Kurukshetra: The Field of Dharma

Two armies face at Kurukshetra

On the sacred plain of Kurukshetra, eighteen armies gather for the most catastrophic war in human memory. As conches sound and warriors take their positions, the weight of destiny settles upon a field where dharma itself will be tested, and where nearly four million men will die in eighteen days.

The Sacred Field

They called it Kurukshetra, the field of the Kurus, but its older name was Dharmakshetra, the field of dharma. For countless generations, sages had performed sacrifices here. The soil was sanctified by the austerities of King Kuru himself, who had plowed this land with a golden plowshare, watering it with his own sweat until Lord Indra appeared and granted it a boon: whoever died on this field fighting righteously would attain heaven.

Now that ancient promise would be tested on a scale unimaginable to those holy men of old.

As the first light of dawn crept across the plain, two armies faced each other across a distance of less than a yojana. The morning mist rose from the earth like the breath of the land itself, as if Bhumi Devi was sighing at what her children were about to do to one another.

"Here, on this very ground, my ancestors performed a thousand sacrifices," Duryodhana had declared when choosing the battlefield. "Here, we shall sacrifice the Pandavas."

He did not know, or did not care, that sacrifices can be refused by the gods, and that the sacrificer sometimes becomes the offering.

The Armies Array

The numbers were staggering. Eleven akshauhinis on the Kaurava side. Seven akshauhinis for the Pandavas. Each akshauhini contained:

Multiply by eighteen. Nearly four million warriors stood ready to kill or die on that autumn morning. The earth trembled under the weight of their armies. The sky darkened with their banners. The air itself seemed to thicken with the collective breath of men facing their mortality.

Bhishma, the grandsire of both armies, took his position at the head of the Kaurava forces. His white hair and beard gleamed like silver fire, and his eyes, those ancient eyes that had seen five generations of Kuru princes, held a sorrow deeper than the ocean.