Kirata: Arjuna Meets Shiva the Hunter

The hunter who was the god

Exiled in the forest, Arjuna walks alone into the Himalayas to do tapas. He needs the Pashupatastra, the great weapon of Shiva, for the war he can already see coming. Shiva tests him first as a hunter named Kirata, takes his arrows, and fights him hand to hand. The weapon is given only after Arjuna keeps fighting with bare hands.

A Bowman Alone in the Snow

Somewhere in the high reaches of the Himalayas, on a ridge above the Indrakila mountain, Arjuna stood alone. His brothers were far below, in the Kamyaka forest, eating roots and waiting out the years of exile. He had walked for weeks to reach this place. His feet were cracked. His lips were split from cold. His bow, the Gandiva, was wrapped in cloth and slung across his back, useless for now.

He had come to do tapas. He needed a weapon his brothers did not have. He needed the Pashupatastra, the weapon of Shiva himself, the one arrow in the cosmos that could end any enemy, any army, any age. The war with the Kauravas was thirteen years away, but he could already see it. He had been told, by the sage Vyasa himself, to come to this mountain and ask.

For months Arjuna stood on one foot, eating fallen leaves, then air, then nothing. The other rishis on the mountain grew worried. "This man's tapas is shaking the worlds," they said. They went, eventually, to Shiva.

Shiva listened. Then he smiled, in the way he sometimes does when he is about to test someone he loves.

The Boar in the Clearing

The story is told in the Mahabharata's Vana Parva, in a section called the Kairata Parva, the parva of the hunter. The Shiva Purana retells it in the Rudra Samhita, mostly the same way, with the same restraint.

One morning, while Arjuna was deep in his standing tapas, a great wild boar burst out of the forest. It was huge, black-bristled, eyes red, charging straight at him. The Mahabharata names it as a demon called Mukasura in disguise, sent to kill the meditating prince. Arjuna, eyes still half-closed, reached for his bow without thinking. He nocked an arrow. He shot.