SECTION 10
Vaishampayana said, "Hearing these words of Vidura, that bull of Bharatas
race (Dhritarashtra) ordered his car to be yoked. The king once more
said, Bring Gandhari hither without delay, and all the Bharata ladies.
Bring hither Kunti also, as well as all the other ladies with her. Having
said these words unto Vidura, conversant with every duty, Dhritarashtra
of righteous soul, deprived of his senses by sorrow, ascended on his car.
Then Gandhari, afflicted with grief on account of the death of her sons,
accompanied by Kunti and the other ladies of the royal household, came at
the command of her lord to that spot where the latter was waiting for
her. Afflicted with grief, they came together to the king. As they met,
they accosted each other and uttered loud wails of woe. Then Vidura, who
had become more afflicted than those ladies, began to comfort them.
Placing those weeping fair ones on the cars that stood ready for them, he
set out (with them) from the city. At that time a loud wail of woe arose
from every Kuru house. The whole city, including the very children,
became exceedingly afflicted with grief. Thoseladies that had not before
this been seen by the very gods were now helpless, as they were, for the
loss of their lords, seen by the common people. With their beautiful
tresses all dishevelled and their ornaments cast off, those ladies, each
attired in a single piece of raiment, proceeded most woefully. Indeed,
they issued from their houses resembling white mountains, like a dappled
herd of deer from their mountain caves after the fall of their leader.
These fair ladies, in successive bevies, O king, came out, filled with
sorrow, and ran hither and thither like a herd of fillies on a circus
yard. Seizing each other by the hand, they uttered loud wails after their
sons and brothers and sires. They seemed to exhibit the scene that takes
place on the occasion of the universal destruction at the end of the
Yuga. Weeping and crying and running hither and thither, and deprived of
their senses by grief, they knew not what to do. Those ladies who
formerly felt the blush of modesty in the presence of even companions of
their own sex, now felt no blush of shame, though scantily clad, in
appearing before their mothers-in-law. Formerly they used to comfort each
other while afflicted with even slight causes of woe. Stupefied by grief,
they now, O king, refrained from even casting their eyes upon each other.
Surrounded by those thousands of wailing ladies, the king cheerlessly
issued out of the city and proceeded with speed towards the field of
battle. Artisans and traders and Vaishyas and all kinds of mechanics,
issuing out of the city, followed in the wake of the king. As those
ladies, afflicted by the wholesale destruction that had overtaken the
Kurus, cried in sorrow, a loud wail arose from among them that seemed to
pierce all the worlds. All creatures that heard that wail thought that
the hour of universal destruction had come when all things would be
consumed by the fire that arises at the end of the Yuga. The citizens
also (of Hastinapura), devoted to the house of Kuru, with hearts filled
with anxiety at the destruction that had overtaken their rules, set up, O
king, a wail that was as loud as that uttered by those ladies."
