The dice game is the hinge of the Mahabharata and its most uncomfortable scene. Yudhishthira, the dharma king, is drawn into a rigged game and loses everything by stages, including his brothers, himself, and then Draupadi, who is the wife of all five. Duhshasana drags her into the assembly by the hair while she is menstruating and in a single garment, and attempts to strip her; the epic's most famous rescue follows, though scholars note the divine intervention is absent from the oldest manuscript tradition. Her legal question — whether a man who had already staked and lost himself retained the standing to stake her — is put to the assembly, and Bhishma, the greatest authority present, answers that the course of dharma is subtle and he cannot decide it. Everyone in the room is honourable and nobody stops it. The epic is not confused about this: the war is the consequence, and the text says so.