After the war, Yudhishthira decided to renounce the world. "I will live in the forest, eating only roots and fruits. I will make no judgments. I will issue no commands."

But his brothers and Draupadi protested, insisting that he must become king.

"Stop indulging yourself and your feelings," Krishna told him. "You will become king; it is your dharma."

So Yudhishthira was crowned king, as Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva stood beside him, along with their wife Draupadi and their mother Kunti.

He appointed Yuyutsu, Dhritarashtra's only surviving son, to care for the old king and attend to his needs.

The mighty Kaurava generals were all dead... except one: Bhishma. Fatally wounded, he was still alive, lying on the bed made by the arrows that pierced his body.

Bhishma had the power to choose when to die, and he was waiting until after the winter solstice: he wanted to die on the first day of Uttarayana, when Surya turns north.

Bhishma thus waited fifty-eight days, the days growing ever shorter.

Yudhishthira came, and Bhishma instructed him in the ways of kingship, telling him stories of long ago.

Bhishma also taught Yudhishthira to chant the Sahasra-Nama, the Thousand Names of God.

The Pandavas gathered around Bhishma on his bed of arrows, waiting for the moment when he would choose to die.

They had known this old warrior all their lives, and he had been like a father to them: Bhishma, the son of Shantanu and of the goddess Ganga. Bhishma, who had no sons of his own.

They waited with him.

They wept.

Finally, he breathed his last.

Yudhishthira lifted Bhishma up off the bed of arrows and cremated his body on the bank of the Ganges. The goddess then arose from the river and escorted her son's soul into heaven.

Dhritarashtra continued to live in the palace, advising his nephew Yudhishthira, who was now king.

Bhima, however, didn't make it easy. When the family ate together, Bhima would crack his knuckles and reminisce about killing the Kauravas one after another. Whenever anybody broke open a bone to eat the marrow, Bhima would shout, "That reminds me of the sound Duryodhana's thigh made when I smashed it!"

Dhritarashtra's brother Vidura urged him to renounce the world. "Brother," he said, "It's time to go live in the forest!"

Dhritarashtra wanted to go, but he was attached to the luxuries of palace life.

Eventually, Dhritarashtra left Hastinapura, together with Kunti and Gandhari. They lived in the forest.

One day there came a forest fire.

Even then, Gandhari didn't remove her blindfold. She had removed her blindfold only once, attempting to use the power of her gaze to make Duryodhana invincible. "Come to me naked," she told him. Duryodhana, however, was embarrassed and wore a loincloth. All that Gandhari saw became invincible, but Duryodhana was still vulnerable.

She had not been able to save him, and she had no wish to save herself.

"Run!" Dhritarashtra shouted.

"Why?" replied Gandhari.

They died in the fire.

Time passed.

Then, a fight began in Dwaraka: some Yadavas defended the Pandavas, while others defended the Kauravas.

"The Kauravas ambushed Abhimanyu!" shouted the Pandava allies.

"The Pandavas deceived Drona!" retorted the Kaurava allies.

Back and forth they argued.

Fearing violence, Krishna and Balarama hid every weapon, but the quarreling citizens of Dwaraka then grabbed reeds from the seashore. These were no ordinary reeds: their edges were as sharp as any iron weapon.

Thus the Yadavas destroyed themselves.

Satyaki and Kritavarma, who had both survived the war, killed one another in that fight.

Such was the power of Gandhari's curse.

Long ago, Krishna's son Samba wanted to trick the forest rishis, so he dressed up as a pregnant woman. "Is my baby male or female?" he asked.

The angry rishis replied, "You bear no baby but an iron bar that will destroy the Yadavas."

Samba tried to laugh it off, but an iron bar eventually emerged from his thigh. Horrified, Samba ground the bar into dust which he threw into the sea.

The sea cast the iron dust back onto the shore, and it grew into the reeds with which the Yadavas destroyed themselves years later, arguing about the war.

After the Yadavas slaughtered one another, Balarama resolved to leave the world. As he meditated, his life-force emerged in the form of a white snake, which then vanished.

After Balarama departed, Krishna too was ready for his life to end. He went into the forest, sat under a banyan tree, and waited.

A hunter named Jara, mistaking Krishna's foot for the ear of a deer, shot Krishna with an arrow.

Jara had found the arrowhead in the belly of a fish, and it was made of the same accursed iron which had killed the Yadavas.

Gandhari's curse was now fulfilled.

Before Krishna died, he revealed to Jara the truth of his birth. "We met before, during the Treta Yuga: you were born as Vali, king of the monkeys of Kishkindha, and I was born as Rama, prince of Ayodhya. Because of a promise I made to your brother Sugriva, I shot you with an arrow from an ambush, just as you shot me now. All is as it must be."

Krishna then left his body and returned to Vaikuntha, his heavenly abode.

Thus the Dvapara Yuga ended, and the Kali Yuga began, the final era in the cycle of time.

The sons of the Pandavas died in the war, but one grandson survived: Parikshit, the son of Uttara and Abhimanyu, who was the son of Arjuna and Krishna's sister Subhadra. Ashwatthama had launched a weapon to kill Parkishit while still in his mother's womb, but Krishna saved him, and Parikshit later became king in Hastinapura.

Then, after Parikshit's coronation, Yudhishthira, his brothers, and Draupadi resolved to climb Mount Meru, seeking heaven. After the loss of Krishna and Balarama, they no longer had any desire to remain in this world.

Dressed in clothes of bark, they departed on their final journey.