01The youngest
Sahadeva was the younger of Madri’s twins and the youngest of the five, and Kunti loved him with a particular tenderness; when the Pandavas left for the forest she begged the others to look after him. He was learned in the shastras and in statecraft, and quiet. Before the Rajasuya he went south, beyond the Narmada, defeating kings as far as the Pandyas and the shore of the sea. At the Rajasuya itself, when Bhishma named Krishna for the first honour, it was Sahadeva who offered him the arghya.
02The oath against Shakuni
As the Pandavas left the dice hall, Bhima named who would kill whom, and gave Shakuni to Sahadeva. Sahadeva rose, eyes red, hissing like a snake, and swore it himself: the dice Shakuni trusted were sharp arrows he had chosen for himself, and he would kill him and his kin in battle if Shakuni stood his ground. In the year in disguise he was Tantipala, keeper of Virata’s cattle, who knew every herd and could tell the king of every cow.
03The eighteenth day
On the last day, as the Kaurava army broke after Shalya’s death, Sahadeva went after Shakuni. He killed his son Uluka first, in front of him, and then, reminding Shakuni of the dice hall, struck off his head with a broad arrow. On the road to the Himalaya he was the first of the brothers to fall, after Draupadi, because he had thought no one his equal in wisdom. A popular telling makes Sahadeva a seer who knew the whole war beforehand and even fixed the hour for Duryodhana’s sacrifice; that comes from later regional retellings, not from Vyasa’s text.