Death of Duryodhana

Death of Duryodhana

After the death of Karna Duryodhana was terribly  sad and was crestfallen . Defeat was staring at him. At that time Kirubar, the brother in law of Drona came and advised him to stop the war and come to agreement with the Pandavas as he has lost everything and is more or less left alone.  All His ninety nine brothers and his brother in law Jayathradhan and all his friends and relatives had been killed. He had only Salliyan and His uncle Sakuni who were also successfully killed one after the other when they led the army of the Kauravas. Finally Duryodhana was left alone defeated and humiliated.   He was left with nothing as no warrior, no army and no single soldier was left for him to fight. So he took his mace and went to a pool and hid inside it. But the Pandavas came there in search of him and called him out of the pool to come and fight.

Duryodhana was completely defeated and said that he came to cool himself from fatigue and did not run away like a coward and he asked Yudhishtra to take the Kingdom and rule it as he had lost all his desire to live and rule.

But Yudhishtra did not agree as he said “since you  refused to give us even a place on the end of a needle to live and you disgraced Draupadi, got her pulled by her hair when she was on her periods  and who was your own cousin’s  wife whom you should have respected and so you have to come out and fight for your life and honour.”

As he has no other way to defend himself Duryodhana got up and called the Pandavas to come and fight him one by one and go to hell. He also said as he was wounded and tired all should not join and fight him.

Then Yudhishtra asked him”if fighting one by many is not justice then how you all joined and killed an unarmed Abhimanyu? So justice will come only for you? So come and fight and die like a true warrior. You select one among us to fight and die”.

Duryodhana finally came out of the water and chose Bheema to fight  with mace as the chosen weapon as both were famous fighters with mace. They started fighting and the fight went on for some time.

Then Krishna said “Beema would kill Duryodhana by hitting him at his thighs as he had taken a vow to kill him so when Draupadi was asked by him to sit on the thighs of Duryodhana, there by hinting to Bheema to do so as hitting at the thighs was against the rules of mace fight.

Hearing Krishna’s words Bheema hit Duryodhana on his thighs and wounded him seriously and he fell down to die a slow death. Bheem danced on his body and stomped on it. Duryodhana wriggled in the mud with pain and Krishna stopped Bheema saying that “being your own relative and from the royal family you should not do this “ and stopped him from further humiliating Duryodhana.

They left Duryodhana to die in the pool. He died but before dying got a promise from Aswathama to kill all Pandavas when they were sleeping.