Dhritarāshtra's Anxiety

The miracle of the endless robes shook the hall, and after it came the omens: jackals howling in the streets, donkeys braying, every sign of a coming retribution, as though the cosmos itself recoiled from what had been done. And Gāndhārī, hearing of these portents, came to her husband and warned him plainly to undo his sons' evil before it consumed the whole line.

And Dhritarāshtra, frightened at last, roused himself, and soothed the wronged Draupadī, and granted her boons; and she, with a nobility that shames the whole assembly that had failed her, asked only for the freedom of her husbands and the return of their weapons, and refused a further boon, saying that greed did not become her. So the Pāṇḍavas were freed, and set out again for Indraprastha, their honour wounded but their lives and their liberty restored.

But it was not to last, for Duryodhana and Shakuni and Duhshāsana would not let their prey escape. They upbraided the blind king for releasing the Pāṇḍavas on the very threshold of victory, arguing that no self-respecting warrior would ever forgive such humiliation, that the Pāṇḍavas would surely return with an army to destroy them, that the only safety now lay in finishing what had been begun. And Dhritarāshtra yielded once more, as he always yielded, and sent a messenger to recall Yudhishthira for one final game.

The terms of this last game were fixed in advance: the losers would go into exile for twelve years in the forest, and a thirteenth year in hiding, unrecognized; and if they were discovered during that thirteenth year, the whole cycle would begin again. And Yudhishthira, though his family begged him not to go, accepted once more, declaring that destiny cannot be escaped and a challenge to dice cannot in honour be refused. And once more Shakuni's loaded dice defeated him.

And so the Pāṇḍavas put on the deerskins of forest exiles and prepared to leave, while the citizens of Hastināpura lamented aloud and openly accused Dhritarāshtra and his sons of treachery. And the sage Nārada appeared in the court and spoke with the authority of prophecy: that fourteen years from that day, the whole Kaurava race would be destroyed, as the fruit of the crime that Duryodhana had committed. The sentence was passed; the doom was named; and the exile began.