Kurukshetra- Hindu LocationLocation · Landmark"Field of Righteousness"

The Field of Dharma

Kurukshetra stretches across the plains of northern India between the Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers in what is now Haryana state. The ancient king Kuru ploughed this land with a golden ploughshare to cultivate righteousness, and Brahma performed a great sacrifice here. The region had served as a gathering place for sages and ascetics for untold generations. The Vamana Purana calls it the northern altar of Brahma's cosmic sacrifice.

The Bhagavad Gita opens with the phrase "Dharmakshetre Kurukshetre," identifying the location as the field of dharma, a place where righteousness would be determined through the clash of arms.

The Gathering of Armies

As war became inevitable, the forces of both Pandavas and Kauravas converged on Kurukshetra. Eighteen akshauhinis, each a massive army division, represented virtually every kingdom and warrior lineage of the known world. Ancient alliances, marriage ties, and political obligations drew kings from distant lands. Even those who recognized the war's tragedy felt bound by duty to participate.

The Pandavas commanded seven divisions against the Kauravas' eleven, but counted among their ranks Arjuna and Bhima. The Kaurava army had Bhishma, the invincible grandsire, and Drona, teacher to warriors on both sides. The night before battle, the two armies encamped across from each other, their fires visible like twin cities of light. Warriors who had trained together, bound by blood and friendship, would face each other when dawn came.

The Bhagavad Gita

As the conch shells sounded and the armies prepared to charge, Arjuna asked Krishna to drive his chariot between the two forces. Surveying the enemy ranks, Arjuna saw his grandfather Bhishma, his teacher Drona, and his cousins. Overwhelmed by grief and moral confusion, the supreme warrior's hands dropped from his bow. He declared he could not fight. The kingdom was not worth this ocean of blood.

Krishna's response constitutes the Bhagavad Gita, seven hundred verses delivered on the chariot between the armies. He addressed Arjuna's crisis directly: as a kshatriya, Arjuna had a duty to fight for righteousness. The souls arrayed against him were eternal and could not truly be destroyed; what died was merely the body.

Then Krishna revealed his cosmic form. Arjuna saw all of creation contained within God's infinite body, all beings streaming into his countless mouths, the past and future burning together in a single vision. The battle's outcome was already determined. Arjuna was an instrument, not a cause. Convinced and renewed, he took up his bow.

The Eighteen Days

Bhishma commanded the Kaurava forces for the first ten days, his prowess devastating the Pandava armies. Thousands fell daily to his arrows alone. On the tenth day, Shikhandi, the reincarnation of Amba, rode at the front of the Pandava formation. Bhishma, who had vowed never to fight such a warrior, lowered his weapons. Arjuna shot arrow after arrow into the undefended grandsire. Bhishma fell upon a bed of arrows, where he would wait fifty-eight days for the auspicious moment of Uttarayana to die.

Drona assumed command and arranged the impenetrable Chakravyuha formation on the thirteenth day. It trapped Arjuna's sixteen-year-old son Abhimanyu, who knew how to enter the formation but had never learned how to escape it. Multiple warriors attacked him simultaneously in violation of single combat honor. He fell fighting. Drona himself fell through deception: told that his son Ashvatthama had died (in truth, an elephant of that name), his grief destroyed his will to fight. Dhrishtadyumna beheaded him.

Karna commanded next. His death was fraught with tragedy: he was Arjuna's elder brother, a secret known to their mother Kunti but hidden from both warriors. When Karna's chariot wheel sank into the earth and he invoked the rules of fair combat, Arjuna struck the killing blow on Krishna's urging.

The war ended with Bhima's mace duel against Duryodhana on the eighteenth day. Duryodhana, the superior mace fighter, dueled Bhima for hours across the blood-soaked field. Bhima shattered Duryodhana's thighs with a blow that violated the rules of mace combat but fulfilled his ancient vow, sworn when Draupadi was humiliated in the Kaurava court.

That night came the war's last horror. Ashvatthama, Drona's son, maddened by grief at his father's death, entered the sleeping Pandava camp and slaughtered the remaining warriors as they slept, including Draupadi's five sons. Only the five Pandava brothers and Krishna, absent that night, survived.

Aftermath

Of the millions who fought at Kurukshetra, barely a handful walked away. The Kaurava line was extinguished. An entire generation of warriors destroyed. The Stri Parva describes the widows and mothers streaming onto the battlefield, their lamentations filling the air as they searched for husbands, sons, and fathers among the heaped dead.

Yudhishthira was crowned king of Hastinapura, but his rule began with grief rather than celebration. He performed the Ashvamedha sacrifice to cleanse the kingdom of the war's pollution. The surviving Pandavas eventually renounced the world and set out on their final journey toward Mount Meru, where they ascended to heaven.

The Living Site

Modern Kurukshetra in Haryana maintains its sacred character. The Brahmasarovar tank remains an important bathing place. During solar eclipses, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gather to bathe in its waters. An ancient belief holds that during eclipses, all sacred waters concentrate at Kurukshetra.

The Jyotisar, identified as the site where Krishna delivered the Gita, features an ancient banyan tree said to descend from one that witnessed the divine teaching. Devotees gather there to recite the Gita's verses on the spot where Arjuna dropped his bow and Krishna answered.