Bhima

Bhima's weapon is the gada, the mace, and the epic is careful to say that he and Duryodhana learned it from the same teacher, Balarama, who rated Duryodhana the more finished technician. That detail sets up the ending: the two best mace fighters of the age are on opposite sides, and the better stylist is the one who loses.

In the dice hall Bhima swears two oaths. He will tear open the chest of Duhshasana, who dragged Draupadi by the hair, and he will break the thigh of Duryodhana, who bared it and struck it as an invitation to her. Both are fulfilled, and both are ugly. The second is more than ugly, it is against the rules: a mace duel forbids a blow below the waist, and Bhima strikes only after Krishna signals by slapping his own thigh.

The epic does not let this pass. Balarama, who taught them both, is present, rises in fury and has to be restrained from killing Bhima on the spot, and leaves. The victory is won by a foul, prompted by an incarnate god, in front of the teacher of both fighters, and the narrative preserves every part of that rather than smoothing it. Bhima is usually read as the simple one of the five brothers, all appetite and force beside Yudhishthira's scruples, but the moments the epic gives him are precisely the ones where force is made to do what righteousness could not.

After the escape from the house of lac the brothers cross into forest country and Bhima kills the rakshasa Hidimba, whose sister Hidimbi has already fallen in love with him. Kunti allows the marriage on terms, and the terms are Hidimbi's undoing as a wife: Bhima will stay only until a son is born, and then return to his brothers. The son, Ghatotkacha, is born and reaches his full growth at once, which is what the epic says of rakshasa children, and he leaves with his mother.

He returns in the war and his death is the point of him. Karna carries the Vasavi Shakti, a single use weapon given by Indra in exchange for the armour Karna was born with, and he has kept it for Arjuna. Ghatotkacha fights by night and does such damage that Karna spends the weapon on him to save the army. Krishna, told of the death of a nephew, is described as delighted, because the one shot certain to kill Arjuna has now been used on someone else. Ghatotkacha's life exists in the plot to be spent.

Hidimbi has an afterlife the epic does not give her. She is worshipped as Hadimba Devi at Manali in Himachal Pradesh, in a wooden temple that stands over a rock shrine and draws pilgrims and visitors alike, where the forest woman married on a condition is the presiding goddess of the valley rather than an episode in someone else's exile.