Bhima — Bhīma, “the terrible” — is the strongman of the Mahabharata: second of the five Pandava brothers, son of the wind-god Vayu, and the mightiest mortal of his age. Where his brother Arjuna embodies skill and his brother Yudhishthira embodies law, Bhima is raw power, ferocious appetite, and a fierce, protective love — the avenger who personally fulfils the bloodiest vows of the epic.
The Wind-God’s Son
Bhima was born to Kunti by the mantra that summoned Vayu, and his strength was superhuman from infancy — as a baby he is said to have fallen from his mother’s lap onto a rock and shattered it. He is the elder brother of Hanuman in a sense, for both are sons of Vayu, and in a famous forest episode the aged monkey-god, lying with his tail across Bhima’s path, humbles the proud strongman by asking him merely to move it — which all Bhima’s might cannot do — before revealing himself and blessing his “brother.” Bhima’s appetite matched his strength; he was called Vrikodara, “wolf-bellied,” for the fire of his hunger.
Slayer of Demons
Bhima is the great rakshasa-killer of the epic. When the Pandavas fled the burning lacquer-house, it was Bhima who carried his mother and four brothers on his shoulders through the forest. There he slew the cannibal Hidimba in a wrestling match, and married his sister Hidimbi, fathering the heroic giant Ghatotkacha. He killed the demon Bakasura who terrorised a village, and the demon Jatasura, and later Kirmira — Bhima is the brother sent against every monster, the human bulwark against the inhuman.
The Vows of Blood
Bhima’s defining role is as the instrument of vengeance for the humiliation of Draupadi in the dice-hall. When Dushasana dragged her by the hair and stripped her, Bhima swore two terrible oaths: that he would break the thigh of Duryodhana (who had bared it to insult her), and that he would tear open Dushasana’s chest and drink his blood. In the war he fulfils both with savage exactness — he rips Dushasana apart and smears the blood on Draupadi’s hair so she may at last bind it again, and in the final duel he shatters Duryodhana’s thigh with his mace, a blow below the belt that breaks the rules of fair combat but honours his vow. He kills, in all, the entire hundred Kaurava brothers.
The Mace and the Heart
Bhima’s weapon is the gada, the great mace, in which he and Duryodhana were the supreme masters of the age (both trained by Balarama). For all his violence he is the most openly loving of the brothers — tender toward Draupadi, devoted to his mother, and the one who carries the others in every crisis. In the final journey to the Himalayas he is among the brothers who fall before reaching heaven, his flaw named as gluttony and pride in his own strength. Yet Bhima endures in the imagination as the great-hearted giant: terrifying to his enemies, gentle to those he loves, the storm-wind’s son who could uproot a tree or cradle a queen with the same mighty arms.