Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Āśramavāsika · 49 of 50
49. The old king goes to the forest
Āśramavāsika (आश्रमवासिक)
Years pass. Dhṛtarāṣṭra lives in the city he lost, treated with a formal respect that Bhīma cannot sustain. The insults of a victor's household accumulate. The blind king, Gāndhārī, and Kuntī leave for the forest. Vidura is there, or he has gone ahead, and he is far gone. The poem says he gives his life into Yudhiṣṭhira, and that the two of them were never two, both portions of Dharma. A counselor who was listened to last spends his end by becoming the king who ignored him.
The Pāṇḍavas visit. There is a tenderness the war did not have, and it is brief. During that visit Vyāsa gives the survivors a night. The dead are seen, risen, reconciled for as long as the vision lasts, enemies talking, sons visible to mothers. Then the vision ends and the dead are dead again. The parva's mercy is deliberately temporary. Grief is not solved by a night of seeing. It is told the truth, which is that the dead were persons, and then it is sent back to the kingdom.
Years later Nārada brings Yudhiṣṭhira the news. A forest fire came. Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Gāndhārī, and Kuntī did not leave it. The page says the fire took them. It does not describe the burning. Sanjaya, in the telling, survived them. Three parents of the poem were gone in one afternoon, including the mother who hid a son and the mother who bound her eyes and the father who could not tell his living son no.
नेपालीमा
वर्ष बिते। धृतराष्ट्र हारेको सहरमै औपचारिक सम्मानसहित बसे, तर भीमले त्यो सम्मान टिकाउन सकेनन्, र विजेताको घरको अपमान जम्मा हुँदै गयो। धृतराष्ट्र, गान्धारी, र कुन्ती वन गए। विदुर त्यहाँ थिए। विदुरले आफ्नो प्राण युधिष्ठिरमा हाले, कविताले भन्छ, दुवै धर्मका अंश। पाण्डवहरू भेट्न गए। त्यही भेटमा व्यासले बाँचेकाहरूलाई एक रात दिनुभयो। मरेकाहरू देखिए, मिलाप भए, शत्रुहरू कुरा गरे, छोराहरू आमाले देखे। दर्शन सकिएपछि मरेकाहरू फेरि मरेका भए। कृपा जानीजानी छोटो छ। शोक एक रातको दर्शनले सुल्झिँदैन। शोकलाई मरेका पनि मान्छे थिए भन्ने सत्य सुनाइन्छ, अनि राज्यमा फर्काइन्छ। वर्षौंपछि नारदले युधिष्ठिरलाई खबर ल्याउनुभयो। वनमा आगो लागेको थियो। धृतराष्ट्र, गान्धारी र कुन्ती निस्केनन्। यो पृष्ठले आगोले लग्यो भन्छ। जलाउने तरिका लेख्दैन।