Week 14 Reading Diary: The End of the Mahabharata

My favorite part of this reading is Yudhishthira's dream. It was very touching to see him journey with his brothers, their wife and a dog. Everyone dies, but he continued on with the journey showing great compassion to the dog. Due to his compassion Yudhishthira is able to go to heaven and hell as a mortal, which is super crazy to think about! What a great experience that must have been for him to see heaven, and how terrifying it must have been to go through Hell!

Angel showing Yudhishthira around Hell!

I also found it extremely honorable how Arjuna ends his warrior life by bringing his weapons to the fire god Agni to be burned! The Mahabharata ultimately ended with the Pandavas leaving the world, leaving Parikshit as the last remaining heir of the Pandavas.

Week 14 Reading Diary A: The End of the War

This reading was much less intense then last weeks, but still had a fair amount of battle and death. It was such a relief to see Duryodhana defeated, but it was very frustrating to see Ashwatthaman become the leader of his army. To me it seemed like Ashwatthaman was operating solely out of rage and revenge, and that seems like a poor person to put in charge of an entire army! Ashwatthaman ends up wiping out basically the entire Pandava army (besides the brothers), and it led to the war being stirred back up once more! I really enjoyed reading about the war taking place in the previous reading, but at this point I wasn't really enjoying it anymore. Ashwatthaman was stoking a flame that could have easily died out, and the war ended. I'm glad my favorite character Arjuna came in with his incredible weapons to take on Ashwatthaman for the final fight. Arjuna is able to cancel out Ashwatthaman's weapon and Vyasa and Krishna recall the weapons and the war ends up finally coming to an end. There are funerals for all the powerful men that died in the war which really bummed me out because I felt like the war was so pointless in the first place!

Bhima defeating Duryodhana