising that he would not rest, would not eat, would not sleep until this vow was fulfilled. More importantly, he assured her that Krishna, their eternal friend and protector, was still with them and would never abandon them, no matter what circumstances arose.

The pursuit of Ashvatthama that followed demonstrated Arjuna's unmatched skills as a warrior and tracker. Through superior power and determination, Arjuna tracked Ashvatthama and cornered him. Ashvatthama, facing the inevitable, made the catastrophic decision to use a brahmastra - the most powerful weapon in all of Vedic warfare, capable of destroying entire armies and even causing universal destruction if its full power were unleashed. In desperation, seeing that he could not defeat Arjuna in fair combat, Ashvatthama released this devastating weapon aimed at killing all the Pandavas and destroying their line of descendants.

Seeing the brahmastra approaching like a meteor of destruction, Arjuna immediately prepared to release his own brahmastra to counteract it. The collision of two brahmastras would have been catastrophic - the entire cosmos would have been destroyed, all three worlds reduced to ash, the very fabric of creation torn apart. At this critical moment, Krishna directly intervened. The Supreme Lord, who appears in the role of Arjuna's charioteer and dearest friend, commanded both warriors to withdraw their weapons immediately. Arjuna, being perfectly obedient to Krishna and understanding Krishna's will to be supreme, immediately withdrew his brahmastra without hesitation. But Ashvatthama, driven by passion and lacking spiritual knowledge, could not withdraw his weapon through his own power. Instead, in a final act of malice and depravity, he redirected the brahmatra toward the womb of Uttara, the young widow of Abhimanyu, attempting to kill the unborn child who represented the last remaining heir of the Pandava dynasty - King Parikshit, who would become the greatest emperor of the age and eventually the ideal listener of the entire Srimad Bhagavatam.

At this critical moment, Krishna - the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the absolute protector of all His devotees - entered the womb of Uttara and personally shielded the unborn child with His transcendental form. The brahmastra could not penetrate the protection of the Lord Himself. The unborn Parikshit, while still in his mother's womb, received a transcendental vision of the four-armed form of Lord Narayana (Vishnu) who had protected him from certain death. This vision left such a deep impression on his consciousness that even after birth, his eyes and consciousness would constantly search for that beautiful form. Arjuna then captured Ashvatthama and brought him before Draupadi. Although she could have demanded his immediate execution, Draupadi's Krishna consciousness and superior character were manifested in her decision to forgive him. However, Krishna ensured that Ashvatthama received appropriate punishment - his divine jewel, which had protected him from all harm throughout his life, was taken away by Krishna, and he was condemned to wander the earth for many thousands of years, bearing the burden of his sins, rejected by all decent society, his body eternally marked by sores and diseases. This chapter teaches that wrongdoing, especially the murder of innocents and the betrayal of sacred trusts, brings inevitable consequences through the law of karma, and that the Supreme Lord never abandons the protection of His sincere devotees.