The Pavas

This chapter tracks the Pavas’ career, focusing on wives, sons, and dynastic ritual business. The Pavas’ first hunt serves as an introduction. The young Pavas and their peers trained under kpa and droa at the Hstinapura court. on a day off, they went hunting (1.123:15). Travelling by chariot with a batman and dog, the Pavas don’t find any deer; but the dog smells, finds, and keeps barking at ekalavya the nida,1 who shoots it in the muzzle with seven arrows. The Pavas, amazed by this marksmanship, ask the stranger who he is; he says he is a pupil of droa’s. (He was disallowed entry to droa’s school on account of being a nida, but he has been using an effigy of droa as his guru nonetheless.) They later relay the incident to droa, and arjuna reminds him of his promise that arjuna would be the world’s greatest archer. droa then goes into the woods with arjuna, finds ekalavya, and returns with a delighted arjuna and ekalavya’s severed thumb (Brodbeck 2006b:2-3).