The 3 sins of Ashwathama

Ashwathama, the son of Dronacharya was a great warrior. During the Mahabharata war he joined the Kaurava's camp. On the 13^th day of war he committed the first crime by involving in a killing of Abhimanyu by unfair means. Later,he lost all his senses when his friend Duryodhan was killed . He decided to took revenge and attacked at the Pandavas camp at night which was against the rules of war and killed the sons of Draupadi.It was his second sin. This created havoc in the Pandavas camp and they chased Ashwathama. A fierce battle broke between Ashwathama and Arjun. Despite restrictions Ashwathama invoke the “Brahmastra”, a divine weapon to kill Arjun. But sage Vyas intervened and advised Ashwathama to stop the use of the weapon to save earth. But Ashwatham didn’t knew the trick of withdrawing the weapon. To take revenge he directed the weapon towards the womb of the daughter in law of Arjun,Uttra who was carrying Abhimanyu’s son,Parikshit. He wanted to destroy the lineage of Arjun. Later Uttra delivered stillborn child. Here Lord Krishna cursed Ashwathama that he will roam like a ghost till the end of Kaliyuga and his body will suffer from the uncurable wounds. Lord Krishna also took away the divine jewel from Ashwathama which he used to wear on his forehead as this jewel had all the powers. Still it is belive that the Ashwathama is roaming with a wound on his forehead and many people has witnessed a strange man with wounds and blood oozing from his forehead.Surly, the current age of Ashwathama would be 5000 years+ today!

The Great Army

It is believe that during the mahabharata war which was fought at kurukshetra region nearly 18 akshoni unit of armymen were gathered and fought a battle of their life time. Now , I am sharing the exact constituent of the unit "akshoni". The word “Akshohini” denotes a group of warrior who were the masters in the various forms of art of war. The total 18 akshohini consisted 1968300 soldiers,1180980 horses.393660 horses ,393660 charioteers. Perhaps this was the reason Arjun felt weak at the onset of the war on seeing the huge army! One thing is sure that more than 3 million people were killed in a short span of 18 days. Following is the sub division of akshohini.

The Pandavas fought with 7 akshohini of armymen whereas Kauravas had 11 akshohini. It was the mismanagement of kauravas that led to their downfall.During the span of 18 days Kauravas were led by Bhishma for 10 days and then by Dronacharya,karna and shalya for the rest of the days. this simply rattles their plans.