Stri Parva

The women of both houses come out to the battlefield to find their dead. Gandhari walks among the bodies naming each fallen son and each widow, and the book gives the epic's most sustained account of grief without consolation. She blames Krishna for allowing the slaughter and curses him to see his own clan destroyed and to die alone, and he accepts it. Vidura consoles Dhritarashtra with the parable of the man hanging in the well, and the survivors perform the water rites for the dead, at which Kunti finally tells her sons that Karna was their eldest brother.