A house
The Kauravas
Gandhari binds her eyes. A mass of flesh is divided into ghee-jars. Duryodhana comes out after Yudhishthira. The jackals know it.
Kaurava in ordinary speech means Duryodhana’s hundred. In the recitation they are Dhritarashtra and Gandhari’s sons, born from a ball of flesh Vyasa divides into jars, plus a daughter, Duhsala. Yuyutsu is Dhritarashtra’s son by a Vaishya woman and later crosses the field.
They grow in one house with the Pandavas. The quarrel is not a distant feud. It is cousins, one roof, one teacher, and a throne two fathers sat on in turn.
Duhshasana drags Draupadi. Vikarna speaks in the sabha and is not followed. The war books spend them in batches. Duryodhana is last, in the lake. This hub lists the named, not every numbered brother as a thin page.
Named figures in this house
- DhritarashtraThe blind king. Father of the hundred. He knows what is right and does not stop the dice.
- GandhariQueen who binds her own eyes. Mother of the hundred, from a mass of flesh divided into jars.
- YuyutsuDhritarashtra’s son by a Vaishya woman. Crosses to the Pandavas before the war. Survives.
- DuryodhanaEldest of the hundred. Named Suyodhana at birth. Kali in a prince. The mace is his.
- DuhshasanaSecond brother. Drags Draupadi in the sabha. Bhima’s vow is about him.
- VikarnaThe Kaurava who speaks for dharma when Draupadi is staked. Dies in the war anyway.
- DuhsalaOnly daughter of Dhritarashtra and Gandhari. Married into Sindhu. The war makes her a widow.
- BhanumatiNamed in later tradition as Duryodhana’s wife, a Kalinga princess.
- Lakshmana KumaraDuryodhana’s son. Slain by Abhimanyu.