16. Mausala Parva
The Book of the Clubs · 9 adhyayas
Gandhari's curse comes true. Thirty-six years later the Yadavas turn on one another at Dwarka and destroy themselves with iron clubs. Balarama leaves his body in yoga. Krishna rests in the forest, where a hunter named Jara mistakes his foot for a deer and looses an arrow — and Krishna completes his avatar. The sea swallows Dwarka.
What Happens in Mausala Parva
Mausala Parva is nine adhyayas long and it settles every debt the epic has left open. Thirty-six years after Kurukshetra, Gandhari's curse arrives at Dwarka.
It starts as a prank. Some young Yadavas dress Samba as a pregnant woman and ask visiting sages what he will bear; the sages, insulted, answer that he will bear an iron club that will destroy the clan. He does. The club is ground to powder and thrown into the sea, and the powder washes ashore as reeds. Omens gather over the city. Krishna orders a pilgrimage to Prabhasa and forbids liquor, and at Prabhasa the Yadavas drink anyway and fall to quarrelling about the war — about Satyaki and Kritavarma, and what each of them did at Kurukshetra. They reach for weapons, find none, and pull up the reeds from the shore, which turn to iron in their hands. They kill each other to the last man, and Krishna, seeing it, joins in.
Balarama walks into the forest and leaves his body in yoga, a great serpent departing from his mouth. Krishna lies down beneath a tree, and a hunter named Jara, seeing the sole of his reddish foot move through the leaves, takes it for a deer and shoots. Krishna comforts the horrified hunter and departs. Arjuna comes to evacuate the survivors — the women, the children, Vajra — and on the road robbers attack the column. Arjuna cannot string the Gandiva; his celestial weapons will not come; he watches the people he is escorting carried off, and the greatest archer of the age is simply an old man with a bow. Behind them, the sea takes Dwarka.
Key Episodes
- Gandhari's curse taking effect
- The Yadavas destroying one another in the club fight
- Balarama leaving his body through yoga
- Jara's arrow, and Krishna's departure
- Dwarka going under the sea
- Arjuna losing the strength to wield the Gandiva
Who Appears in Mausala Parva
- Krishna
- Sees his clan destroy itself, departs after Jara's arrow, and completes the avatar.
- Balarama
- Leaves his body in yoga in the forest before the end.
- Jara
- The hunter whose arrow finds Krishna's foot — the instrument, not the cause, of Gandhari's curse.
- Arjuna
- Comes to evacuate Dwarka, finds the Gandiva beyond his strength, and loses the survivors to common robbers.
- Samba
- Krishna's son, whose prank draws the sages' curse and the iron club from it.
- Vajra
- Aniruddha's son and the Yadavas' one royal survivor, installed by Arjuna at Indraprastha.
What Mausala Parva Teaches
Power leaves when its time is done
Arjuna's failure on the road is the most quietly devastating passage in the Mahabharat. The weapons are the same and the man is the same; what has gone is the age in which they worked. The epic makes decline a matter of time rather than of fault.
A curse fulfilled exactly
Gandhari said the Yadavas would destroy themselves as the Kurus had, and they do — drunk, over an argument about the war, with makeshift weapons. Krishna accepted the curse without protest in Stri Parva and does nothing here to avert it.
The end of an avatar
Krishna dies of a hunter's mistake, alone under a tree, and his last act is to reassure the man who shot him. The Mahabharat refuses him a grand departure, and the refusal is the point.
Mausala Parva — Frequently Asked Questions
Thirty-six years after the war, the Yadava clan destroys itself at Prabhasa with iron clubs grown from reeds. Balarama leaves his body in yoga, Krishna is shot by the hunter Jara and departs, Arjuna evacuates the survivors and loses them to robbers, and the sea swallows Dwarka.
Musala means a club or pestle. The parva is named for the iron clubs — grown as reeds from the powdered curse-club thrown into the sea — with which the Yadavas killed one another.
Resting in a forest after the Yadava slaughter, he lay with one foot raised. A hunter named Jara, seeing movement through the leaves, mistook the sole of his foot for a deer and shot. Krishna reassured the stricken hunter and left his body.
The epic gives no failing of his own. With Krishna gone and the age turning, the Gandiva became too heavy for him, his quivers were exhausted and his celestial weapons would not answer — the yuga itself had changed, and the abilities belonged to it.
In the epic, the sea reclaims the city immediately after the survivors leave, which the text presents as the end of Krishna's earthly work. Marine archaeology off the Gujarat coast near modern Dwarka has recovered submerged structures, though what they correspond to remains debated.