Storytelling Week 14: The Journey to Heaven

Yudhishthira continued to walk along the pathway.  His brothers and wife had already perished along this path.  As he thought to himself, the sequence of events that had led to this appeared in his head.  The sequence of events had started when Yudhishthira had heard the Krishna had perished.  This had been shocking news to him and his brothers.  They had loved Krishna very much and when they had heard that Krishna had died had decided to also depart the mortal realm to ascend into heaven. 

So they began to walk on their journey to heaven.  First they traveled east to where they encountered Agni, the fire god, who had Arjuna cast his weapons into the sea.  With that single instance, he had severed all that had held him back in the mortal realm. 

They then turned northward to the Himalayas.  As they had crossed the Himalayas they came across a desert and while they were in the midst of crossing the desert Draupadi fell because of her partiality to Dhananjaya.

Journey to heaven (Source: Wikimedia)

As they continued, walking Sahadeva also fell.  With this the first of the pandavas had fallen.  As they had continued one by one the brothers fell.  The second brother to go was Nakula, who had been broken hearted with the death of his brother and Krishna. 

Then a little while later Arjuna also fell.  Bhima was saddened over these events and he mourned their deaths.  Finally, Bhima also fell and as he lay dying, he asked Yudhishthira why he had fallen.  Yudhishthira replied that he had not attended to others while eating. 

As Yudhishthira walked along Indra appeared before him telling him that if wanted to enter into heaven he must first cast aside the dog that was following him.  Yudhishthira refused to cast aside the dog because of how faithful the dog had been to him.  Then suddenly in the place of the dog, Dharma appeared and he blessed his son for his compassion and faithfulness.  Then Yudhishthira entered into heaven.

When he entered into heaven, he noticed that he could not find his family but had found Duryodhana in heaven.  So he had them bring him to his family but instead of being in heaven, they appeared in hell.  Yudhishthira was saddened in the suffering decided to stay with them instead of returning to heaven.  When he said this hell vanished and Indra told him that it had been a test and then Yudhishthira entered into heaven.

Author’s note:

This is based off the pandava’s journey to heaven from The Story of the Great War: Some Lessons from Mahabharata by Annie Besant.  I kept the text closely based on the original text.  I mainly just shortened and lengthened the story.  My main goal was to provide a third person view.  I wrote in a past tense almost memory based style for this story.

Bibliography:

The Story of the Great War: Some Lessons from the Mahabharata by Annie Besant(1899)