Well, this reading was heartbreaking. Turns out I had pretty much completely forgotten everything that happens after the battle. I roughly remembered that all five Pandava brothers survive, but their children and most of the other key figures do not (besides Krishna). I'd forgotten the part where everyone should be safe, but someone on the Kaurava side goes mad, breaks into the Pandava camp, and brutally kills Dhri, the five Pandava sons, and some other important people who are, again, slipping my mind right now.
This section really emphasizes the senselessness and monstrosity of war. The two sides start out with rules for war, but about halfway these get tossed out the window. Atrocity is countered with atrocity in a cycle that will only continue past the conclusion of the battle. At the end, the head honchos finally wake up to the fact that their drama-turned-battle doesn't just affect them; they're all heartbroken -- and so is everyone else around them. The conflict over succession has devastated the lands they would be ruling, which seems pretty counterintuitive to me.
So...if I thought Rama's treatment of Sita in the Ramayana was sad, the Mahabharata is even more depressing by the time the epic concludes. And I'm not even to the end just yet. But kudos to the epic for not just senselessly glorifying its heroes, but for showing the pathos that goes along with their actions and repercussions as well.
Just look at all the little people who are going to die because the couple of big ones can't get along.
image: Arjuna confronts Karna; painting c.1820 (Wikimedia Commons)
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