The Book of the Women presents an interesting take on the Great Bhrata war.

The setting is the battlefield immediately after the hostilities are over; the theme is horror, loss, and grief; the women who prowl the battlefield, looking for the remains of their husbands, sons, and brothers, fighting jackals and vultures for their bodies, are, mainly, a poetic device the authors of the MBh used to sum up and close out their account of the war. I said the women were mainly a deviceI am referring to the texts use of the mass of the grieving Bhrata women; a few womenKunt, Draupad, and above all Gndhr do have a significant presence in the basic structure of the narrative. As we have the Book now in the written Sanskrit version, as made available in the critical edition of Poona, the first portion of the book focuses upon the grief of Dhtarra, the father of a hundred sons dead, and speeches made to dispel his grief (from Vidura, his half-brother who is an incarnation of the God Dharma, and his actual father, Ka Dvaipyana Vysa). From this didactic interlude we move to the theme of reconciliation between the victorious Pavas, on the one hand, and Dhtarra and his queen Gndhr, on the other. After a curious episode in which the kings grief is represented by his attempt to crush Bhmasena (only to be foiled by Kas foresight), Gndhr takes center stage, to hold it for most of the rest of the Book. Initially, she intended to curse the killers of her sons, but Vysa divines her feelings, appears, and tells her that now is the time for peace. She says her only grudges stem from Bhmas using a low blow to defeat Duryodhana in their club-duel and his drinking Dusanas blood on the battlefield. Their exchanges on these two subjects are very interesting. The first gets into the subject of dharma and how it is conceived and regarded by different speakers in the text; and the second gives a glimpse into the subtle rhetoric of the text. In the first, Bhma simply reveals himself as a bald pragmatist, one for whom artha is paramount and dharma counts for nothing.

Following up on that, the second depicts Gndhr as being mistaken about a detail in the sequence of events on the battlefield and Bhma seizing that mistake unscrupulously to falsely attenuate the horror of his drinking Dusanas blood. David Gitomer has pointed out Bhmas association with rkasas and his rkasa like qualitieswhat is the MBh doing in having this untamed brute excuse himself and lie like a child caught stealing butter to this poor bereaved mother, his mother too? The scene becomes more potent if we recall that, back at the actual moment of Bhmas defeating Duryodhana with the low blow, Ka, who had himself suggested the low blow, provided Bhma with the arthrtha kevalam line of reasoning. And Ka Vsudeva and Ka Dvaipyana Vysa who are both present allow Bhmas temporizing to pass unchallenged. So goes the reconciliation. The focus now shifts to Gndhr alone. She becomes like an oracular woman in a trance. She gets a divine eye and is able to see every detail of the grisly battlefield without moving. How she acquires this divine eye is interesting, and seems to represent a certain sort of brahminization. The text introduces the fact by pointing to the suffering she had willingly accepted (the tapas) upon marrying Dhtarra. Because Dhtarra was blind Gndhr willingly agreed to wear a blindfold the rest of her life in order to be the same as her husband; that is, so she would not be superior to him. As with all such suffering willingly embraced, the agent, really a patient, accumulates power, and Gndhr had a good store of that. But after mentioning this fact, the text goes on to say that Vysa gave her the divine eye as a favor! For whatever reason the MBhs authors were not going to allow this woman to speak without a higher sanction! Most of the rest of the book consists of Gndhrs report of the women prowling the battlefield.

Ka Vsudeva is at her side and she addresses him throughout her vision.