Drona Parva

Drona Parva

At the beginning of Drona Parva,we join the action during an uneasy hiatus after ten days of fighting. The warring cousins stand face to face on the battlefield, awestruck by the fall of Bhishma, symbolic patriarch to Kauravas and Pandavas alike. He will spend the rest of the battle a mere spectator, his life ebbing slowly as each day passes. Now it is Drona’s turn to take his place as the leader of Duryodhana’s armies. Though a brahmin by birth, Drona was once an instructor in the arts of war to both the Pandavas and the Kauravas, and like Bhishma he accepts his post only with a certain reluctance. The fighting begins once more. However, Duryodhana is so desperate to gain ground against the Pandavas that it is not long before he angrily accuses Drona of fighting halfheartedly against his former students. Drona replies that only if the great Pandava warrior Arjuna is removed from the battlefield can he stand any chance of defeating his opponents. The kings of Trigarta step forward and challenge Arjuna to a duel he cannot refuse, and Drona sets about destroying the army that Arjuna leaves behind him. In response, Yudhishthira decides to send his nephew Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son, to counter Drona’s advance. Eager to please his uncle, Abhimanyu sets off for the Kaurava line and, breaking through it, causes havoc among Duryodhana’s troops. But Abhimanyu’s achievements take him too far. After a sequence of battles, he finds himself cut off from the rest of the Pandavas, and despite his ferocious determination he is finally overwhelmed by a group of his enemies and killed. Yudhishthira realizes too late that he has sent his nephew to an inevitable doom. He is plunged into despair, and the sun sets on a scene of mourning in the Pandava camp. 

And as the war draws on, it is darkness that predominates. Just as the fratricide that their rivalry has triggered will now build towards the bizarre closing passages of ‘Drona,’ when the fighting explodes into a nocturnal massacre where it no longer seems to matter who kills whom. 

‘Drona’ is in itself a huge text. At first glance, we find scene after scene that seem to blend into one. But there is a definite sequence of events in the book, extending from Drona’s accession to the post of commander of the Kaurava forces, through Abhimanyu’s tragic death and the demise of Jayadratha and Ghatotkacha, to the cruel deception and beheading of Drona.

Concision is not the point; the epic is as much a cultural force as a literary work, and is unencumbered by the niceties of compositional convention that we might expect of it. Yet wound about its events is the undulating texture of the epic’s poetry. The reader will find that a certain synesthesia is the inevitable consequence of close association with it—the text can fruitfully be approached like a piece of music, but one in form much closer to the gathering swell of a raga than to the frozen arc of a symphony. The deeper we delve into the detail of what happens, the more is revealed to our eyes and ears. Verses are never repeated precisely but are inflected, recast or transformed, and all the time, line by line, the tale moves on, riverine and enveloping, occasionally meandering gently, at other times twisting suddenly, like the haunted streams of blood that crisscross the plain of Kurukshetra.

Dronabhisheka Parva

This is the 65th of the 100 Upa Parvas situated in the seventh (Drona Parva) of the 18 Maha Parvas in the Vyasa Mahabharata. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes the consecration of Drona as commander-in-Chief of the Kaurava army, after the fall of Bhishma on the 11th day of the Mahabharata war. Drona vows to capture Yudhishthira.

This Upa Parva has a total of 634 Shlokas organized into 15 Chapters.  Click to See...

Samshaptakavadha Parva

This is the 66th of the 100 Upa Parvas situated in the seventh (Drona Parva) of the 18 Maha Parvas in the Vyasa Mahabharata. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes the destruction of Samshaptaka army by Arjuna, and other events covering the 12th day of of the Mahabharata war.

This Upa Parva has a total of 717 Shlokas organized into 16 Chapters.  Click to See...

Abhimanyuvadha Parva

This is the 67th of the 100 Upa Parvas situated in the seventh (Drona Parva) of the 18 Maha Parvas in the Vyasa Mahabharata. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes the killing of Abhimanyu on the 13th day of of the Mahabharata war.

This Upa Parva has a total of 643 Shlokas organized into 20 Chapters.  Click to See...

Pratignya Parva

This is the 68th of the 100 Upa Parvas situated in the seventh (Drona Parva) of the 18 Maha Parvas in the Vyasa Mahabharata. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes Arjuna's oath to kill Jayadratha, and him re-obtaining the Pahupata weapon from Lord Shiva on the 13th night of the Mahabharata war.

This Upa Parva has a total of 365 Shlokas organized into 9 Chapters.  Click to See...

Jayadrathavadha Parva

This is the 69th of the 100 Upa Parvas situated in the seventh (Drona Parva) of the 18 Maha Parvas in the Vyasa Mahabharata. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes the killing of Jayadratha by Arjuna and the events there of covering the 14th day of the Mahabharata war.

This Upa Parva has a total of 3174 Shlokas organized into 67 Chapters.  Click to See...

Ghatotkachavadha Parva

This is the 70th of the 100 Upa Parvas situated in the seventh (Drona Parva) of the 18 Maha Parvas in the Vyasa Mahabharata. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes the killing of Ghatotkacha by Karna on the 14th night of the Mahabharata war.

This Upa Parva has a total of 1554 Shlokas organized into 31 Chapters.  Click to See...

Dronavadha Parva

This is the 71st of the 100 Upa Parvas situated in the seventh (Drona Parva) of the 18 Maha Parvas in the Vyasa Mahabharata. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes the killing of Drona by Dhrishtadyumna and the events covering the first half of 15th day of the Mahabharata war.

This Upa Parva has a total of 523 Shlokas organized into 7 Chapters.  Click to See...

Narayanastramoksha Parva

This is the 72nd of the 100 Upa Parvas situated in the seventh (Drona Parva) of the 18 Maha Parvas in the Vyasa Mahabharata. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes the release of the Pandava army from the effects of Narayana weapon unleashed by Asvatthama on the second half of the 15th day of Mahabharata war.

This Upa Parva has a total of 542 Shlokas organized into 8 Chapters.  Click to See...

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