Vritra

The Kaleyas, terrible danavas invincible in battle, arm themselves and place themselves under Vritra, pursuing the gods led by Indra everywhere. The thirty gods, with Indra at their head, approach Brahma for a means to kill Vritra. Brahma tells them: go to Dadhicha. Ask for his bones. Fashion the vajra. With it, Indra will kill Vritra.

Vritra's roar shakes Indra to his core, but the king of the gods strikes him dead with the vajra — then flees in terror, refusing to believe his enemy is gone. The daityas, hunted by the rejoicing gods, retreat into the ocean depths and there hatch a terrible plan: destroy the world by destroying every virtuous ascetic who sustains it.

Arjuna sets out on the divine chariot that Indra once used to vanquish the greatest asuras. The roar of his departure alerts the gods, who assemble and ask what he intends to do. He tells them his mission, receives their blessings, and accepts the conch shell Devadatta — the very one Indra used to conquer the worlds.

The danavas unleash a storm of rocks, water, wind, fire, and finally a terrible darkness that confounds Arjuna and terrifies Matali. Arjuna counters each elemental assault with divine weapons, but when the darkness falls, even his charioteer loses his senses — and Arjuna must steady himself before he can fight on.

Yudhishthira sits in the forest, weighed down by exile and loss, when the ancient sage Markandeya finds him. Instead of empty comfort, Markandeya offers a series of comparisons — Rama’s endurance in the wilderness, Indra’s victories won through allies, and the Pandavas’ own recent rescue of Draupadi from Jayadratha — to argue that Yudhishthira has no reason to despair.

Yudhishthira is weighed down by the calamity that has befallen him. Dhoumya, his priest, speaks to him — not with empty consolation, but with a catalogue of gods who once hid in the most unlikely places: Indra in a hermitage, Vishnu in a womb, Agni in water. If the great-souled ones concealed themselves to conquer their enemies, Dhoumya asks, why should a king not do the same?