The Court Comes to the Forest

After the chief of the Kurus went into the forest, Hastinapura did not settle.

The Brahmanas talked of nothing but the old king. "How will he live in the solitary woods, at his age? How will the highly blessed Gandhari live there, and Pritha, the daughter of Kuntibhoja? The royal sage has lived in the enjoyment of every comfort since the day he was born. He will certainly be miserable. What is the condition, in deep woods, of a person of royal descent who is besides bereft of vision?"

"It is a difficult feat Kunti has performed," they said, "separating herself from her sons. She cast off kingly prosperity and chose a life in the woods."

"And what of Vidura, who is always devoted to the service of his elder brother? And how is the intelligent son of Gavalgani, who is so faithful to the food his master gave him?"

Citizens who had not reached their majority stood about with the grown men asking one another these things.

Inside the palace it was worse, because the men there had the same questions and had also given the permission that made them necessary. The Pandavas sorrowed for their old mother and could not stay in their own city for long together. They thought about the old sire who had lost all his children, and about Gandhari, and about Vidura of great intelligence, and none of them found any peace of mind. They took no pleasure in sovereignty. They took no pleasure in women. They took no pleasure in the study of the Vedas.

Despair got into them, and the government of the earth simply halted.

They had always been engaged in kingly offices; now they did not attend to those acts at all, in their own capital. They took pleasure in nothing. If anybody accosted them, they did not honour him with an answer. Those men were as grave as the ocean by nature, and grief had taken away their knowledge and their very senses.

What they thought about, over and over, was the slaughter. They thought of the boy Abhimanyu killed on that field. They thought of the mighty-armed Karna, who had never once retreated from a fray. They thought of the sons of Draupadi and of the other friends they had lost, and they thought about the earth herself, stripped now of both her heroes and her wealth, and could not get past it. Draupadi had lost all five of her children. The beautiful Subhadra was childless. The two women sat in that house with cheerless hearts and grieved.

And about their mother, at the same time, they said this to one another: "How is that king living, whose sons have all been killed, who has no refuge, alone with only his wife, in woods that are the haunt of beasts of prey? How does the highly blessed Gandhari follow her blind lord in the solitary woods? How is our emaciated mother serving that old couple?"

One thing held them in the world. Looking at the son of Virata's daughter, the infant Parikshit, the grandsires of Janamejaya somehow kept their life-breaths in their bodies.

It was the youngest who broke it. Sahadeva bowed down to the king and said what everybody in the house had been carrying separately.

"I see your heart is set on seeing our sire," he said. "Out of respect for you I could not open my mouth quickly on the subject of a journey to the woods. But the time for that journey has come.

"By good luck I shall see Kunti living in the observance of penances, with matted locks on her head, practising severe austerities, emaciated from sleeping on blades of kusa and kasa grass. She was brought up in palaces and mansions. She was nursed in every comfort and every luxury. When shall I see my mother, who is now toil-worn and plunged into misery? There is no doubt about it, chief of Bharata's race: the ends of mortals are exceedingly uncertain, since Kunti, who is a princess by birth, is living in misery in the woods."

Then queen Draupadi, that foremost of all women, saluted the king properly and added her own weight to it.

"When shall I see queen Pritha," she said, "if indeed she is still alive? I shall consider that my life has not been passed in vain if I succeed in beholding her once more. Let this sort of understanding be always stable in you, O king of kings. Let your mind always take pleasure in the righteousness that lies in your wish to bestow such a high boon on us.

"And know this. All the ladies of your house are standing with their feet raised for the journey already, from the desire of seeing Kunti, and Gandhari, and my father-in-law."

The women had packed. They had been waiting for one of the men to say it first.

Yudhishthira summoned all the leaders of his forces to his presence.

"Cause my army, teeming with cars and elephants, to march out," he said. "I shall behold king Dhritarashtra, who is now living in the woods."

Then he turned to the officers who supervised the concerns of the ladies, and the thing began to grow.

"Let conveyances of every kind be properly equipped, and all my closed litters, which count by thousands. Let carriages be ordered out, and granaries, and wardrobes, and treasuries, and let the mechanics have their command to march. Let the men in charge of the treasuries go out ahead on the road that leads to the ascetic retreats on Kurukshetra.

"Whoever among the citizens wishes to see the king is allowed to do so without any restriction. Let him proceed, properly protected.

"Let the cooks and the superintendents of kitchens and the whole culinary establishment, with edibles and viands of every kind, be carried out on carts and conveyances. Let it be proclaimed that we march out tomorrow, and let no delay occur in the arrangements. Let pavilions and resting-houses of every kind be built along the way."

That is what it costs to go and sit with your uncle when you are the emperor of the world. The old man had walked out of that city in rags, with two women, a brother, a charioteer and a few Brahmanas, to eat air and sleep on grass. His nephew was going to visit him with granaries.

