Arjuna and Shiva - The Battle with the Hunter

The boar lay dead, two arrows in its body. Arjuna reached for his arrow, but another hand was already there.

SHIVA: "That's mine,"

the hunter said. He was massive—taller than any man Arjuna had seen. His clothes were rough skins, his bow a crude thing of mountain wood. But his eyes... his eyes held something Arjuna couldn't name.

Arjuna: "Both arrows struck. But mine hit first."

SHIVA: "Your arrow hit its side. Mine hit its heart. The killing blow."

Arjuna: "I am Arjuna, prince of Hastinapura. I do not lose arguments with tribal hunters."

SHIVA: "Then perhaps you should learn."

The hunter's smile was wrong. Too wide. Too knowing.

Arjuna felt his anger rise—an unfamiliar feeling. He was the patient one, the focused one. Why did this stranger's mere presence make his blood burn?

SHIVA: "We'll settle this properly. I challenge you."

Arjuna: "A prince challenging a hunter? Where's the dharma in that?"

SHIVA: "Dharma is in skill, not birth. I've learned that much."

Arjuna: "Have you? Very well. We fight."

They fought.

For hours, they fought. Arrows first—Arjuna's divine shafts meeting the hunter's crude arrows and somehow, impossibly, being matched. Then swords, when the quivers emptied. Then bare hands, when the swords broke.

Arjuna had never fought like this. The hunter anticipated every move. Countered every technique. It was like fighting a mirror that was always one step ahead.

SHIVA: "Who are you?"

Arjuna gasped, bleeding from a dozen wounds.

Arjuna: "Does it matter? You came here for weapons. I'm giving you a fight."

SHIVA: "I came here to pray. To earn the grace of Shiva."

SHIVA: "And if Shiva answered? If he came not as a vision in a temple but as a test in the forest—would you recognize him?"

Arjuna froze.

The hunter changed. Not dramatically—no cosmic explosion, no sudden divine form. Just... a shifting. The rough skin clothes became tiger pelts. The crude bow became something ancient and terrible. The eyes—those wrong, knowing eyes—became the eyes of the cosmos itself.

Arjuna: "Pashupati,"

Arjuna breathed. He fell to his knees.

SHIVA: "Rise. You don't bow to someone you just tried to kill."

Arjuna: "I didn't know—"

SHIVA: "You didn't look. That's different. You came to the mountains to ask for weapons. I came to the mountains to see if you deserved them."

Arjuna: "And do I?"

SHIVA: "You fought me for hours without using the one weapon that would have won."

Arjuna: "What weapon?"

SHIVA: "Surrender. At any point, you could have said 'Take the boar. This fight isn't worth it.' You could have walked away from your pride. That would have been wisdom."

Arjuna: "But I didn't."

SHIVA: "No. You fought until you had nothing left. And only when you were completely empty—only when pride and skill and strategy had all failed—did you finally see what was in front of you. That's the lesson. The Pashupataastra cannot be given to someone who still has something to prove. You had everything to prove. Now you have nothing. Now you can receive."

Arjuna: "I don't understand."

SHIVA: "Weapons aren't tools, Arjuna. They're responsibilities. A man who needs to prove himself will misuse them. A man who is empty can wield them without the weapon wielding him. I empty you of pride. In that emptiness, receive my weapon."

Knowledge flooded Arjuna—not just how to use the weapon, but when. And more importantly, when not to.

SHIVA: "You'll use this once, Against an enemy you cannot defeat any other way. Use it wisely."

Arjuna: "Lord, why a boar? Why a hunter? Why this elaborate test?"

SHIVA: "Because if I had appeared as myself, you would have immediately prostrated. You would have asked properly, received properly, left properly. And you would have learned nothing. The bow doesn't know who's holding it. In battle, your enemy's arrow doesn't care that you're a prince. Only by fighting me as an equal could you learn what equality means."

Arjuna bowed—genuinely now, not in submission but in gratitude.

Arjuna: "The boar, Whose arrow killed it?"

SHIVA: "Neither. Both. Does it matter?"

Arjuna: "No, It never did."