SECTION XXXVIII
"Yudhishthira said, 'When such a fate overtook that high-souled monarch
who was engaged in austere penances, notwithstanding the fact of his
having such kinsmen as ourselves all alive, it seems to me, O regenerate
one, that the end of human beings is difficult to guess. Alas, who would
have thought that the son of Vichitraviryya would thus be burnt to death.
He had a hundred sons each endued with mighty arms and possessed of great
prosperity. The king himself had the strength of ten thousand elephants.
Alas, even he has been burnt to death in a forest-conflagration! Alas, he
who had formerly been fanned with palm leaves by the fair hands of
beautiful women was fanned by vultures with their wings after he had been
burnt to death in a forest-conflagration! He who was formerly roused from
sleep every morning by bands of Sutas and Magadhas had to sleep on the
bare ground through the acts of my sinful self. I do not grieve for the
famous Gandhari who had been deprived of all her children. Observing the
same vows as her husband, she has attained to those very regions which
have become his. I grieve, however, for Pritha who, abandoning the
blazing prosperity of her sons, became desirous of residing in the woods.
Fie on this sovereignty of ours, fie on our prowess, fie on the practices
of Kshatriyas! Though alive, we are really dead! O foremost of superior
Brahmanas, the course of Time is very subtle and difficult to understand,
inasmuch as Kunti, abandoning sovereignty, became desirous of taking up
her abode in the forest. How is it that she who was the mother of
Yudhishthira, of Bhima, of Vijaya, was burnt to deathlike a helpless
creature. Thinking of this I become stupefied. In vain was the deity of
fire gratified at Khandava by Arjuna. Ingrate that he is, forgetting that
service he has burnt to death the mother of his benefactor! Alas, how
could that deity burn the mother of Arjuna. Putting on the guise of a
Brahmana, he had formerly come to Arjuna for soliciting a favour. Fie on
the deity of fire! Fie on the celebrated success of Partha's shafts! This
is another incident, O holy one, that appears to me to be productive of
greater misery, for that lord of Earth met with death by union with a
fire that was not sacred. How could such a death overtake that royal sage
of Kuru's race who, after having ruled the whole Earth, was engaged in
the practice of penances. In that great forest there were fires that had
been sanctified with mantras. Alas, my father has made his exit from this
world, coming in contact with an unsanctified fire! I suppose that
Pritha, emaciated and reduced to a form in which all her nerves became
visible, must have trembled in fear and cried aloud, saying,--O son
Yudhishthira, and awaited the terrible approach of the conflagration. She
must have also said,--O Bhima, rescue me from this danger--when she, my
mother, was surrounded on all sides by that terrible conflagration. Among
all her sons, Sahadeva, was her darling. Alas, that heroic son of
Madravati did not rescue her.' Hearing these lamentations of the king,
those persons that were present there began to weep, embracing each
other. In fact, the five sons of Pandu were so stricken with grief that
they resembled living creatures at the time of the dissolution of the
universe. The sound of lamentations uttered by those weeping heroes,
filling the spacious chambers of the palace, escaped therefrom and
penetrated the very welkin."'
