This new translation of the end of the great Sanskrit epic depicts the final years of the surviving heroes, their debates about the justice of war and the meaning of life, their ultimate deaths, and their experiences of heaven and hell. The men now contemplate the ways in which they had violated the warrior code, and the women lament the conditions under which they had conceived their sons, often against their will, and the tragic and often unjust deaths of those sons. Finally, in heaven, enemies are reconciled, wounds healed, and deaths undone, as the heroes regain the divine natures that had been merely suspended during their sojourn on earth. The author, a distinguished translator of Sanskrit texts, has put the text into clear, flowing, contemporary prose, with a comprehensive but unintrusive critical apparatus. This book will delight general readers and enlighten students of Indian civilization and of great world literature.