Indian Epics: Reading Notes: The Mahabharata part D

The battle is raging on now, and it seems, by the telling of the story, that it is a very brutally and bloody battle. Arjuna gets worried about the war because he is loosing many men, but Krishna reinforces him and tells him that Bhisma, the other armies big hitter, is going to die. So Arjuna takes this news and fights hard and ends up killing Bhisma himself. Though Arjuna was very unhappy because Bhisma was like a father to him, so he wept over his death. Abhimanya, Arjuna’s son, was fighting in the battle and found himself surrounded by many foes and nobody could make their way to him to help him out, he soon fell in battle and Arjuna, learning of his death, became furious and full of vengeance. Arjuna swore to kill all his enemies by the time the sun went down, and Krishna made the sun stay up a little longer so that Arjuna could do just that. Arjuna finds his way to Karna, and they have it out, and with Arjuna’s celestial bow he shot off the head of Karna and victory was theirs. Many were left dead including many of the sons of Draupadi. They had their ceremonial fires to honor the dead and then they had a horse sacrifice to honor the gods for their victory. But time came for the Panduva’s to depart from the world and go to heaven. As they were traveling to heaven along the way they began one by one to fall short of heaven and die. In the end Udistera is the only one to make it to the mountain where heaven is. He says to the gods that he will not go in without his brothers and wife. The gods show him to his brothers and wife who are in some form of hell. But it was just a test, and the brothers and Draupadi were actually in heaven with him.