Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Ādi · 7 of 50
7. The lacquer house
Ādi (आदि)
Duryodhana cannot bear the excellence of his cousins, and his father's love is not strong enough to refuse him. A house is built at Vāraṇavata, lacquer and pitch and ghee in the walls, and the Pāṇḍavas are sent there for a festival. The plan is a fire that will look like an accident. Vidura warns in a language only Yudhiṣṭhira is meant to hear, and a miner digs a tunnel.
The night the house is lit, a Niṣāda woman and her sons, who had come hungry and been fed and who had fallen asleep inside, burn in the Pāṇḍavas' place. The poem does not linger, and it does not acquit. The cousins escape. The court mourns five princes who are alive, walking south and east through the forest with their mother, believed dead. Duryodhana's plot has given him a lie he will live inside, and it has given the Pāṇḍavas their first knowledge that the kingdom is trying to kill them.
This page says the house was built to burn, and that it burned, and that the wrong people died in it. It does not describe the making of the fire.
नेपालीमा
दुर्योधनले आफ्ना चचेरा दाजुभाइको श्रेष्ठता सहन सकेनन्, र पिताको माया उनलाई इन्कार गर्न सक्ने गरी बलियो थिएन। वारणावतमा लाख, पिच र घिउ पर्खालमा राखेर घर बनाइयो, र पाण्डवहरूलाई उत्सवका लागि त्यहाँ पठाइयो। योजना दुर्घटनाजस्तो देखिने आगो लगाउने थियो। विदुरले युधिष्ठिरले मात्र बुझ्ने भाषामा चेताए, र सुरुङ खनियो। घरमा आगो लगाइएको रात निषादकी एउटी आमा र उनका छोराहरू, जो भोकाएर आएका थिए, खुवाइएका थिए र भित्रै सुतेका थिए, पाण्डवहरूको सट्टा जले। कविताले यहाँ अडिँदैन, र दोषमुक्त पनि गर्दैन। दाजुभाइ भागे। दरबारले जीवित रहेका पाँच राजकुमारको शोक मनायो। यो पृष्ठले घर जलाउनकै लागि बनाइएको थियो, त्यो जल्यो, र गलत मानिस त्यसमा मरे भन्छ। आगो बनाउने तरिका लेख्दैन।