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Bhishma
Also Known As Devavrata (Sanskrit) · Gangaputra (Sanskrit) Son of Ganga. · Pitamaha (Sanskrit) The grandsire.
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Bhishma, born Devavrata, son of King Shantanu and the river goddess Ganga, takes the vow that gives him his name: he renounces the throne and swears lifelong celibacy so that his father may marry the fisherman daughter Satyavati, and for that terrible oath the gods grant him death at a time of his own choosing. He becomes the grandsire of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas and the conscience of the court, and yet sits silent while Draupadi is dragged into the assembly, a silence the epic never lets him forget. Bound by his oath of service to the throne rather than to justice, he leads the Kaurava army, and falls on the tenth day of the war on a bed of arrows, choosing to hold off death until the winter solstice has passed. From that bed he delivers the long discourses on duty, kingship and liberation that fill the Shanti and Anushasana books.
Facts
Life
Office HeldServed as regent of Hastinapura and later as commander-in-chief of the Kaurava armies during the eighteen-day war the Mahabharata describes, a role his lifelong vow of celibacy and service made possible. 1 Manner of DeathMortally struck by arrows on the tenth day of the war at Kurukshetra, he lingered on a bed of arrows and chose the moment of his own death, a boon granted to him for his lifelong vow of celibacy. Practice
LineageSon of King Shantanu by the river goddess Ganga 1 Attestation
HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 1 Scholarship
How Its Legacy Is ContestedThe Mahabharata recounts that he took a vow of lifelong celibacy so that his father Shantanu could marry the fisherwoman Satyavati, forgoing his own claim to the throne, a self sacrifice tradition credits him for even as it obligated him afterward to defend a Kuru throne divided against itself in the very war that ultimately kills him. 1 Attributions
Mythic AssociationHe renounces the throne and takes a vow of lifelong celibacy so that his father may marry, and is granted in return the choosing of the hour of his own death 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionThe epic itself treats his silence during Draupadi's humiliation in the assembly hall as a genuine moral failure of the code of duty he otherwise embodies, not excused by his prior oath of loyalty to the throne; some readings hold his own lingering death on the battlefield a karmic consequence of that silence. 1 Learn More
Amba, and the Enemy the Vow Created
Bhishma's vow of celibacy did not remove him from marriage politics, it only changed his role in them. To provide wives for his half brother he went to the svayamvara at Kashi and carried off the three princesses Amba, Ambika and Ambalika by force, which was a recognised if aggressive form of marriage for a warrior. Amba told him she had already chosen the king of Shalva. Bhishma released her, Shalva refused her because she had been carried off by another man, and Bhishma could not marry her himself because of the oath.
Amba went to teachers and kings for redress, found none, obtained a garland from a god that no warrior would wear for fear of Bhishma, and finally undertook austerities for a death that would let her come back and kill him. She is reborn as the child of Drupada, raised as a boy and later exchanged sex with a yaksha, and comes to Kurukshetra as Shikhandi.
On the tenth day Arjuna fights from behind Shikhandi, and Bhishma will not raise a weapon against one he regards as having been born a woman. He is shot down and falls on the arrows. The epic thus makes his death the direct consequence of the vow that made him great: the oath that took the throne from him also took a woman's marriage from her, and she is the instrument that ends him. Nothing in the sequence is an accident, and the poem does not offer him an excuse.
The Books Delivered from a Bed of Arrows
Bhishma falls on the tenth day of eighteen and does not die until long after the fighting stops, because the boon of choosing his hour lets him wait for the sun to turn north. That interval is where the Mahabharata puts its longest sustained teaching. Yudhishthira, sick with what winning has cost, comes to the dying grandsire and is answered across two entire books, the Shanti Parva and the Anushasana Parva, which together run to something like a quarter of the whole epic.
The material is not devotional in the main. It is government: how a king raises revenue and where the limit is, how law binds a ruler who is also its enforcer, what a king may do when the ordinary rules cannot be kept, which is the doctrine of apaddharma or duty in extremity, and then, at the far end, the paths of release. It is the point at which an epic of a family quarrel turns into a manual for people who have to govern.
Set within it is the Vishnu Sahasranama, the thousand names of Vishnu, given by Bhishma in answer to a question about what is highest, and recited daily by many Vaishnavas who have never read the war books around it. The framing is deliberate. The teaching on power is put in the mouth of a man who held vast authority, used it to keep an oath rather than to prevent a war, and is spending his last weeks explaining, to the winner, what he should have done differently.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Bhishma directly: "own collections record for "Arjuna and Bhishma," a Kalighat watercolour and tin alloy painting on paper, ca."
He led their army for ten days and fell on a bed of arrows.
Grandsire to both houses, and bound by his oath to serve the throne rather than the claim he thought just.
The Vishnu Sahasranama is spoken in the Mahabharata by Bhishma to Yudhishthira.
Attested In
Belongs to Tradition
Child Of
Ganga, Deities Son of Shantanu and the river goddess Ganga.
Depicted In
The V&A's own title and description name Bhishma directly as the target of Arjuna's arrows, the Mahabharata's own account of how Bhishma came to lie on his bed of arrows at Kurukshetra.
Related To
Parashurama is teacher of Bhishma in the Mahabharata, a story that puts the immortal axe wielding avatar inside a tale set long after his own age.
Bhishma is the eighth Vasu, held back to live out a mortal life, which is what the epic offers as the reason for his self denial.
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