ORIENTAL SERIES.

52
BHIMA.
retaliation of the insults Duh-sasana had offered to Draupadl
On the eighteenth and last day of the battle Dur-yodhana fled
and hid himself in a lake. "When he was discovered, he would
not come out until he had received a promise that he should not
have to fight with more than one man at a time. Even then
he delayed until he was irritated by the ahuse and the taunts
of the PaTfcdavas. Bhima and Dur-yodhana fought as usual
with clubs. The battle was long and furious ; the parties were
equally matched, and Bhima was getting the worst of it, when
?
he struck an unfair blow which smashed Dur-yodhana s thigh,
and brought him to the ground. Thus he fulfilled his vow and
avenged Draupadl. In his fury Bhima kicked his prostrate
foe on the head, and acted so brutally that his brother Yudhi-
sh^hira struck him in the face with his fist, and directed Arjuna
to take him away.
Bala-rama was greatly incensed at the foul
play to which Bhima had resorted, and would have attacked
the Paw^avas had he not been mollified by Krishna. He de-
clared that Bhima should thenceforward be called Jihma-yodhin,
*
the unfair fighter.' After the conclusion of the war, the old
king, Dhnta-rashfra, asked that Bhima might be brought to him.
BLnshTia, who knew the blind old man's sorrow for his son,
whom Bhima had killed, and suspecting his intention, placed
before him an iron statue, which Dhnta-rashfaa crushed in his
embrace. Dhrtta-rashfra never forgave Bhlina, and he returned
the ill feeling with insults, which ended in the old king's retir-
ing into the forest Bhima's last public feat was the slaughter
of the horse in the sacrifice which followed Yudhi-sh^hira's
accession to the throne. Apart from his mythological attributes,
the character of Bhima is natural and distinct A man of burly
form, prodigious strength, and great animal courage, with coarse
tastes, a gluttonous appetite, and an irascible temper ; jovial and
jocular when in good humour, but abusive, truculent, and brutal
when his passions were rousecL His repartees were forcible though
coarse, and he held his own even against Knshm when the
latter made personal remarks upon hrm T See Maha-bharata.
By his Asura wife Hi^imba he had a son named Ghafotkacha ;
and by his wife Balandhara, princess of Kasi, he also had a son
named Sarvatraga or Sarvaga.
Bhima-sena, Bahu-salin, '
quisher of Jarasandha/
Other appellations of Bhima are
*
the large armed/ Jarasandha-jit, van