Prayashchitta (prāyaścitta)

Prayashchitta is expiation, the prescribed penance by which the stain of a wrong action is worked off. After the war, Yudhishthira is unable to enjoy a throne bought with the deaths of grandfather, teacher and brothers, and the whole of the Shanti Parva can be read as an extended attempt to give him a workable penance. The horse sacrifice he eventually performs is the ritual answer, though the epic quietly undercuts it with the mongoose who finds a poor man's barley worth more.