The Night the Dead Came Back

Years after the war, when old Dhṛtarāṣṭra had gone to live in the forest with Gāndhārī and Kuntī, and the Pāṇḍavas came to visit them, Vyāsa came too, and Gāndhārī and Kuntī told him of the grief they still carried for their sons. Kuntī told him at last of Karṇa, the son the Sun had given her when she was still a girl in her father's house, whom she had set adrift on the water in secret and never acknowledged, though she knew him; he had fought against his own brothers and fallen in the war. Others there had lost sons too: Draupadī, the wife of the five Pāṇḍavas, had lost all five of hers, and Arjuna's wife Subhadrā her son Abhimanyu. Vyāsa said to Gāndhārī, You will see your sons and your brothers and your friends, and the daughters-in-law will see their husbands, as if risen from sleep in the night. Kuntī will see Karṇa, Subhadrā will see her son, Draupadī her five sons, her father and her brothers. They are not to be grieved for. They kept the dharma of warriors and died as warriors die. And he told her that each of them had been a god or some other being more than human, born on earth as a man for the gods' purpose: Droṇa a part of Bṛhaspati, the teacher of the gods, Karṇa a part of the Sun, Abhimanyu the Moon. Their work done, they had gone back to heaven.

All of you go to the Gaṅgā, he said, and there you will see all who were killed in that battle. They went to the river with a great shout, and waited all day, and the day was as long as a hundred years. At nightfall they gathered around Vyāsa, Dhṛtarāṣṭra with the Pāṇḍavas, Gāndhārī with the women, and all the people. Vyāsa went down into the holy water of the Gaṅgā and called out to the worlds.

Then from the water came a great roar, as when the two armies met, and out of the river rose the kings by the thousand with their armies, Bhīṣma and Droṇa at their head, Virāṭa and Drupada with their sons, the sons of Draupadī, Abhimanyu, Ghaṭotkaca, Karṇa and Duryodhana, Śakuni and Duḥśāsana and all the rest, each in his own dress, with his own banner and his own chariot, in heavenly clothes and shining earrings, without enmity, without pride, without anger. Vyāsa, pleased, gave Dhṛtarāṣṭra divine sight by the power of his austerity, and Dhṛtarāṣṭra saw them all and rejoiced, and Gāndhārī saw her sons.

The warriors came together without anger or envy, sons with fathers and mothers, wives with husbands, brother with brother, friend with friend. The Pāṇḍavas met Karṇa and Abhimanyu and the sons of Draupadī with joy, and stood with Karṇa in friendship. That one night they spent together happily, as if they were in heaven; there was no grief and no fear. Then they embraced one another and took their leave, and Vyāsa let them go, and they vanished into the river, with their chariots and banners, each to his own world. Then the sage, standing in the water, said that any woman who wished to go to her husband's world should go into the Gaṅgā, and the widows asked leave of Dhṛtarāṣṭra and went into the water, and left their bodies, and joined their husbands.