Page:The Mahabharata (Kishori Mohan Gangopadhyay, First Edition) Volume 18.djvu/16

2 all our seniors! Ye gods, I have no desire to even behold Suyodhana! I wish to go there where my brothers are!' Nārada, smiling, told him,'It should not be so! O king of kings! While residing in Heaven, all enmities cease! O mighty-armed Yudhishthira, do not say so about king Duryodhana. Hear my words. Here is king Duryodhana. He is worshipped with the gods by those righteous men and those foremost of kings who are now denizens of Heaven. By causing his body to be poured as a libation on the fire of battle, he has obtained the end that consists in attainment of the region for heroes. You and your brothers, who were veritable gods on Earth, were always persecuted by this one. Yet through his observance of Kshatriya practices he has attained to this region. This lord of Earth was not terrified in a situation fraught with terror. O son, thou shouldst not bear in mind the woes inflicted on thee on account of the match at dice. It behooveth thee not to remember the afflictions of Draupadi. It behooveth thee not to remember the other woes which were yours in consequence of the acts of your kinsmen,the woes, viz., that were due to battle or to other situations. Do thou meet Duryodhana now according to the ordinances of polite intercourse. This is Heaven, O lord of men! There can be no enmities here!'Though thus addressed by Nārada, the Kuru king Yudhishthira, endued with great intelligence, enquired about his brothers and said,'If these eternal regions reserved for heroes be Duryodhana's, that unrighteous and sinful wight, that man who was the destroyer of friends and of the whole world, that man for whose sake the entire Earth was devastated with all her horses and elephants and human beings, that wight for whose sake we were burnt with wrath in thinking of how best we might remedy our wrongs, I desire to see what regions have been attained by those high-souled heroes, my brothers of high vows, steady achievers of promises, truthful in speech, and distinguished for courage. The high-souled Karna, the son of Kunti, incapable of being baffled in battle, Dhrishtadyumna, Sātyaki, the sons of Dhrishtadyumna, and those other Kshatriyas who met with death in the observance