KRISHNA CORIOLIS#5: Rage of Jarasandha Read online

  Now, that same technique had been used against him.

  He felt it as a hammer pounding his chest.

  With a horrible wet sound, his chest was shattered.

  His body was rent apart into two separate pieces.

  Divided cleanly at the center, as if a knife had sliced him from head to groin, the two halves came unstuck and flew yards away to land on the dust of the field.

  Asunder.

  The word derived from his own name: Jarasandha. Wherein the ‘asandha’ literally referred to his ability to split into two parts.

  ***

  Siddhran roared with laughter. He turned and faced his fellow champions, clapping his own hands together, biceps and pectoral muscles bulging prodigiously.

  ‘You see, bhraatr? He cannot withstand my power and skill! The great Jara is good only at giving orders from his high seat, with his minions to enforce those orders. But when faced down in single combat he can be defeated as easily as any warrior. He is no match for Siddhran! I have broken Jar-asandha!’

  No laughter came from his audience. The vaids dispensing the potions turned and stared wide-eyed for a moment—not at the fallen parts of their master, but at the gloating champion. Several of them sniggered and turned away, shaking their heads as they continued their work. Even the Emperor’s personal Mohini bodyguards remained where they were by his umbrella-covered throne on the promontory, watching impassively.

  Siddhran gestured up to them. ‘I killed your master with a single blow! Now I am coming to claim his throne, his women, his possessions. Siddhran shall be the new Emperor of Magadha!’

  He laughed and took a step forward. The champions closest to him sucked in their breaths. Some gasped openly, faces blanching. They shuffled farther away from him.

  He sneered. ‘What? Are you afraid of Siddhran now? Cowards! Unable to stand up to a skinny tyrant. Your oppressor is dead, like his protege Kamsa. At least Jarasandha had the honor of dying at Siddhran’s hands. Kamsa was felled by a mere boy, broken by a stupid fear of an old prophecy. I wish he had lived long enough to face me in combat at least.’

  He took another step forward then saw something in the faces of his fellow champions. It occurred to him that perhaps they were not exclaiming and blanching out of fear of Siddhran, but on account of something behind Siddhran. He turned his head, listening, then swung around.

  The two halves of Jarasandha’s body were crawling towards each other.

  Each half was using its hand to reach out and claw the ground then pull itself forward, aided by the leg of that half and guided by the eyes which looked toward each other.

  The eyes stopped and looked toward Siddhran as he stared down at them.

  He grinned.

  ‘How pathetic! Crawling across the ground like a common half-dead animal with a crushed spine. Even if you join together again, what will you achieve? I will tear you apart once again, and again. Or perhaps I shall tear you into little pieces, and fling each to the horizon. Let us see how you come together again then, hey!’

  The two halves resumed their crawling towards one another.

  Siddhran laughed again and strode forward. He reached the two halves just when they were inches from each other. He kicked one to the left, the other to the right and looked from one to the other, grinning again. The eyes of Jarasandha’s severed halves rolled wildly before settling again on their counterparts.

  ‘Now what?’ Siddhran asked. He stood precisely between the two halves, separating them. ‘Even if you come together, I shall not let you join into one body. What will you do then?’

  There was a momentary pause as if the two halves were considering their next move. The other champions exchanged glances nervously. On the promontory the Mohini bodyguards remained where they were, guarding an empty throne. The vaids had finished dispensing the potion to the last of the champions. They glanced briefly at Siddhran, standing between the two sundered halves of their master, and retreated to their tent behind the marching lines. They shot pitying glances at the champion as they went.

  Siddhran waited to see what would happen next.

  Several moments passed without anything happening. Even the two halves of the Magadhan remained as they were, no longer trying to creep or crawl towards each other.

  The champion laughed, resting his hands on his hips. ‘So. It seems Siddhran has killed Jarasandha with a single blow. So much for his legendary reputation of being unkillable!’

  Suddenly, with the swiftness of a whiplash cracking out—or a cobra striking—the two halves of Jarasandha flew at one another. Specially empowered as he was, Siddhran glimpsed them coming at him and braced himself at once, hardening his body to maximum density. It took him but the speed of thought to accomplish this feat, so skilled was he in this technique by now.

  In the fraction of a second that the two halves of Jarasandha’s body took to fly at him, Siddhran’s body was hardened to the consistency of solid stone.

  The two halves slammed into Siddhran’s stone-solid body with the force of iron hammers. They shattered him like hammers striking stone, smashing his rock-hard body into smithereens.

  The champions watching raised their hands instinctively, covering their eyes and turning away as the fragments of Siddhran’s shattered body exploded outwards in all directions. But except for a few pieces the size of pebbles, most of what fell onto them was mere dust. The dust of flesh solidified to the consistency of stone.

