Alambusha

Alambusha (अलम्बुष) is a rakshasa of the Mahabharata, a demon warrior who fought on the side of the Kauravas in the great war at Kurukshetra. He was a master of maya, the power of illusion: he could multiply his own form, vanish from sight and cover the battlefield in darkness. He is remembered above all for his duels with the Pandava heroes and for the manner of his death at the hands of another rakshasa.

Son of a sage

The epic names Alambusha as the son of the sage Rishyasringa, which gives him a strange, double nature: born to an ascetic, yet a rakshasa in power and temperament. Rishyasringa is himself a figure who ties the two great epics together, for it was he who performed the putrakameshti sacrifice for King Dasharatha of Ayodhya, the very sacrifice from which Rama and his brothers were born. Tradition does not speak with one voice about how a sage came to have a demon son; the Mahabharata simply presents Alambusha, also called Shalakatankata, as a being of great strength and sorcery.

In the war at Kurukshetra

Alambusha fought for Duryodhana and the Kauravas. On the first day of the war he clashed with Ghatotkacha, the rakshasa son of Bhima; later he met Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna, loosing thousands of arrows and raising a wall of darkness, only to be driven back. For a time he overpowered the five young sons of Draupadi, exchanged arrows with Satyaki of the Yadavas, and faced Bhima in a duel the epic colours with his wish to avenge a kinsman, the rakshasa Baka, whom Bhima had earlier slain. In every encounter his true weapon is illusion: he disappears, he doubles, he fills the sky with arrows.

Death at the hands of Ghatotkacha

Alambusha’s end came in the Drona Parva of the Mahabharata, where he was killed by Ghatotkacha, Bhima’s half-rakshasa son. It is one of the epic’s many mirrorings: a demon of illusion overcome by a greater demon of illusion fighting for the other side. The Mahabharata itself likens the Alambusha duels to the clash of Lakshmana with Ravana’s son Indrajit in the Ramayana, holding the two epics up against each other. Among the Kaurava commanders he served beside the great teacher Dronacharya.

Alambusha in the Ramayana

The name is easily confused. A different Alambusha appears in the Ramayana as a vanara chief in Rama’s army, and the word also names an apsara in other tales. The demon son of Rishyasringa, however, belongs wholly to the Mahabharata and its war.