Victory at Kurukshetra brought no joy. When the dust settled, the survivors walked a field of the dead so vast that the epic numbers the slain in the millions — and among them lay grandfathers, teachers, cousins, and the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra. The Stri Parva, the "book of the women," gives the grief its voice: the queens and mothers come out to the field to weep over their fallen, and Gandhari, who had borne and lost a hundred sons, in her anguish curses Krishna himself, foretelling the ruin of his own Yadava clan — a curse that the tradition says comes to pass years later. Even the divine charioteer accepts the cost.

For Yudhishthira, the new king, the throne felt like ashes. He had killed his kin to win it, and he wished to renounce it all and withdraw to the forest. It was only the counsel of Krishna, Vyasa, and above all the dying Bhishma — who, from his bed of arrows, instructed the new king at length in the duties of rule, in justice, mercy, and the welfare of subjects — that turned him back to his responsibility. He performed the great horse-sacrifice in atonement and ruled for many years, a sober, righteous reign shadowed always by sorrow. Late in life he learned the bitterest lesson of all: that his enemies, the very men he had slain, were not absent from heaven, and that dharma is subtler and stranger than victory suggests.

The end came quietly. When word reached them that Krishna had departed the earth and the Yadavas had destroyed themselves, the Pandavas knew their own time was done. They crowned Arjuna's grandson Parikshit king and set out together on the mahaprasthana, the "great departure" — a final pilgrimage northward, on foot, toward the Himalayas and Mount Meru, renouncing the world. One by one along the climb they fell and died — Draupadi first, then the younger brothers, each for some small flaw the epic gently names — until only Yudhishthira walked on, accompanied by a single faithful dog. At the gate of heaven he was told he might enter, but not the dog. He refused; he would not abandon a creature that had been loyal to him. The dog then revealed itself as Dharma, his own divine father, and the test was passed. Even then a last trial awaited, a glimpse of his cousins in apparent bliss and his brothers in apparent torment, until the illusion lifted. The man who had wept to win his kingdom walked at last, unbroken in his goodness, into the world beyond.