  The instant the dust fell to ground, it lost the consistency that had been induced by the living body, returning to its natural state as human tissue, blood, bone fragment, and similar material.

  The other champions were spattered with the blood and fragments of Siddhran’s body.

  In the spot where Siddhran had stood, Jarasandha now stood, rejoined. There was an instant during which the crack where his two halves met was very slightly out of joint. Just a fraction. The disjointing was most evident in his face, where his eyes were one marginally higher than the other.

  He adjusted himself with a shrug of his shoulders. And both halves meshed perfectly with a liquid sticky sound.

  Then he grinned, his divided tongue flickering forth from his mouth sibilantly as he surveyed the spattered remains of his challenger.

  ‘And that, boys, is why I tell you to take your medicine without complaining.’

  14

  Balarama slowed the chariot to a halt, stopping it at a sideways angle to the cliff edge so Krishna and he could have a better view unobstructed by the horses. They looked down at the large empty plains that bordered the end of Mathura province. They were less than a yojana from the capital but like any large city, Mathura was surrounded by outlying farms and properties. As they had ridden out of the city, those outlying properties were already being evacuated, their occupants making their way hastily to the city proper where they could seek shelter within the high walls. But there were still some who chose to remain out of compulsion or choice: cowherds who could neither leave their herds nor expect there to be room enough for them within the city walls.

  For too long, Mathura had been the source of martial aggression, not the target. Kamsa had not paid any heed to building defenses. If anything, he had willfully ignored them, taking pride in the knowledge that no enemy existed who was strong enough to challenge the might of Mathura under his rule. This was not foolhardiness, it was quite literally true: the only challenger to Mathura’s might in this part of the world was Magadha. And Magadha was not only a friend and ally, its interests were intertwined with those of the Yadava nations, through marriage as well as through trade, governance and polity.

  All that changed the minute Kamsa was killed. Jarasandha had left the city quietly, withdrawing his emissaries and other representatives. And at the time, they had thought that he was busy on other fronts, continuing his empirical expansion. But it was clear now that he had been preparing to return from the very minute he left. The retreat had been tactical, as was the return.

  They l
ooked down now on a sight guaranteed to chill even the hardiest hearts.

  An army was arrayed on the plains outside Mathura. An army so vast, they understood what the foreigner Daruka had meant when he reported never having seen such a large force before. But while Daruka was a simple man unschooled in matters of warfare, Krishna and Balarama were well enough educated in those details to make an accurate assessement of its exact size.

  Owing to the division of the army into akshohini, each akshohini in turn comprising the four parts of a complete fighting force, it was possible to make such an assessment using the following principle:

  Each akshohini consisted of chariots, elephants, cavalry and infantry in the ratio 1:1:3:5. The base figure was 21,870. So one akshohini had 21,870 chariot, 21,870 elephants, 65,610 cavalry and 109,350 foot-soldiers, and was led by a senapati or general.

  These senapatis were represented at the head of an army by krta-dhvaja or banner carriers. Flag men. By counting the colorful krta-dhvaja flapping on poles arrayed at the front of an army, one could easily count the number of senapatis or generals, which in turn indicated the number of akshohini in that army.

  Krishna and Balarama counted the colors of 23 akshohini on the plains below. Their banners flapped in the wind, each mounted on a pole before a tent which housed their senapati. Behind these 23 banners and tents was one enormous tent with a great banner unfurled before it: this displayed the markings of the Magadhan Empire.

  By the use of Vedic mathematics, both brothers were able to estimate the total number of enemy forces in the field. An akshohini’s total count amounted to 210,870 individual units - one counted an elephant as well as its mahout rider as a single unit, just as one counted a chariot, its horse or horse team, its charioteer and one or more archers who rode with the charioteer all as a single unit too. 23 akshohini in the field meant there were a total of 50 lakh, thirty thousand and one hundred fighting units at play.

  Just over five million enemy in all.

  Krishna and Balarama arrived at the figure together and exchanged a glance. This was the largest threat ever faced by the Yadava nations, singly or collectively. It was so much greater than any force that had ever gone to war against Mathura that there was nothing to compare it to. While Mathura was a prize city that any invader might lust after, it was situated too far inland to be easily approachable. One would have to fight one’s way through far too many other powerful kingdoms just to get here. This was why Mathura had never been fortified heavily or had its defenses built up, the way other border city-states had, particularly after the legendary destruction of Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and other borderline cities in ancient times.

  But the threat to Mathura had not come from the border or beyond it. It had come from within the Arya nations themselves. From the Empire of Magadha, a great and powerfully ally to Mathura for the past 23 years.

  It was one thing that Mathura was not built to defend itself against foreign invaders.

  Against an ally this powerful and close, it had no defense at all.

  Especially not with a force of five million enemy already at its doorstep, ready to attack within the day.

