The divine sage, addressing Yudhisthira, explained to him that happiness is to be attained neither by learning, nor good morals, nor personal exertion. There is yet another and more important factor than all these to be reckoned with, and that is _Karma_. “If the fruits of our exertion,” says Markandeya, “were not dependent on anything else, people would attain the object of their desire by simply striving to attain it. It is sure that able, intelligent, and diligent persons are baffled in their efforts and do not attain the fruits of their actions. On the other hand, persons who are always active in injuring others, and in practising deception on the world, lead a happy life. There are some who attain prosperity without any exertion; and there are others who with the utmost exertion are unable to achieve their dues. Miserly persons with the object of having sons born to them worship the gods and practise severe austerities, and these sons ... at length turn out to be very infamous scions of their race; and others begotten under the same auspices, decently pass their lives in luxury, with hoards of riches and grain accumulated by their ancestors. The diseases from which men suffer are undoubtedly the result of their own _Karma_,” that is of their actions in previous and unremembered existences. “It is,” pursues Markandeya, “the immemorial tradition[84] that the soul is eternal and everlasting, but the corporeal frame of all creatures is subject to destruction here (below). When, therefore, life is extinguished the body only is destroyed, but the spirit, wedded to its actions, travels elsewhere.” It inhabits innumerable bodies in succession, it lives countless lives, it passes through the infernal regions, it attains to the heaven of the gods; and, after untold woes and infinite struggles, is eventually re-absorbed in the divine essence from which it sprang.[85] Turning from these episodes and mystic speculations to the Pandavas themselves, we find that the ever-fair Draupadi having, by her perennial and faultless beauty, aroused the passions of Jayadratha, Rajah of Sindhu, was artfully carried off by him during the temporary absence of her husbands; but the ravisher was overtaken and suffered punishment at the hands of the ardent Bhima, who, after inflicting severe bodily chastisement upon the defeated Rajah, cut off his hair, all except five locks, and made him confess himself the slave of the Pandavas. At the request of Yudhisthira, backed by generous Draupadi, Jayadratha was released.