Gāndhārī Śāpa on Kṛshṇa

After the great war at Kurukshetra, the queen Gāndhārī walked over the battlefield and saw her hundred sons and countless others lying dead. Her grief turned to anger. She turned to Kṛshṇa and gave him a śāpa (a curse): the Yādavas, Kṛshṇa’s own kinsmen, would destroy one another in thirty-six years.

This happens in the Strī Parva of the Mahābhārata. Gāndhārī had gathered great tapas (austerity) through decades of service to her blind husband Dhṛtarāshṭra and through her pativratā vow (the vow of a faithful wife), which she had kept without a break. She used that tapas for her śāpa.

Gāndhārī’s grief turns to anger

Gāndhārī had walked the whole battlefield. She had seen her hundred sons, her sons-in-law, her grandsons and her allies lying slain. Then her grief broke open into anger, and she spoke to Kṛshṇa directly.

“Kṛshṇa, you had the power. You had the strength of arms, the wealth of allies, and the words to make both sides listen. You could have stopped this. Yet you let it happen. You let the Kauravas and Pāṇḍavas burn each other away while you watched. I call upon the tapas I earned through decades of service to my blind husband, through the pativratā vow I have kept without lapse. By the strength of that tapas I give you my śāpa. Thirty-six years from now your kinsmen, the Yādavas, will destroy each other in the same way these warriors have destroyed each other. Your ministers and sons will die before you. You yourself will wander in the forest without protectors. You will die by an ignoble means, alone, known to no one. And the women of your house will weep as these women of Hastināpura now weep.”

Kṛshṇa accepts

Kṛshṇa was neither defensive nor sorrowful. The Mahābhārata says he heard the śāpa with a slight smile (kiñcit prahasya). Then he answered.

“Devī Gāndhārī, what you say, I already know. No one but Gāndhārī could destroy the Yādavas. All other beings cannot conquer them: not the devas, not the dānavas, not the nāgas, not the rākshasas. The Yādavas will destroy themselves. This is what I foresaw and what I have accepted. Your tapas is true. Your śāpa will come true.”

The Pāṇḍavas heard Kṛshṇa accept the śāpa. They had relied on him completely, and now he himself stood under a śāpa that would end his life. Fear and sudden hopelessness filled them, and the Mahābhārata says their hearts were shaken.

Kṛshṇa speaks again in Chapter 26

In Chapter 26, which belongs to the Śrāddha Parva, Kṛshṇa speaks to Gāndhārī again, more directly and sharply. He tells her that the fault in the destruction of the Kauravas lay with Duryodhana’s own adharma (wrong conduct). He tells her that she herself had borne and raised Duryodhana and had not counselled him firmly, so she carried a share of the responsibility. He is not harsh, but he is clear: she cannot place all the blame on him. Having said this, Kṛshṇa does not take back his acceptance of the śāpa.

What the śāpa leads to

Gāndhārī’s śāpa is the basis of the events of the Mausala Parva. There the Yādavas, drunk at a festival, quarrel and kill each other with reeds. Kṛshṇa leaves the world when a hunter’s arrow strikes his foot. The city of Dvāravatī sinks into the sea.

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Strī Parva, Chapters 25–26