Ekalavya

By Jit Majumdar

one with a single goal or target
one concetrated in achieving a single purpose; one who aims for a single knowledge
the son of Hiraņyadhanu, the king of the Nişādhas, who was a supremely talented student of archery, and who upon being refused to be taught by Droņacārya, nevertheless accepted Droņa as his guru in his mind, and taught himself by practising daily in his forest settlement before a clay image of Droņa, and acquired such a unique level of expretise that he was able to seal the mouth of a hunting dog of the Kuru princes who were on a hunting trip, since its barking was disturbing his concentration in training; that led to Arjuna’s feeling of fear and insecurity that Droņa was not training him adequately, due to which the latter asked for the tribal boy’s right thumb as his gurudakşinā, thus rendering him incapable of archery and erasing the possibility of his ever being superior to or being a rival to his favourite disciple arjuna. He was later killed by Kŗşņa before the Bharata War, to erase the possibility of his joining the Kaurava camp and rendering the Pāndava side even more vulnerable, since Ekalavya had since learnt to shoot arrows with his left arm with equal flourish and accuracy, and would have joined the Kaurava side (M. Bh.).

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