  15

  Vasudeva shook his head despairingly. ‘How could this happen without our receiving some notice?’ he said. Balarama and Krishna had just returned from their inspection of the enemy forces. The news had spread throughout the city. People were arriving in droves from outlying areas, seeking refuge within the city walls. As Krishna and Balarama had driven through the streets, the atmosphere had been one of barely suppressed panic. People had shouted out queries to the brothers as they rode past, many had prayed openly to them to save Mathura from this new calamity. In the palace complex, the mood was grim. Even the Mathuran Army forces that had been amassing and drilling had looked stunned.

  ‘After the Death of the Usurper, nobody expected any further threat to rear its head,’ said an old advisor. He was one of those who was imprisoned and tortured after Kamsa had usurped his father’s throne. Somehow, he had survived the long imprisonment and torture as well as the numerous mass executions and purges by Kamsa and had kept abreast of goings on in the kingdom thanks to Akrura and the rebels. He could barely walk but his knowledge was invaluable. ‘The spasas were all loyal to Magadha anyway, they were planted here by Jarasandha to serve his own ends. Besides, we had no reason to expect Magadha to invade and when they did, they came like lightning.’

  Old Pralamba, the only major court minister who had served under Ugrasena before Kamsa and was serving him again now, passed a hand across his lined face. ‘Jarasandha must have planned this down to the last detail. Nobody moves an army of 23 akshohini all the way from Magadha to Mathura in mere days.’

  ‘He did not move it in days,’ said Ugrasena. The old king’s voice was faltering but his will was strong and his intelligence undimmed. ‘These are active frontline units he has kept in play against other kingdoms. He simply diverted them from different places and brought them to converge on Mathura. That is how he was able to move them so close so quickly without anyone suspecting. Magadha has been invading and fighting with numerous kingdoms for decades in its unending quest for empirical expansion. Everyone is accustomed to seeing their akshohini shunted from one place to another all the time.’

  Ugrasena indicated the chaupat board laid out before him on a wooden table. He moved pieces representing the four parts of an akshohini, wooden blocks carved to resemble elephants, chariots, horse cavalry and foot-soldiers as he explained. ‘All Jarasandha did was pull out four or five akshohini from here and move it in this direction, another half dozen akshohini from here and move it that way, and so on, until even spasas watching each region carefully would see only units moving in one particular direction. Nobody was in a vantage point to view the whole picture.’

  He moved numerous units in criss-crossing directions. ‘And then, when he had brought them all within a few days travel from Mathura, he turned their heads and converged them all.’

  Ugrasena’s wrinkled fingers pushed all the pieces on the chaupat board together in a cluster. ‘He must have given the word for them to converge barely four or five days ago. By the time our outliers and outposts put two and two together and figured out what was happening, they must have been overrun by this juggernaut of an invading force.’

  Pralamba nodded sadly. ‘Our outposts are all overrun. We can be sure of that. Otherwise they would have gotten word to us by now. King Ugrasena speaks wisely. Nobody knows the geography of those territories better than he does with a view to military troop movements.’

  ‘And he should at that,’ said the old war minister. ‘There was a time when he planned such maneuvers and movements himself, back when he dreamed of expanding the Yadava Empire.’

  ‘The Yadava Empire?’ Vasudeva said. ‘Then you once planned to expand our nations as well? Through military conquest?’

  Ugrasena sighed and leaned his forehead on his fist. ‘I was younger and more ambitious then.’ He added self-critically: ‘More foolish as well. I grew to see the folly of my ambitions. When all nations live together in peace as sister kingdoms, there is no need for empires and conquests.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Jarasandha does not share your enlightened way of thinking, grandfather,’ Krishna said grimly. ‘To him, war and conquest are a way of existence. He knows nothing except the rule of sword and reign of blood.’

  ‘From the state of preparedness of the army,’ Balarama said, ‘They could invade Mathura tomorrow itself.’

  Vasudeva made a puzzled gesture. ‘Is it not customary to issue a threat beforehand? Or at the very least present a list of demands?’

  Pralamba shook his head. ‘Jarasandha is known for simply invading and overwhelming kingdoms with superior forces, often conquering and subjugating before the kingdoms in question even realize they were under threat. He regards his proclamation of two and a half decades earlier as sufficient notification to one and all.’

  The chief minister was referring to a d
eclaration some twenty five years earlier when Jarasandha had proclaimed himself the Emperor of the Known World and demanded that all kings regard themselves as subjugate to his power and surrender arms to him if they wished to avoid being overrun and conquered. By default, any king or ruler who did not comply with this demand was declared an enemy and therefore subject to conquest, invasion, destruction, as Jarasandha saw fit.

  ‘But Mathura was allied to Magadha all these years,’ Vasudeva pointed out. ‘Kamsa was his son-in-law.’