Duryodhana

Duryodhana (दुर्योधन) is the eldest of the hundred Kaurava brothers in the Mahabharata, son of Dhritarashtra and Gandhari. His refusal to give the Pandavas their share of the kingdom is the immediate cause of the war on Kurukshetra, and it is his army that Arjuna sees arrayed against him when the Bhagavad Gita begins.

Who was Duryodhana?

Duryodhana was born to Dhritarashtra and Gandhari at Hastinapura, the first of their hundred sons. From childhood he resented his cousins the Pandavas, especially the strength of Bhima and the skill of Arjuna. As the eldest son of the reigning king he believed the throne was rightfully his, and he refused to accept Yudhishthira as heir.

The road to war

Duryodhana tried several times to remove the Pandavas, including the house of lac at Varanavata. After the Pandavas built Indraprastha, he arranged the dice game in which Yudhishthira lost the kingdom, and he insulted Draupadi in the assembly. When the Pandavas returned from exile and asked only for five villages, he answered that he would not give even land the size of a needle point. Krishna’s peace mission failed on that refusal.

Duryodhana in the Gita

The Gita begins with Sanjaya telling Dhritarashtra how Duryodhana, in 1.2, goes to his teacher Drona and names the warriors on both sides. His words are confident on the surface, but the verses that follow show a leader counting his army and checking its weak points. Nowhere does he doubt the war itself, which is the sharp contrast with Arjuna’s grief in the same chapter.

His end

On the eighteenth day, after his army was destroyed, Duryodhana hid in a lake and was challenged by Bhima. In their mace duel Bhima struck him on the thigh, breaking it, and Duryodhana died of the wound. Admirers of the epic often note his courage and loyalty to friends, especially Karna, even as the text is clear that his pride and refusal to listen ruined his family.