Arjuna- Hindu DemigodDemigod"Greatest Archer"

Birth and Divine Origin

Arjuna was born as the third of the five Pandava brothers, son of Queen Kunti and the god Indra, king of the devas and lord of storms. Kunti possessed a boon from the sage Durvasa that allowed her to invoke any deity to father a child. When her husband Pandu was cursed to die if he engaged in physical love, Kunti called upon Indra, who fathered Arjuna. At the moment of his birth, a divine voice declared that this child would equal Kartavirya Arjuna and Shiva in power, and that his fame would spread across the three worlds.

Training Under Drona

The Pandavas and their Kaurava cousins studied martial arts under Drona, the greatest warrior-teacher of the age. Among all students, Arjuna proved the most dedicated. The test of the bird revealed why: when Drona asked each student to aim at a wooden bird in a tree and describe what they saw, others saw tree and branches, but Arjuna saw only the eye of the bird and nothing else. Drona loved him above all students and taught him techniques shared with no one else, including the devastating Brahmastra. When Ekalavya, a forest-dwelling Nishada prince, developed archery skills to rival Arjuna through self-directed practice before a clay image of Drona, the guru demanded Ekalavya's right thumb as guru-dakshina. Arjuna's supremacy cost a boy his hand. As his own offering to Drona, Arjuna led the campaign to capture King Drupada, fulfilling his teacher's long-held desire for vengeance.

The Svayamvara of Draupadi

After escaping the lac palace the Kauravas had built to burn them alive, the Pandavas lived disguised as brahmins. At the svayamvara of Draupadi, daughter of King Drupada, the challenge required stringing an impossibly heavy bow and shooting five arrows through a revolving mechanism to strike a fish target, looking only at its reflection in water below. Kings and warriors from across Bharatavarsha failed. Arjuna accomplished the feat with ease. When the brothers returned to Kunti and announced they had won a prize, she told them to share it equally without looking up. Once spoken, the command was binding. Draupadi became wife to all five Pandavas, an arrangement sanctioned by Vyasa that would bind them together through all their coming trials.

The Burning of Khandava

When the Pandavas established their kingdom at Indraprastha, Arjuna and Krishna encountered Agni, the fire god, in disguise. Agni was tormented by indigestion from consuming too many oblations and craved to devour the Khandava forest, but Indra, Arjuna's own divine father, protected it with rain because his ally the serpent Takshaka lived there. Agni offered Arjuna the divine bow Gandiva, forged by Brahma himself, along with two inexhaustible quivers and a celestial chariot bearing Hanuman's emblem on its banner. Armed with these weapons, Arjuna and Krishna held off Indra and the assembled gods while Agni consumed the forest. The architect Maya Danava escaped the flames and, in gratitude, built the magnificent assembly hall at Indraprastha for the Pandavas.

Exile, Pilgrimages, and Marriages

The five brothers agreed that when one was with Draupadi, no other would intrude. When Arjuna accidentally violated this pact by entering Yudhishthira's chamber to retrieve weapons needed to help a brahmin, he accepted twelve years of exile as penance despite Yudhishthira's willingness to forgive. During this pilgrimage across the subcontinent, Arjuna married three times. At the source of the Ganga, the Naga princess Ulupi drew him into her underwater realm and bore his son Iravan. In Manipura, he married Princess Chitrangada, who bore his son Babhruvahana. In Dvaraka, with Krishna's encouragement, he eloped with Krishna's sister Subhadra, who bore Abhimanyu, the son whose death in the great war would become its cruelest moment.

