After the war · Mahabharata questions
How did the Pandavas die?
After Krishna death they crowned Parikshit and walked north into the Himalaya to die. Draupadi fell first, then Sahadeva, Nakula, Arjuna and Bhima, each for a particular fault named by Yudhishthira. Only Yudhishthira reached the gate of heaven in his own body.
The Mahaprasthanika Parva, the seventeenth book, is three short chapters and among the most affecting things in the epic. Hearing that Krishna is dead and the Yadavas gone, the Pandavas decide their time is over. They install Parikshit at Hastinapur under the guardianship of Kripa, set Vajra, Krishna great-grandson, at Indraprastha, and leave the city on foot with Draupadi. A dog follows them.
They walk east, then south, then north to the Himalaya, and begin to climb Mount Meru. Draupadi falls first. Bhima asks why, and Yudhishthira answers without stopping: she loved Arjuna more than the rest of them. Sahadeva falls next, for pride in his own learning; Nakula for pride in his beauty; Arjuna for the boast that he would destroy the enemy in a single day, which he did not; Bhima for eating too much and for pride in his strength. Yudhishthira keeps walking without looking back, because looking back is not permitted, and only the dog stays with him.
Indra comes with a chariot to carry him to heaven in his own body, and refuses to take the dog. Yudhishthira refuses to go without it, arguing that abandoning one who has taken refuge with you is a greater sin than anything he would gain by entering heaven. The dog is Dharma, his father, and this is the last of the tests.
The Svargarohana Parva adds one more. Yudhishthira is shown his cousins in heaven and his brothers and Draupadi apparently in hell, and chooses to stay in hell with them rather than take comfort among the Kauravas. The scene dissolves; it was an illusion, the last measure of him. The brothers, Draupadi and the rest are then seen in their divine forms, and the epic closes.