Bhishma Parva— The Book of Bhishma
The Bhishma Parva, the sixth book of the Mahabharata, opens the eighteen-day war of Kurukshetra. It contains the supreme jewel of the epic — the Bhagavad Gita — and ends with the fall of the grandsire Bhishma.
The eve of battle
As the two armies face one another on the field of Kurukshetra, Arjuna asks Krishna to drive his chariot into the space between them. Seeing kinsmen, teachers and friends arrayed on both sides, he is overcome with grief and lets fall his bow, refusing to fight.
The song of God
There, between the armies, Krishna speaks the Bhagavad Gita — the “Song of the Lord” — revealing the immortality of the soul, the path of selfless action, the way of devotion, and the science of uniting the self with the Divine. Lifted out of his despair, Arjuna takes up his weapons and the war begins.
Ten days of carnage
Under Bhishma’s command the Kaurava host is irresistible. For ten days the grandsire ranges across the field, sparing the Pandava brothers as he vowed but cutting down their armies in their thousands. No warrior can stand against him, and the Pandava cause grows desperate.
The fall of the grandsire
At last Krishna counsels the Pandavas to use the warrior Shikhandi, born a woman, against whom Bhishma will not raise his weapons. Placing Shikhandi before him, Arjuna looses an unending storm of arrows, and Bhishma falls — yet does not die. Having the boon to choose the hour of his own death, he lies upon a bed of arrows, awaiting the sun’s northward turn to depart in peace.
The Bhishma Parva sets the whole war in the light of the Gita: the outer battle becomes the symbol of the soul’s inner struggle, fought best when action is offered wholly to God.