01Hidimbi’s son
After Bhima killed her brother, the rakshasi Hidimbi asked for him as her husband, and Kunti and Yudhishthira agreed on one condition: she could keep him by day and must bring him back every night, until a son was born. She carried Bhima over the mountains and the lakes. Their son was born that same day and grew to a young man at once, with fearsome eyes and a great mouth. His head was bald and shining like a pot, ghata, and so he was Ghatotkacha. He told the Pandavas he would come whenever they needed him, and went north with his mother.
02Through the mountains
In the forest years the Pandavas set out for the high Himalaya, towards Gandhamadana. On the way the wind and the cold were too much for Draupadi and she fainted. Bhima thought of his son, and Ghatotkacha came at once with a band of rakshasas. He took Draupadi on his shoulders, and his companions carried the Pandavas and the brahmins who travelled with them, over the mountains to the ashrama of Nara and Narayana at Badari.
03The fourteenth night
On the night after Jayadratha’s death the fighting went on by torchlight, and the dark belonged to the rakshasa. Ghatotkacha killed Alambusha and Alayudha, rakshasas of the Kaurava side, and rained down stones, weapons and illusions until the Kaurava army began to break. Duryodhana begged Karna to save them. Karna had kept the Shakti, Indra’s spear that would kill one enemy and no more, for Arjuna. He threw it now. Ghatotkacha, struck, swelled to a vast size as he fell, and crushed part of the Kaurava host beneath him. Krishna embraced Arjuna and danced: the spear was spent.
04Outside the text
Vyasa’s text gives Ghatotkacha a short life and a single great night. Much else has gathered around his name. The katha of Barbarika, the grandson of Bhima who offered his head before the war and is worshipped as Khatu Shyam in Rajasthan, is told in the Skanda Purana and in regional tradition, not in the Mahabharata. In Java and Bali, Gatotkaca is a favourite hero of the wayang shadow theatre, a flying warrior with a body of iron, and in Kerala and Karnataka the night battle is a much-loved scene of Kathakali and Yakshagana.