Shanti Parva, the Book of Peace, is the longest single book of the entire Mahabharata, opening with Yudhishthira crowned king over a kingdom devastated by the very war that won it for him, so consumed by grief and guilt over the scale of death his claim has caused that he initially refuses to rule at all and must be persuaded, across extended argument from his brothers, Draupadi and Krishna, that abandoning his royal duty now would waste every sacrifice already made.
Once persuaded, Yudhishthira is directed to the still-living Bhishma, lying on his bed of arrows and using his self-chosen delay before death to deliver an enormous body of teaching on statecraft, law, ethics and the duties of a righteous king, material that occupies the overwhelming bulk of this parva and ranges from practical political counsel, taxation, warfare, the treatment of ministers and subjects, to extended philosophical reflection on dharma, karma and the paths toward spiritual liberation. Embedded within this vast teaching sits the story of a starving hunter who nonetheless refuses to lie or steal even to feed his family, and the story of a butcher who, despite his low-status occupation, is revealed to possess deeper wisdom than a proud ascetic, both illustrations of the parva's recurring insistence that righteous conduct matters more than social status or conventional piety.