What Happened to Krishna and the Yadavas After Mahabharata? | Fall of Dwarka & Kali Yuga Begins

With the Kauravas defeated and the Pandavas ascending to power, Krishna’s Yadava clan became unchallenged in western India. Centered around the splendid city of Dwarka, the Yadavas were prosperous, powerful, and invincible.

Krishna, having fulfilled his divine role as the strategist of Dharma, became a kingmaker, philosopher, and anchor of his people. His presence was the spiritual and moral compass of the clan. But even the divine must obey the cosmic order. Destiny was preparing its final act.


It began, as most downfalls do, not with a war—but with a joke.

Years after the war, a few Yadava princes, intoxicated by their privileged lineage, encountered a group of rishis. Among them were the revered Vishwamitra, Narada, and Kanva. To amuse themselves, the princes disguised Samba, Krishna’s son by Jambavati, as a pregnant woman by tying a pillow to his stomach. They mockingly asked the sages to predict the gender of the “child.”

The sages, enraged at this blatant disrespect, cursed them:
“A heavy iron mace will be born from her womb, and with it, your clan shall destroy itself.”

This was no ordinary curse—it was a prophecy that would haunt Dwarka like a shadow.

As foretold, Samba “gave birth” to an iron mace the next day.

Alarmed, the elders of Dwarka decided to destroy the weapon. They ground the mace into fine powder and cast it into the sea. But fate cannot be drowned. The iron dust settled on the shore of Prabhasa and grew into iron reeds—unbreakable, metallic grasses that awaited their moment.

The mace's unmelted fragment was kept by a man named Musal, from whom the word “Mausala Parva” (the book of the mace) in the Mahabharata derives. That too would play its part.

Years later, the Yadavas gathered for a festival in Prabhasa, near the coast. With Krishna’s time on Earth nearing an end, a strange unease hung in the air.

Wine flowed freely. The once-noble warriors, heirs of a divine dynasty, became intoxicated—not just with liquor, but with arrogance, rivalry, and suppressed resentments. What started as mockery turned into quarrels. Old insults were revived, and anger replaced brotherhood.

In the chaos, the Yadavas seized the iron reeds that had sprouted from the cursed mace. The harmless-looking plants transformed into deadly weapons in their hands. Brother killed brother. Fathers struck sons. Heroes fell not in battle, but by each other’s hands.

Even Krishna’s own sons perished. Balarama, his elder brother and avatar of Adishesha, witnessed the carnage in silent despair. Soon after, he sat in deep yogic meditation and left his mortal coil, returning to his divine form.


Krishna, now alone, knew that the time had come.

He wandered into the forest, choosing solitude over sorrow. In the quiet of the woods, he sat beneath a tree, resting with one leg crossed over the other. His foot shone with the radiance of a divine being.

In that moment, Jara, a tribal hunter, mistook the bright foot for the eye of a deer and shot an arrow.

The arrow pierced Krishna’s foot—the only vulnerable part of his body, just as Achilles’ heel was his lone weakness in Greek lore. When Jara approached and recognized Krishna, he was filled with remorse. But Krishna smiled gently.

He said, "O Jara, do not grieve. You were Bali in a past life, and I, as Rama, had slain you from behind. This is the completion of that karmic cycle."

With this, Krishna withdrew his life force. The Supreme Being returned to Vaikuntha, his heavenly abode. His mortal departure signified the end of the Dwapara Yuga, and the beginning of the Kali Yuga—the age of darkness and decline.


Shortly after Krishna's departure, the city of Dwarka, built upon divine architecture and celestial foundations, began to tremble.

As foretold in many scriptures, Dwarka sank into the sea. It was nature reclaiming what man had borrowed. The city that had been a symbol of Krishna’s divine presence was now lost to time.

The submersion of Dwarka is one of the most powerful symbols in Indian mythology. It represents the ephemeral nature of even the most glorious empires, and how divine presence alone sustains civilization.

Today, ruins off the coast of Gujarat, found near Bet Dwarka and Okha, hint at ancient submerged structures. Many believe this is the historical Dwarka, now a silent legend beneath the Arabian Sea.


Why did Krishna allow his own clan to perish? Why did the Yadavas, his descendants, fall prey to such a tragic end?

The Mahabharata, and especially the Mausala Parva, doesn’t offer simplistic answers. Instead, it presents layered truths:

Even divine incarnations do not override karma. The Yadavas, though protected by Krishna, had accumulated arrogance and adharmic tendencies. The curse was only a vehicle for karma to manifest.

The Yadavas were destroyed not by enemies but by themselves. Their pride, privilege, and sense of invincibility made them blind to consequences—just like the Kauravas before them.

Krishna’s incarnation was meant to establish Dharma, not to create eternal kingdoms. With his mission fulfilled, the Dwapara Yuga had to end. The destruction of Dwarka was necessary for Kali Yuga to begin—where human beings would be tested in new ways.

Each act, from Jara’s arrow to Dwarka’s sinking, was part of a cosmic script. Krishna had said: “I am Time, the destroyer of worlds.” Even his own lineage had to succumb to that timeless law.

The Mahabharata ends not in triumph, but in stillness. After all the wars, all the dharma, and all the divine interventions, what remains is memory.

The Pandavas, grief-stricken, renounced the throne and began their journey to the Himalayas.Parikshit, Arjuna’s grandson, was crowned king and became the last hope of dharma in the coming dark age.Krishna’s message lives on in the Bhagavad Gita, which has guided generations through moral confusion.And Dwarka, though submerged, lives in the collective memory as a lost Atlantis of India.The Divine Disappears, Dharma Must EndureThe story of Krishna and the Yadavas after the Mahabharata is not merely a tale of destruction—it is a mirror to civilization.

It teaches that power must be accompanied by humility, that divine protection does not excuse arrogance, and that even gods do not stop the wheel of time—they only turn it in the right direction.

When Krishna left, he left behind not just a kingdom or a family—but a way of life, a philosophy, and a promise:
"Whenever dharma declines, I will return."

As we live in Kali Yuga today, the only way to summon Krishna again is through truth, devotion, and remembrance.