Duryodhana

And we see in that story that...

One of the main causes, maybe not the only cause, but one of the main causes for the war was the attachment that Dhritarashtra had to his son Duryodhana.

Duryodhana was evil.

Duryodhana had bad intentions.

Duryodhana wanted to take the kingdom from the Pandavas and rule himself.

And Dhritarashtra knew that that was a bad idea.

Dhritarashtra knew also that that was against Dharma, but he couldn't resist his attachment to his son.

The whole story became very bad, and the whole war took place just because of that.

It's sent again, a saintly person to help us.

One Dronacharya was teaching the sons of Pandu and Dhritarashtra, that is, Yudhisthira, Arjuna, Bhim, Nakusha, Dev and Duryodhana.

He told, I am giving lesson for tomorrow.

Shatyam bada.

Always try to speak truth.

You should be prepared and come tomorrow.

Duryodhana told that I had remanded.

I can make you hear.

Now the time came when Pandu grew tired of his royal duties and spent a great deal of his time in the forest like a hermit.

The government therefore passed into the hands of his brother, Dhritarashtra, who was blind and who had no less than a hundred sons, among whom Duryodhana was the eldest.

One day news came to the palace that Pandu had met his death in the forest, and his brother became king in fact.

But the five tall sons of Pandu remained under the guardianship of their uncle.

Naturally, the sons of the new king were jealous of the five brothers, and Duryodhana in particular hated them with all his heart.

The five brothers, however, were not concerned to hate anyone.

They lived contentedly at their uncle's court, engaged in perfecting themselves in all manly pursuits, as if they knew that the time would come when all their valor, hardihood, wisdom, and powers of endurance would be put to the most severe tests.

Then in a voice which matched his stature, the stranger said to Arjun, All your feats of strength and valor are as nothing unto mine.

And I wanted to give the listeners a kind of a journey with this object from its, literally from its creation to relatively the present day, just to give us an idea of some of the big characters, the big themes, and some of the legality of a lot of this that I think will set up the context for this quite well.

So the object I'm speaking about is the Duryodhana.

It's like a life-sized statue.

It's incredible.

Whereas in Koh Ker, they're really, they're moving.

They're depicted in movement.

And you mentioned the Duryodhana, which is kind of the ur piece from Koh Ker that there are a lot more, which is a figure of this male, a male figure clearly doing something.

It's sort of bouncing on bent knees.

But the, the cousins were always trying to, um, trying to, uh, take the whole thing- kingdom for themselves.

The fact that, um, Duryodhana, that, that is the, the eldest of the cousins who was the main, the main, uh, baddie in the whole story.

The fact that he was ready to cheat even his own very close relatives fro-from what was rightfully theirs shows that how will...

If someone's ready to cheat their own, uh, relatives, what sort of a king will he be? If he had ruled, he would have been exploiting the people.

Now the time came when Pandu grew tired of his royal duties and spent a great deal of his time in the forest like a hermit.

The government therefore passed into the hands of his brother, Dhritarashtra, who was blind and who had no less than a hundred sons, among whom Duryodhana was the eldest.

One day, news came to the palace that Pandu had met his death in the forest, and his brother became king in fact.

But the five tall sons of Pandu remained under the guardianship of their uncle.

Naturally, the sons of the new king were jealous of the five brothers, and Duryodhana in particular hated them with all his heart.

The five brothers, however, were not concerned to hate anyone.

They lived contentedly at their uncle's court, engaged in perfecting themselves in all manly pursuits, as if they knew that the time would come when all their valor, hardihood, wisdom, and powers of endurance would be put to the most severe tests.

"Who is this?" asked the people in faltering whispers, but there was none to answer the question.