Quest for Divine Weapons

During the Pandavas' twelve-year exile following their defeat at dice, Arjuna undertook extraordinary austerities in the Himalayas to obtain celestial weapons for the coming war. Shiva, disguised as a Kirata hunter, challenged Arjuna over the kill of a wild boar. The two fought fiercely: Arjuna's arrows and physical strength proved useless against the disguised god. Only when Arjuna recognized his opponent and offered worship did Shiva reveal himself and, pleased by the warrior's valor, grant him the Pashupatastra, a weapon capable of annihilating creation. Arjuna then ascended to Amaravati, Indra's heaven, where his divine father welcomed him and he spent years learning celestial warfare. The apsara Urvashi, rejected by Arjuna out of respect (he regarded her as a mother-figure among his ancestors), cursed him to live as a eunuch. Indra reduced the curse to one year's duration.

The Year in Disguise

For the thirteenth year of exile, the Pandavas had to live in hiding or their exile would reset. Arjuna, invoking Urvashi's curse, took the guise of Brihannala, a eunuch dance and music instructor at the court of King Virata. He taught the princess Uttara the performing arts he had learned from the gandharvas in Indra's heaven. When the Kauravas attacked Virata's kingdom to steal his cattle, the young prince Uttara fled in terror from the approaching army. Arjuna revealed his identity, recovered the Pandavas' weapons hidden in a shami tree outside the city, and single-handedly routed the entire Kaurava force. The Pandavas had survived their exile. They could no longer be denied their rights.

The Bhagavad Gita

On the first day of the eighteen-day war at Kurukshetra, Arjuna asked his charioteer Krishna to position their chariot between the two armies. He saw Bhishma his grandfather, Drona his teacher, his cousins and kinsmen arrayed for slaughter. His limbs grew weak, Gandiva slipped from his hands, and he declared he could not fight. The kingdom was not worth this ocean of blood.

Krishna answered with seven hundred verses. The atman is eternal and cannot be slain; bodies perish, but the self transmigrates through countless births. A warrior must act according to his svadharma without attachment to results: renounce not action itself but the fruits of action. When Arjuna asked to see Krishna's true divine form, the god unveiled his Vishvarupa, the cosmic form containing the entire universe. All beings streamed into his countless mouths like rivers flowing into the ocean, simultaneously beautiful and terrifying beyond mortal comprehension. Arjuna, trembling, begged Krishna to return to his familiar form. His doubt dissolved, and he took up Gandiva once more.

The Great War

Throughout the eighteen days of battle, Arjuna was the Pandavas' foremost warrior. He fought Bhishma, who fell on the tenth day after Arjuna positioned Shikhandi before him; Bhishma had vowed never to fight one who was born female. He played his part in the deception that broke Drona's will to fight, the half-truth that Ashvatthama (an elephant named for Drona's son) had been killed. On the fourteenth day, after Abhimanyu's death, Arjuna swore to kill Jayadratha before sunset or immolate himself; Krishna used his yogic power to obscure the sun, and when Jayadratha emerged believing Arjuna had failed, Arjuna struck off his head. He killed Karna, his unknown elder brother, a son of Surya whom Kunti had secretly borne before her marriage, when Karna's chariot wheel sank into the earth.

The Final Journey

After the war, with eighteen armies dead and Kurukshetra a field of corpses, the victory brought little joy. Gandhari, mother of the slain Kauravas, cursed Krishna and the Yadava clan to perish. Arjuna performed the Ashvamedha sacrifice to establish Yudhishthira's sovereignty, during which the ritual horse's wanderings led him into conflicts across the subcontinent, including a battle with his own son Babhruvahana in Manipura, who killed him. Arjuna was revived through a magical gem possessed by Ulupi. Years later, when Krishna died and the Yadava clan destroyed itself in a drunken brawl at Prabhasa, Arjuna attempted to escort Krishna's widows to safety but found his divine weapons powerless. Gandiva could not even be strung. Without Krishna, his celestial strength had departed.

When the five Pandavas and Draupadi set out on their final pilgrimage toward Mount Meru, Arjuna was the fourth to fall. Yudhishthira, asked why, said it was pride. Arjuna had boasted he could destroy all enemies in a single day, and that pride weighed him down. Yet beyond death, he attained heaven and was reunited with all his brothers in the celestial realm.