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STORIES · THE MAHĀBHĀRATA · Āśramavāsika
Death in the Forest Fire
Classical
Two years after the Pāṇḍavas' last visit to the hermitage, Nārada comes to Yudhiṣṭhira's court. The king asks him about Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Gāndhārī, Kuntī and Sañjaya, who are said to be in the forest practising austerity. Nārada says he has seen the Gaṅgā and its holy places, and that he will describe what he saw and heard.
He tells how the old king went to Gaṅgādvāra with his sacred fire, Gāndhārī, Kuntī and Sañjaya. He kept pebbles in his mouth, lived on air and did not speak, and in six months was a skeleton. Gāndhārī lived on water, Kuntī ate every sixth day. The priests kept the fire burning even if the king could not see it. Dhṛtarāṣṭra wandered with no fixed home, Sañjaya guiding him, and Kuntī acting as Gāndhārī's eyes.
One day, after bathing in the Gaṅgā, the king turned back to the hermitage and a wind rose, and a forest fire began. Animals fled, snakes burned, and the old king, fasting and too weak to move, saw the flames close on all sides. He told Sañjaya to save himself, saying that fire, water, wind and fasting are fit deaths for ascetics. Sañjaya objected that death by a non-sacred fire would be a calamity, but the king insisted.
Dhṛtarāṣṭra sat facing east, and Gāndhārī and Kuntī beside him, all in yoga and still as wood. Sañjaya walked round them and left. The fire reached the three. Sañjaya escaped, bade the ascetics farewell and set out for the Himalaya. Nārada says he saw the bodies himself.
When Yudhiṣṭhira hears it he breaks down, and Arjuna and Bhīma weep. The king laments most for Kuntī, who gave up her sons' prosperity to die like a helpless woman, and blames Agni for burning Arjuna's mother after the gift of Khāṇḍava. He also fears the king died by a profane fire. Nārada answers with what the ascetics told him: the king had lit his own sacrificial fires in the woods, performed his rites and then left them. His priests cast the fires aside in a lonely place, the fire spread, and it was this very fire of his own that took him. Yudhiṣṭhira then goes with his brothers and the whole city to the Gaṅgā, with Yuyutsu at their head, and offers water to Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Gāndhārī and Kuntī, and on the twelfth day gives vast gifts. Dhṛtarāṣṭra had spent fifteen years in the city and three in the forest.
Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya
Who: Nārada, Yudhiṣṭhira, Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Gāndhārī, Kuntī, Sañjaya
Bound to
Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Gāndhārī and Kuntī Retire to the Forest origin
Khāṇḍava-daha mirror
Dharma, Yama, Vidura and Yudhishthira: one essence mirror
Gandhari's mud elephant: the Mewati origin of the feud mirror
Places: Gaṅgādvāra, Himālaya
Where this comes from
- read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (text as scanned on archive.org; mahabharataonline.com section pages could not be opened from the working environment) Ashramavasika Parva (Naradagamana), Sections XXXVII-XXXIX