020 Four brothers on a hunting spree in four directions for five years

VOL. 3, BOOK OF FORESTS VANA PARVA CHAPTER 47 VERSES 41 AND 42
aran047011 praaciim raajaa dakshiNaam Bhimaseno; yamau pratiiciim atha vaapy udiiciim` dhanurdharaa maamsahetor mrigaaNaam; kshayam cakrur nityam evopagamya

|| tathaa teshaam vasataam kaamyake vanai; vihiinaanaam arjunenotsukaanaam` pancaiva varshaaNi tadaa vyatiiyur; adhiiyataam japataam juhvataam

K.M. GANGULI'S TRANSLATION
And the king himself wending towards the
east, and Bhima, towards the south, and the twins, towards the west and
the north, daily killed with bow in hand the deer of the forest, for the
sake of meat. And it was that the Pandavas lived for five years in the
woods of Kamyaka, in anxiety at the absence of Arjuna, and engaged all
the while in study and prayers and sacrifices.


ybrao a donkey's views.
*Prayers, sacrifices and studies will reach their zenith when bellies are full with meat.

*Calculation: 2 deer-one on each shoulder per brother = 8 deer per day. 365x5 years = 1825 days. 1825 x8 deer = 14600 deer.

*The families and race of deer must have worried about their future. Deer should also learn prayers, sacrifices and sacrifices, if they have to defend themselves. They do not , unfortunately, know east, south, west and north directions. They would have run hither and thither in agitation when the great great Dharma-Bhima-Nakula-Sahadeva chased them. Pandava vanavasa (Forest exile of Pandava brothers) was a calamity for the deer, just as Sri Rama Vana vasa (forest exile of Sri Rama)^ was a calamity for deer in Dandakaranya of Ramayana times. Were these calamities not avoidable?


^You can see the calamity to deer from the bows and arrows of Rama and Lakshmana at my Ramayana blog.Click to visit ramayanayb.blogspot.com.

*Just visualise them carrying one deer each of their shoulders and bending to balance their bodies.

*You can also visualise one more scene. You could have seen in my earlier post, that Yudhishthira fed pork to the Brahmins present at the newly built court hall maya-sabha (Verse No. 1, chapter 4, of Book 2-- Sabha Parva-the Book of Court-Hall. As hunting swine/bore/pigs (varaha) was not a taboo during Mahabharata times or Gupta Rule, the hunting routine of the four brothers might have included some pigs also. To estimate the loss of lives of hogs and the deers separately, we may have to use some algebric formulae like 2a+1b.(a representing deer and b representing swine).