the Vedas.  Despair penetrated their souls as they thought of the old king and as they repeatedly reflected on that terrible slaughter of kinsmen.  Indeed, thinking of the slaughter of the youthful Abhimanyu on the field of battle, of the mighty-armed Karna who never retreated from the fray, of the sons of Draupadi, and of other friends of theirs, those heroes became exceedingly cheerless.  They failed to obtain peace or mind upon repeatedly reflecting that the Earth had become divested of both her heroes and her wealth.  Draupadi had lost all her children, and the beautiful Subhadra also had become childless.  They too were of cheerless hearts and grieved exceedingly.  Beholding, however, the son of Virata’s daughter, viz., thy sire Parikshit, thy grandsires somehow held their life-breaths.’

SECTION XXII

“Vaisampayana said, ’Those foremost of men, the heroic Pandavas,—­those delighters of their mother—­became exceedingly afflicted with grief.  They who had formerly been always engaged in kingly offices, did not at that time attend to those acts at all in their capital.  Afflicted with deep grief, they failed to derive pleasure from anything.  If any body accosted them, they never honoured him with an answer.  Although those irresistible heroes were in gravity like the ocean, yet they were now deprived of their knowledge and their very senses by the grief they felt.  Thinking of their mother, the sons of Pandu were filled with anxiety as to how their emaciated mother was serving the old couple.  ’How, indeed, is that king, whose sons have all been slain and who is without refuge, living alone, with only his wife, in the woods that are the haunt of beasts of prey?  Alas, how does that highly blessed queen, Gandhari, whose dear ones have all been slain, follow her blind lord in the solitary woods?’—­Even such was the anxiety manifested by the Pandavas when they talked with one another.  They then set their hearts upon seeing the king in his forest retreat.  Then Sahadeva, bowing down to the king, said, ’I see thy heart to be set upon seeing our sire.  From my respect for thee, however, I could not speedily open my mouth on the subject of our journey to the woods.  The time for that sojourn is now come.  By good luck I shall see Kunti living in the observance of penances, with matted locks on her head, practising severe austerities, and emaciated with sleeping on blades of Kusa and Kasa.  She was brought up in palaces and mansions, and nursed in every comfort and luxury.  Alas, when shall I see my mother who is now toil-worn and plunged into exceeding misery?  Without doubt, O chief of Bharata’s race, the ends of mortals are exceedingly uncertain, since Kunti, who is a princess by birth, is now living in misery in the woods.’  Hearing these words of Sahadeva, queen Draupadi, that foremost of all women duly honouring the king said, with proper salutations,—­Alas, when shall I see queen Pritha, if, indeed, she be yet