What Punishment Is Really For

Statecraft in the Mahabharat treats danda — the rod, punishment, the king's coercive power — as one of the central subjects a ruler must understand. The Shanti Parva, the long instruction Bhishma gives from his bed of arrows, returns to it at length: what restraint is for, when it is legitimate, and what a kingdom becomes without it.

The distinction the epic keeps drawing is between punishment as correction and punishment as revenge. The war itself can be read as the second dressed as the first, which is part of why the aftermath is so bleak.