Vidura sends a miner to meet Yudhishthira. The miner tells him of a plan to build a tunnel from the palace to the river Ganga. As Purochana is always with them, they go hunting to wean him away from the palace to enable the miner to do his work. After about a year the tunnel is ready and the door hidden by covering it with a costly rug. Just in time, as the miner tells Yudhisthira of the plan to set fire to the palace on the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight.
The pandavas hatch a plan to set fire to the palace before the set day and escape through the tunnel. Kunti holds a feast and a Nishada woman and her five sons whom Kunti had befriended stay back. They were made to drink their fill and thus unable to travel in the night. Purochana was drunk too. Kunti and the four pandavas enter the tunnel. Bheema sets fire to the palace, making sure that the areas where Purochana and the six were sleeping and hastens to the tunnel and escapes.
The entire city was woken up by the fire and people were helpless as the moat could not be crossed. They stood all night watching the palace of lac being burnt to ashes.
(Human history is full of stories where the poorer are victims of such chicanery! Truly some are more equal than others?)
2 comments:
(Human history is full of stories where the poorer are victims of such chicanery! Truly some are more equal than others?)
This is true even in Communism, which was founded on the basis of equality of everyone, with some "comrades" enjoying a lot of perks as compared to others. In the US, unions were started to safeguard the interests of the rank and file workers, but many union leaders live lavishly, abuse the privileges, and misuse union funds.
I do not think Kunti deliberately caused the death of the Nishad woman and her sons. I have written in detail on this topic in my blog. I hope it is ok to post a link here rather than write all over again. http://riddlesinmahabharat.blogspot.in/
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