The Mahabharata is the longest ballad written
in human history.
Apart from being a religious text, it in itself
is fascinating.
The poem has it all- from action to drama
to suspense.
It has compelling elements that will draw
any mythological buff to it- gods, demigods,
demons, heroes, heroines, fierce battles,
even anti-heroes, people who get angry for
no apparent reason and might give one a curse,
the occasional game of dice(which, by the
way, if you lose, you'll end up with a 13
year long exile and shall need to spend 1
year incognito) and many more.
Today we're gonna discuss one such story from
the epic.
The Pandavas were a group of five demigod brothers, namely- Yudhishthir, the son of
Yama, the god of death, Bheem, the son of
Vayu, the wind god, Arjun, the son of Indra,
the king of heavens and the god of rain and
thunder, Nakula and Sahadeva, the sons of
the Ashwini twins, the gods of medicine.
So, the Pandavas and their wife, Draupadi,
and I say wife because they were all married
to the same woman (long story) have had a
rough time of it.
They had to serve a 13 year long exile and
spend a year incognito(that’s why you should
NEVER play Ludo with the wrong people).
This was because their cousin brothers, the
Kauravas wanted the throne of the Kuru kingdom
for themselves.
So, the Pandavas returned from their exile
and demanded back their kingdom, but the Kauravas
won't budge, and so they fought each other
in the battlefield of Kurukshetra.
Soon, all the kingdoms of India were forced
to pick up sides.
The Kauravas had a bigger army, but, fortunately
for the Pandavas, Lord Krishna was on their
side.
Krishna was the eighth incarnation of Vishnu,
and is regarded by many to be the Ultimate
Soul, Brahman.
It was like having God on your side.
Long story short, the Pandavas won the war,
with of course, heavy losses.
Yudhishthir became the emperor of all of India
and ruled with prosperity and peace for about
36 years.
Thirty-six long, peaceful years after the
Pandavas won back their kingdom from their
brothers in the massive Mahabharata war there
was an announcement in the prestigious court
of Yudhishthir that an internecine war had
erupted near the island city of Dwarka, the
capital of the Yadava confederation, and many
Yadavas had been killed.
This was the Yadava civil war.
Many people don’t know that the Kurukshetra
war wasn’t the only war in the Mahabharata.
The Mausala Parva of the Mahabharata gives
a detailed account of a destructive civil
war that occurred between the Yadavas, which
resulted in the destruction of one of the
earliest republics, the deluge of the great
city of Krishna, the renunciation of the Pandava
brothers and their wife, Krishna’s death
and, indirectly, the commencing of the last
epoch, Kaliyuga.
The Pandavas were shocked.
They knew that the Yadavas were headed by
Lord Krishna, who was the eighth incarnation
of Vishnu.
They could not bring themselves to believe
that the wise Krishna would allow his brethren
to fight amongst themselves.
What they didn’t realize was that it was
out of Krishna’s hands to control the war.
It was imminent.
It had been decided well before.
But how come?
The grand scheme of the destruction of the
Yadavas had begun in the full court of the
Kuru kingdom, when Yudhishthir was crowned
emperor.
The blindfolded queen Gandhari, overcome with
sorrow and anger of a mother upon losing her
fellow sons on the battlefield of Kurukshetra,
declared Krishna as the mastermind and schemer
of the war.
True, Krishna had not tried to stop the war
when he could and instead encouraged Arjun
to fight his own evil brothers, but he had
done it for the betterment of his countrymen
and the rest of the world.
Nonetheless, Gandhari cursed him that just
like her family had been destroyed in a war
between themselves, his family and people,
too would suffer and die in a civil war.
Krishna accepted the curse as
he knew the pain of a mother when she lost
her beloved sons(he should know, he's got
two pairs of
parents).
And now the curse had come to life.
The king, Yudhishthir asked for details, and
was provided
for.
Apparently a group of sages, including Vishwamitra,
Durvasa, Vashista and Narada, were visiting
Dwarka for an audience with Krishna and other
leaders of the clans.
Sambha, a (not so bright) son of
Lord Krishna, along with his friends decided
to pull a mischief on the sages.
He dressed up as a pregnant
woman and reached the sages with his company(they
seem like him too).
He then asked the sages
whether he would deliver a girl or a boy(again,
not too bright).
Obviously, the sages were enraged once
they saw through the deception.
But they got a little carried away and cursed
the foolish Sambha.
 
this just got dark.
The son of Krishna, both afraid(as he should’ve
been before messing things up for himself
and his family) and ashamed of what he had
done, went to Chief Ugrasena, the maternal
uncle of
Krishna, asking what he should do.
The chief ordered him to have the rod powdered
and thrown into the
sea.
Later on, when the Yadavas are at a pilgrimage
at Prabhasa, present day Somnath, an argument
breaks out between the drunken clans about
which side committed more crimes in the Mahabharata
war.
The Yadava warriors pick up iron rods from
the shore which had mutated from the powdered
pieces of the iron rod that Sambha had given
birth to.
Then they started attacking each other with
lethal
blows and soon everyone who was fighting is
dead except Krishna and Daruka.
Balaram had survived as
he had left Prabhasa earlier.
Krishna orders Daruka to go to Hastinaspur
and inform the Pandavas about
what had happened and ask them to come to
rescue the women and children.
Krishna himself returns to
the capital and consoles his birth parents,
Vasudeva and Devaki.
He returns to find that Balaram has
renounced the world and has left his mortal
life.
Lord Krishna too, wary of the mortal realm,
decides
that it is time for him to die and take his
rightful place in Vaikunth.
Faraway from here, a hunter named
Jara finds a piece of metal in a fish’s
mouth that he has caught.
This metal is actually a piece of Sambha’s
iron rod that could not be powdered and was
swallowed by a fish.
The hunter sharpens this metal and
makes it an arrowhead.
Later on when he is hunting he takes this
arrow with him.
Krishna was
meditating in the same forest where Jara was
hunting.
The hunter sees Krishna’s left foot in the
bushes
and mistakes it for a deer’s eye.
He takes aim and fires the arrow.
On coming near his prey, he finds the
deity severely injured.
He touches his feet in due reverence and in
the realization of his mistake.
The
supreme soul comforted him and then ascended
upwards, filling the entire sky with splendor.
Soon,
Arjun reaches the coast to take the women
and children, but to no avail.
Just as her master left the
world, the island city of Dwarka receded below
the waters, taking with it the despaired families
of the
martyred Yadavas.
Arjun managed to save some of the great grandchildren
of the son of Devaki, whom
he took under his tutelage.
The Pandava brothers, Yudhishthir, Bheem,
Arjun, Nakul and Sahadeva, and
their wife, the beautiful Draupadi, tired
of the violence they had experienced in their
lives, decided that
it was time for their renunciation.
Soon, they left for the forest, leaving the
throne to the young and
bright Parikshit.
Krishna was the only person preventing Kaliyuga,
the dark age, from arriving.
When he left the world,
Kali, the demonic personification of the last
epoch, felt safe to enter the earthly domain
as there was no
one left to counter him.
As soon as the offspring of adharma stepped
into this world, evil has had a vice like
grip, which can catch even the most virtuous
of men and take them down to the road of chaos.
