Gandhari's curse: 36 years and the Yadavas die

Classical

Krishna accepts the curse because it was his own plan.

The war is over, and the battlefield is full of the dead. Gandhari, the mother of the hundred Kauravas, has come out to see it. She is speaking to Krishna as she goes over the field, and the story turns on what she says to him.

She starts with a roll call of the dead, calling Krishna by his names Madhava, Janardana, Keshava, and pointing at the bodies. Here lies the king of the Kambojas, and his wife is weeping over his blood-stained arms. Here is the king of Kalinga with his armlets still on. The women of Magadha are grieving over their king, Jayatsena. The women of the Kosala king Brihadbala are pulling Abhimanyu's arrows out of his body. She names the young sons of Dhrishtadyumna, killed by Drona, and the five Kekaya brothers, and King Drupada himself, felled by Drona. She names Dhrishtaketu of the Chedis and his son, mourned by their wives, and the brothers Vinda and Anuvinda of Avanti. The Pandavas and Krishna, she says, have come through while all these heroes lie dead, and Time has overturned them. She remembers that Bhishma and Vidura both warned her to stop loving her sons so much.

Then she collapses on the ground, overcome. When she gets up, her grief has turned to anger, and the anger is aimed at Krishna. He had the power, she says. He had followers and the gift of speech. He could have stopped the slaughter and did not. He stayed indifferent, so he must bear the result.

She calls on the merit she has gained by serving her husband faithfully, and she curses him. He will be the killer of his own kinsmen. In the thirty-sixth year from now, after his relatives, friends and sons are dead, he will die in the wilderness by a shameful means. The women of his race will be left without sons, kin or friends, and they will weep as the women of the Bharata line are weeping now.

Krishna's reply is surprising. He answers her with a faint smile. He says that only he can destroy the Vrishnis, and that he already means to do it. Her curse, he says, only helps him. The Vrishnis cannot be killed by anyone else, whether humans, gods or Danavas, so they will fall by each other's hands.

The Pandavas, who are standing by, are stunned by Krishna's words. They become anxious and despairing about their own lives.

This scene is where the epic lets a grieving mother say to Krishna's face that the war could have been prevented. And Krishna's answer is not an apology. He does not argue that the war was just or that he did what he could. He accepts the curse, and says it will serve his plan. Later in the epic, the Yadavas do destroy themselves in a drunken brawl at Prabhasa, and that is how Krishna's story ends.

Who: Gandhari, Krishna, Yadavas

Bound to

Krishna's death by the hunter Jara curse→payoff

Samba's pregnancy prank and the iron bolt that ended the Yadavas causes

Dhritarashtra and the 100 burned baby birds mirror

The iron Bhima that Dhritarashtra crushed mirror

Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Gāndhārī and Kuntī Retire to the Forest geneal

Balarāma Leaves the World curse

Places: Kurukshetra

Where this comes from

vulgate (Ganguli) · Ganguli translation of the Mahabharata (read via MahabharataOnline) Ganguli, Stri Parva, Section XXV (page header shows 25)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Stri Parva, Section XXV (as labelled on page): Gandhari speaks to Krishna
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Mausala Parva, section 4 (as labelled): the Yadava brawl at Prabhasa, for the fulfilment

See it on the tree · All stories

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