After the war · Mahabharata questions
What happened after the Mahabharata war?
Yudhishthira was crowned and ruled for thirty-six years, taught by the dying Bhishma. Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti retired to the forest and died in a fire. The Yadavas then destroyed themselves, Krishna died, and the Pandavas walked into the Himalaya, leaving Parikshit as king.
The last seven books of the epic are the aftermath, and they are longer than the war.
Yudhishthira refuses the throne first, sickened by what winning cost, and has to be argued into it by Krishna, Vyasa and his brothers. He is crowned at Hastinapur, with Yuyutsu given charge of the household, and then goes with Krishna to Bhishma, who is still alive on his bed of arrows waiting for the sun to turn north. What Bhishma says to him fills the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas: the duties of a king, the conduct of war, charity, truth, the ways of release. When the solstice passes, Bhishma dies.
Yudhishthira performs the horse sacrifice to expiate the killing, and Arjuna follows the horse across the subcontinent, fighting old enemies and, at Manipura, his own son Babhruvahana. After fifteen years the old king Dhritarashtra, with Gandhari, Kunti, Vidura and Sanjaya, retires to a forest hermitage. Vidura dies there by yoga; a forest fire takes Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti.
Thirty-six years after the war, Gandhari curse comes due. The Yadavas, drunk at a festival at Prabhasa, quarrel and kill one another with reeds from the shore that harden into iron clubs. Balarama leaves his body by the sea. Krishna, resting in a forest, is shot in the foot by a hunter named Jara who takes him for a deer, and dies. The ocean swallows Dwaraka behind the evacuating survivors.
On that news the Pandavas crown Parikshit, the son of Abhimanyu and Uttara, install Vajra at Indraprastha, and leave. They walk north with Draupadi and a dog, and one by one they fall on the road: Draupadi first, then Sahadeva, Nakula, Arjuna, Bhima. Only Yudhishthira reaches the gate of heaven, still refusing to abandon the dog, which turns out to be Dharma, his father, in a final test. The epic ends with the survivors and the dead reconciled in another world, and with the recitation of the whole story at Parikshit son Janamejaya snake sacrifice.