In the morning the king set out, with a large train of women and old men. Having gone out of the city, he then waited five days at the edge of it for any citizen who still wanted to come, and only then turned towards the forest.

He ordered out the troops, protected by heroes headed by Arjuna, who resembled the guardians of the universe, and at once a great clamour went up all over the field: the shout of "Equip! Equip!" from horsemen busy equipping, and the noise of their horses.

Some went on carriages. Some went on horses of great speed. Some went on cars of gold with the splendour of blazing fires on them. Some went on mighty elephants and some on camels, and some went on foot, from that class of combatants which fights with tiger-like claws on their hands. Behind them came the citizens and the people of the provinces, on every kind of conveyance they owned, because they wanted to see Dhritarashtra.

Kripa of Gotama's race, that great leader of forces, took the whole army under his command at the king's word and moved it towards the old monarch's retreat.

Yudhishthira went surrounded by a great number of Brahmanas, with his praises being sung by a band of Sutas and Magadhas and bards, a white umbrella held over his head and cars all round him. Vrikodara rode an elephant as big as a hill, strung bow in hand, with machines and weapons of attack and defence on it. The twin sons of Madri rode two fleet horses, well cased in mail, with banners. Arjuna rode an excellent car with the effulgence of the sun on it, drawn by white horses. The ladies of the royal household, with Draupadi at their head, went in closed litters guarded by the superintendents of the women, and as they went they scattered showers of wealth along the road.

Yuyutsu and the priest Dhaumya were left behind, at Yudhishthira's command, to hold the city.

The host blazed with beauty, full of cars and elephants and horses, ringing with trumpets and the music of vinas, and it moved slowly, resting at delightful riverbanks and lakes. By slow marches the king reached Kurukshetra, crossed the Yamuna, and saw from a distance the retreat of the royal sage and of Dhritarashtra. Then every man there was filled with joy, and they went quickly into that forest, filling it with the noise of their gladness.

At a distance from the retreat the Pandavas got down off their cars and went the rest of the way on foot, bending themselves in humility. And every combatant did the same, and all the people of the kingdom, and the wives of the Kuru chiefs: an army dismounted and walking.

They came to the sacred retreat, which was full of herds of deer and adorned with plantain plants. Ascetics of rigid vows came out, curious, to look at the Pandavas.

The king asked them, with tears in his eyes, "Where has my eldest sire, the perpetuator of Kuru's race, gone?"

He had gone to the Yamuna, they said, for his ablutions, and to fetch flowers and water.

So the Pandavas went quickly along the path they were shown, and saw them all at a distance, and began to walk fast.

Then Sahadeva ran. He ran ahead of his brothers to the spot where Pritha was, and touched his mother's feet, and wept aloud. The tears came down her cheeks as she looked at her darling child. She raised him up and put her arms round him and called out to Gandhari that Sahadeva had come.

Then she saw the king, and Bhimasena, and Arjuna, and Nakula, and tried to hurry towards them, walking in front of the childless old couple and dragging them along by the hand.

The Pandavas fell down on the earth.

The old monarch could not see them. He knew them one after another by their voices and by touch, and comforted each one that way. Shedding tears, those princes approached the old king and Gandhari and their own mother with the due formalities, and then, having got their senses back, they did the first useful thing anyone had done that day: they took the jars of water out of the hands of the king and their aunt and their mother, and carried them themselves.

Then the women of those lions among men came up, and all the women of the royal household, and the inhabitants of the city and the provinces, and stood in front of the old king.

And Yudhishthira presented every one of them, one after another, saying the name and the race aloud, so that a blind man could receive his guests properly. Then he worshipped his eldest sire with reverence himself.

Surrounded by that crowd, with his eyes bathed in tears of joy, Dhritarashtra felt for a while as though he were staying once more in the city called after the elephant. His daughters-in-law, headed by Krishnaa, saluted him with reverence, and he was filled with joy, with Gandhari on one side of him and Kunti on the other. Then he walked back to his forest retreat, which was applauded by Siddhas and Charanas and was now packed with vast crowds of men who had come to look at him, so that it resembled the sky with its innumerable stars.

And there, when the king had taken his seat with his brothers around him, all of them with eyes like lotus-petals, the ascetics came and sat down about him. They had come from many different regions, and they had one question, which they put frankly, the way men do who have been out of the world a long time.

"We wish to know which of these is Yudhishthira. Which are Bhima and Arjuna? Which are the twins? Which is Draupadi of great fame?"

The man who answered them was Sanjaya.

He had described these men to a blind king for eighteen days of war, from a chariot he never rode, by a sight he no longer had. Now he was standing on the ground beside them, in bark cloth, describing them again to a ring of ascetics.

"This one," said Sanjaya, "who is as fair of complexion as pure gold, whose body looks like that of a full-grown lion, who has a large aquiline nose and wide expansive eyes of a coppery hue, is the Kuru king.

