Marutta

Yudhishthira grieves that those who abandon dharma sometimes prosper. Lomasha answers him not with comfort but with a warning: prosperity without dharma is a slow poison. He traces the chain of destruction — insolence to vanity to anger to shamelessness to ruin — and tells Yudhishthira that the path to lasting prosperity runs through tirthas, austerities, and the example of the righteous kings who came before him.

Lomasha recites the Kuru genealogy and then tells Yudhishthira a cryptic saying from a pishacha woman about bathing at Bhutilaya. He reveals that the place where they stand is Kurukshetra's gate — a tirtha so sacred that bathing there cleanses all evil deeds and lets a man see all the worlds.