Pandavas Settle at Lake Dvaitavana

The twelfth year of exile had arrived. The Pandavas had spent the previous year in the great forest near the mountain Yamuna, living among boars and birds, radiant in their austerities. Now they moved — the foremost among those devoted to the knowledge of arms — toward the neighborhood of the desert. They came to the Sarasvati river and found Lake Dvaitavana. It was a place unlike any they had seen. The banks of the Sarasvati were covered with plakshas, akshas, rohitakas, cane, snuhas, badaris, khadiras, shirishas, bilvas, ingudas, pilus, shamis, and karira trees — a dense and varied forest of fruit and shade. It was a place loved by yakshas (nature spirits), gandharvas (celestial musicians), and maharshis (great sages). It was the sacrificial ground of the gods themselves. The Pandavas wished to live there. When the residents of that region saw them arrive and begin to settle, they came to them. These were men engaged in austerities and restrained, devoted to rituals and meditation. They brought grass for bedding, water for drinking, vessels for cooking, offerings for worship, and stones for grinding grain. They gave the Pandavas everything they needed to establish a hermitage. The sons of a god among men — the Pandavas — lived there happily, roaming delightedly along the banks of the Sarasvati. The place that had been a sacrificial ground for the gods became a home for five brothers in exile.