Pandavas Sustain Themselves in Kamyaka Forest

Janamejaya asked Vaishampayana: “After sending the brave Pandavas into exile, all of King Dhritarashtra’s lamentations served no purpose. Why did the king agree with his son Duryodhana, whose intelligence is limited, and anger Pandu’s sons, the maharathas (great warriors)? What did Pandu’s sons eat when they lived in the forest? Tell me — was it collected from the forest or cultivated?” Vaishampayana answered. The Pandavas ate what the forest gave them — forest produce and animals brought down with pure arrows — but they never ate first. Every meal was first offered to the brahmanas who had followed them into exile. And many had followed. Brahmanas with fire and brahmanas without fire — ten thousand great-souled snataka brahmanas (those who had completed their Vedic studies), who knew the means of salvation — all of them came to Kamyaka. Yudhishthira sustained them there. He killed ruru deer, black antelopes, and other sacrificial forest-dwelling animals with his bows and offered them to the brahmanas according to ritual. Among those ten thousand, not a single ill-complexioned or diseased person could be seen. No one was thin, weak, miserable, or frightened. Dharmaraja Yudhishthira, supreme among the Kouravas, maintained them like his own beloved sons, relatives, or brothers from the same womb. Draupadi served them all. Like a mother, she first served her husbands, then all the brahmanas, and only then ate whatever food remained. For the meat of the deer, the brothers spread out across the forest with their bows — the king towards the east, Bhimasena towards the south, the twins towards the west and the north — and they made that race of deer decay. Thus they lived in Kamyaka, and five years passed. But they were without Arjuna. He had gone north to the Himalayas to acquire divine weapons, and they were anxious about him. Still, they did not stop. They engaged themselves in studying, meditating, and sacrificing — a stable but incomplete state of exile, waiting for the brother who had not yet returned.