The bows twanged against arm-guards. There were the footfalls of the infantry and the loud roars of horses. Staffs and goads descended. Weapons resounded. As the elephants dashed toward each other, bells jingled. There was a tremendous roar that made the body hair stand up. There was the roar of chariots, like the sound of the (thunder) clouds. Cruel in their intentions, all of them raised their standards and advanced against the Pandavas… Grasping a terrible bow, like the staff of death, Shantanu’s son himself advanced against Dhananjaya. Arjuna grasped the bow Gandiva, famous in the world.
- Debroy. Bhishma Vadha Chapters 902-903
The diagram above is a sketch drawn from the first two chapters of combat in Bishma Vadha parva from the Mahabharata - the first two chapters of war.
This is an idea that I have had for awhile now - to switch gears in the war chapters and go for a graphical representation of the text rather than a rhyming translation. I don’t know - like all ideas this may be a one-off execution - or may have some legs.
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I wanted to give some sense of the relative strength and importance of the characters so I went with chess pieces - seemed appropriate as the game originated in India (and may have originated in the time of the Mhb - knights and rooks once elephants and so on). The above accurately describes who fought who in these opening chapters of the war. [2]
The positioning of the characters relative to one another is not really described - the battle formations of the wars are called vyuhas - that is channels and patterns of channeled spaces created by elephants within which chariots, infantry and cavalry fight. Mixing the forces cause chaos and is to be avoided.
One strategy in fighting with vyuhas is to create patterns of movement to trap and exhaust opponents - preventing egress when they get the worst of it. Abhimanyu was trapped in the Chakra-vyuha and killed by one such maneuver. Arjuna often turned the channels of vyuhas into rivers of death.
Notes
[1] Shantanu’s son is the Kaurava Bhishma. Dhananjaya is Arjuna.
[2] For those not in the know chess pieces are gauged in pawn units of measure. A queen is worth 9 pawns, rooks are worth 5 pawns, knights are worth 3.5 pawns and bishops are worth 3 pawns. The heuristic for calculating an exchange.
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