with grief, like calves destitute of their dams.  Dhritarashtra reached that day a place far removed from the city.  The puissant monarch arrived at last on the banks of the Bhagirathi and took rest there for the night.  Brahmanas conversant with the Vedas duly ignited their sacred fires in that retreat of ascetics.  Surrounded by those foremost of Brahmanas, those sacred fires blazed forth in beauty.  The sacred fire of the old king was also ignited.  Sitting near his own fire, he poured libations on it according to due rites, and then worshipped the thousand-rayed sun as he was on the point of setting.  Then Vidura and Sanjaya made a bed for the king by spreading some blades of Kusa grass.  Near the bed of that Kuru hero they made another for Gandhari.  In close proximity to Gandhari, Yudhishthira’s mother Kunti, observant of excellent vows, happily laid herself down.  Within hearing distance of those three, slept Vidura and others.  The Yajaka Brahmanas and other followers of the king laid themselves down on their respective beds.  The foremost of Brahmanas that were there chanted aloud many sacred hymns.  The sacrificial fires blazed forth all around.  That night, therefore, seemed as delightful to them as a Brahmi night.[37] When the night passed away, they all arose from their beds and went through their morning acts.  Pouring libations then on the sacred fire, they continued their journey.  Their first day’s experience of the forest proved very painful to them on account of the grieving inhabitants of both the city and the provinces of the Kuru kingdom.”

SECTION XIX

“Vaisampayana said.  ’Following the advice of Vidura, the king took up his abode on the banks of the Bhagirathi which were sacred and deserved to be peopled with the righteous.  There many Brahmanas who had taken up their abode in the woods, as also many Kshatriyas and Vaisyas and Sudras, came to see the old monarch.  Sitting in their midst, he gladdened them all by his words.  Having duly worshipped the Brahmanas with their disciples, he dismissed them all.  As evening came, the king, and Gandhari of great fame, both descended into the stream of the Bhagirathi and duly performed their ablutions for purifying themselves.  The king and the queen, and Vidura and others, O Bharata, having bathed in the sacred stream, performed the usual rites of religion.  After the king had purified himself by a bath, the daughter of Kuntibhoja gently led both him, who was to her as her father-in-law and Gandhari from the water into the dry bank.  The Yajakas had made a sacrificial altar there for the king.  Devoted to truth, the latter poured libations then on the fire.  From the banks of the Bhagirathi the old king, with his followers, observant of vows and with senses restrained, then proceeded to Kurukshetra.  Possessed of great intelligence, the king arrived at the retreat of the royal sage Satayupa of great wisdom and had an interview with him.  Satayupa,