The Great Journey

When Arjuna came back to Hastinapura from the west, the brightness had gone out of him. He told Yudhishthira all of it: that Krishna had left the world, that Balarama had gone before him, that Dwaraka itself had been swallowed by the sea, and that the Yadavas - drunk, quarrelsome, cursed - had slaughtered one another to the last man on the shore at Prabhasa. The Vrishnis and the Andhakas were no more. The Gandiva itself had grown heavy in his hands, and his old weapons no longer answered his call.

Yudhishthira heard it almost without surprise. He had felt the turning for a long time, the way an old man feels a change of season in his bones. "Time cooks all creatures," he said quietly. "This is the working of Time, and our time too has come." Arjuna could only repeat the word like an echo. "Time. Time." Bhima said nothing; the twins bowed their heads. They had all known, since the war ended, that they were living past the end of their own age. Now the man who had held the world together was gone, and there was nothing left for the sons of Pandu to do in that world but leave it well.

So Yudhishthira set his house in order. He summoned the council and the elders, and before them he installed Parikshit - the grandson of Arjuna, the son of slain Abhimanyu and gentle Uttara, the child who had been struck in the womb and given back his life - as king of Hastinapura. He was a calm, capable youth, and the people loved him. To the western city Yudhishthira sent word that Vajra, Krishna's great-grandson and the last shoot of the Yadava vine, should rule from Indraprastha and Mathura. He charged Yuyutsu, the surviving son of Dhritarashtra, to advise and protect the young kings, and he gave to Subhadra the care of guiding both. Then, his last duty done, he laid the kingdom down like a load he had carried far enough.