01Setting down the kingdom
When Arjuna brought the news of the Vrishnis, Yudhishthira said only: time cooks all beings. He made up his mind to go. He crowned Parikshit at Hastinapura and gave Yuyutsu, Dhritarashtra’s one surviving son, charge of the realm. Vajra, the last of the Yadus, stayed king at Indraprastha, and Yudhishthira asked Subhadra to watch over him. The brothers performed shraddha for Krishna and Balarama and their elders, fed brahmins, gave away jewels, robes, villages, horses and chariots. Then they put off their ornaments, dressed in bark cloth, and walked out of the city as they had once walked out after the dice.
02Six, and a seventh
The text counts them carefully: five brothers, Krishnaa the sixth, and a dog the seventh. The dog had simply begun following them out of Hastinapura. The people walked behind for a long way and then turned back. The Pandavas went east first, along the Ganga, to the shore of the Lauhitya sea. Arjuna had not been able to let go of the Gandiva. Agni stood before them like a mountain and told him to give it back to Varuna, from whom it had come, along with the two inexhaustible quivers. Arjuna threw them into the water.
03Round Bharat to the north
From the eastern sea they turned south, then west along the coast, and there they saw Dwaraka under the water. Then they went north. Walking in yoga, they crossed the Himavat, the great mountain, and came out beyond it to a sea of sand, and saw Meru, best of peaks, ahead. The parva takes this whole round in a few verses. Pilgrims have long walked a road of their own toward it: by Badrinath and the village of Mana, the path called Svargarohini runs up to the lake Satopanth, and local tradition says the Pandavas came this way.
04The falls
Draupadi fell first. Bhima asked why, for she had done no wrong. She loved Arjuna more than the rest, Yudhishthira said, and walked on without looking back. Then Sahadeva fell: he thought no one his equal in wisdom. Nakula fell, proud of his beauty. Arjuna fell: he had vowed to burn all his enemies in a single day and had not done it, and he looked down on other archers. Last Bhima fell, and asked the reason for himself. You ate too much, said Yudhishthira, and boasted of your strength, and thought little of others. He did not stop.
05The dog
Yudhishthira walked on with the dog. Indra came down in his chariot, filling sky and earth with sound, and told him to climb in. Not without my brothers and Draupadi, Yudhishthira said. They have gone ahead, Indra answered; you alone go in this body. Then let the dog come, said Yudhishthira; it is devoted to me. Indra refused: there is no place in heaven for dogs. Yudhishthira held his ground. To abandon one who is devoted, he said, is as great a sin as killing a brahmin, and he would not do it for his own happiness. The dog stood up as Dharma, his father, who had tested him once before at the lake.
Famous verses
भक्तत्यागं प्राहुरत्यन्तपापं तुल्यं लोके ब्रह्मवध्याकृतेन । तस्मान्नाहं जातु कथंचनाद्य त्यक्ष्याम्येनं स्वसुखार्थी महेन्द्र ॥
To abandon one who is devoted, they say, is the gravest sin, equal in this world to killing a brahmin. So never, by any means, will I abandon him today for my own happiness, great Indra.Mahabharata 17.3.11 (BORI CE), Yudhishthira to Indra