Bhīma poisoned and thrown into the Gaṅgā: the Nāga realm and the elixir

Classical

The Pāṇḍava boys grew up with Dhṛtarāṣṭra's sons, and Bhīma beat them all at running, eating, wrestling and every game, though he did it in play, not out of malice. His cousin Duryodhana, the eldest Kaurava, saw it differently. He decided to kill Bhīma by trickery: drown him in the Gaṅgā while he slept, then lock up Yudhiṣṭhira and Arjuna and rule alone. Duryodhana built a pleasure house on the river at Pramāṇakoṭi and invited the Pāṇḍavas for a day of water-games and feasting. He mixed a strong poison into the food and, smiling, fed it to Bhīma himself. After swimming all day Bhīma lay down, tired, and the cool air spread the poison through his body until he lost consciousness.

Duryodhana tied him with creepers and rolled him into the river. Bhīma sank all the way to the realm of the Nāgas. The serpents bit him by the thousand. Their venom neutralised the vegetable poison already in his blood, and he woke, burst his bonds and began crushing the snakes. The survivors ran to their king, Vāsuki, who came to see the stranger. There he found Āryaka, an ancestor of Kuntī's father, who recognised Bhīma at once. Vāsuki offered treasure, but Āryaka said such a youth did not need wealth: let him drink from the vessels of nectar, each worth the strength of a thousand elephants. Bhīma purified himself, faced east, and drank eight whole vessels in eight draughts, then slept on a bed the Nāgas had made.

Meanwhile, back in Hastināpura, the others had come home assuming Bhīma had gone ahead. Yudhiṣṭhira asked Kuntī where he was, and Kuntī, afraid, asked Vidura. Vidura told her not to accuse Duryodhana openly, because that could put her other sons in danger, and he reminded her that a sage had foretold long lives for all her sons. On the eighth day Bhīma woke, the nectar digested, with the strength of ten thousand elephants. The Nāgas fed him sweet rice pudding, gave him fine clothes and sent him back to the garden. He told his brothers everything, and Yudhiṣṭhira told them to keep it secret. Duryodhana tried once more, with poisoned food, and Yuyutsu warned the Pāṇḍavas; Bhīma swallowed it and suffered nothing. This was the first of the Kaurava plots, and the Pāṇḍavas, advised by Vidura, said nothing.

This first attempt on the Pāṇḍavas shows the pattern of later ones. Duryodhana acts out of fear and envy, hides behind a party, and relies on the others being trusting. Yudhiṣṭhira, whose reaction is to ask where his brother is, never suspects. Vidura's advice to Kuntī is the first of many in which he tells the Pāṇḍavas to hold their tongues for safety. The meeting with Āryaka also quietly shows that Kuntī's family has a Nāga link. The elixir is the origin of Bhīma's strength of a thousand, or ten thousand, elephants. Later versions make it the origin of his iron body, and in one tale this strength lets him survive Dhṛtarāṣṭra's embrace of the iron statue.

Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Bhīma, Duryodhana, Vāsuki, Āryaka, Kuntī, Vidura, Yudhiṣṭhira, Yuyutsu

Bound to

The house of lac and the tunnel origin

The iron Bhima that Dhritarashtra crushed mirror

Droṇa arrives at Hastināpura: the ball in the well and the bird's eye origin

Pāṇḍu's death and Mādrī's sati origin

Places: Pramāṇakoṭi on the Gaṅgā, Nāga-loka (the serpent world)

Where this comes from

read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Adi Parva, Section CXXIX (Bhīma's return from the Nāgas; second poisoning)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (Roy edition, archive.org full text) Adi Parva, Sections CXXVIII and CXXIX (Pramāṇakoṭi; the Nāga realm)

See it on the tree · All stories

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