"This one, whose tread is like that of an infuriated elephant, whose complexion is as fair as heated gold, whose frame is of large and expansive proportions and whose arms are long and stout, is Vrikodara. Look at him well.

"The mighty bowman sitting beside him, of darkish complexion and youthful frame, who resembles the leader of a herd of elephants, whose shoulders are as high as a lion's, who walks like a sporting elephant, and whose eyes are as wide as the petals of a lotus, is the hero called Arjuna.

"Those two foremost of men sitting beside Kunti are the twins, who resemble Vishnu and Mahendra. In this whole world of men they have no equals in beauty, in strength, or in excellence of conduct."

He was naming, to a circle of hermits who did not know one from another, the five men who between them had emptied the earth; and every one of them sat there on the grass and let himself be pointed at.

"This lady," Sanjaya went on, "whose eyes are as wide as lotus petals, who seems to have touched the middle age of life, whose complexion is like the blue lotus, and who looks like a goddess of heaven, is Krishnaa, the embodied form of the goddess of prosperity.

"She who sits beside her, of the complexion of pure gold, who looks like the embodied rays of the moon among the other ladies, is the sister of that unrivalled hero who wields the discus.

"This other, as fair as pure gold, is the daughter of the snake chief and the wife of Arjuna. This other, whose complexion is like pure gold or like Madhuka flowers, is the princess Chitrangada.

"This one, with the complexion of an assemblage of blue lotuses, is the sister of that lord of hosts who used always to challenge Krishna. She is the foremost wife of Vrikodara.

"This is the daughter of the king of Magadha who was known by the name of Jarasandha. Of the complexion of an assemblage of Champaka flowers, she is the wife of the youngest son of Madravati. And she who sits there on the earth, as dark as the blue lotus, with eyes as wide as lotus petals, is the wife of the eldest son of Madravati.

"This lady, whose complexion is as fair as heated gold, who sits with her child on her lap, is the daughter of king Virata. She is the wife of that Abhimanyu who was killed by Drona and others, fighting from their cars, while he was without a car himself.

"And these ladies, the hair on whose heads shows no parted line, who are clad in white: they are the widows of the slain sons of Dhritarashtra. They are the daughters-in-law of this old king, the wives of his hundred sons, deprived now of both their husbands and their children, who were killed by heroic foes.

"I have pointed them out in the order of precedence. Because of their devotion to the Brahmanas, their understandings and their hearts are free of every kind of crookedness. They are of pure souls, these princesses of the Kaurava household, and I have shown them to you in answer to what you asked."

So the roll ended where every roll in that generation ended: with a block of women in white, sitting together, who could be told apart from all the others by one detail of their hair.

When the ascetics had gone away, the old king asked his nephews about their welfare. The warriors who had come with the Pandavas left the retreat and sat down a little way off, getting down from their cars and their animals, and when all that crowd of women and old men and children had been seated, the old king addressed them and made the usual enquiries of politeness.

They passed that night under auspicious constellations, in that retreat of righteous ascetics. The talk ran on morality and on wealth, in delightful and sweet words, and was graced with citations from the Srutis. The Pandavas left their costly beds alone and lay down near their mother on the bare ground, and they ate that night the food that was the food of the high-souled king Dhritarashtra.

In the morning Yudhishthira went through his acts and then walked about the retreat with his brothers, with the ladies of his household and his servants and his priest, going wherever he pleased, at Dhritarashtra's invitation. He saw altar after altar with the sacred fires blazing on them, ascetics seated by them who had poured their libations to the gods, the altars strewn with forest fruits and roots and heaps of flowers, the smoke of clarified butter curling up. Herds of deer were grazing and lying about with no fear in them. Birds without number were singing, and the whole forest was ringing with peacocks and datyuhas and kokilas. In some places Brahmanas were chanting the Vedic hymns aloud.

And Yudhishthira gave. He had brought jars of gold and of copper, and he gave them to the ascetics, and deer-skins and blankets, and sacrificial ladles of wood, and kamandalus, and wooden platters, and pots and pans, and vessels of iron, and smaller vessels and cups of various sizes, and the ascetics took away as many as each of them liked.

Then he came back to where his uncle was. He found the old king at his ease with Gandhari beside him, his morning rites finished, and his mother Kunti sitting not far off with her head bent like a disciple.

He saluted, proclaiming his name aloud, as one does to the blind.

"Sit down," said Dhritarashtra.

He sat on a mat of kusa grass, and his brothers came up and touched the old king's feet and sat down with his permission, and the old Kuru king in the middle of them blazed with a Vedic splendour, like Vrihaspati among the celestials.

Then the great rishis who lived on Kurukshetra came in, and Vyasa showed himself at the head of his disciples. Everyone stood up and went a few steps to meet them. Vyasa said, "Be seated," to Dhritarashtra, and took the seat that had been kept for him: kusa grass laid on a black deer-skin and covered with a piece of silk. And only when he was down did the rest of them sit.