Duḥśāsana

Duḥśāsana, simply known as Dushasana, Sanskrit: दुःशासन, Telugu: దుశ్శాసనుడు, Hindi: दुःशासन.

Duḥśāsana was the second of the hundred sons of Dhṛtarāshṭra and Gāndhārī, and a younger brother of Duryodhana. His name means “hard to rule” or “one who commands terribly” (duḥ, difficult or terrible, and śāsana, command). He was one of the main agents of the worst acts of the Kaurava side.

The Mahābhārata condemns him most of all for carrying out Duryodhana’s order to drag Draupadī by the hair into the full assembly of the Kuru court. For this, Bhīmasena swore the most terrible oath of the epic. He vowed to tear open Duḥśāsana’s chest on the battlefield and drink his blood. In the Kurukshetra war Duḥśāsana fought as one of the senior Kaurava commanders. Bhīmasena killed him on the seventeenth day and kept the vow.

Who he was

Duḥśāsana was the second of the hundred sons of Dhṛtarāshṭra, the blind king of Hastināpura. He was among the most devoted followers of his elder brother Duryodhana. He took part in all the acts of adharma (wrong against dharma) of the Kaurava side. These were the dice game, the attempt to strip Draupadī, and the steady effort to keep the Pāṇḍavas from their rightful kingdom.

The dragging of Draupadī

Draupadī had been staked and lost in the dice game. The charioteer Prātikāmī had twice carried her question back to the assembly, and no answer came. Duryodhana lost patience with this deadlock over dharma. He ordered Duḥśāsana to go into the inner rooms himself and bring Draupadī to the sabhā (assembly hall).

Duḥśāsana obeyed at once. He went into the women’s quarters, found Draupadī among the other queens and seized her by the hair. Her long, sweet-smelling hair had been dressed with ritual care. She was in her monthly period and wore a single garment. She struggled. She called on the women of the house to witness the wrong done to her. She called on dharma. Duḥśāsana dragged her out.

He pulled her through the halls and into the open assembly, before every king, elder and warrior of the Kuru court. The text describes the scene very exactly: her loosened hair, her one blood-stained cloth, her trembling, her cries. Duḥśāsana then tried to strip that single garment from her. Kṛshṇa stepped in with an endless stream of cloth. Duḥśāsana became exhausted and was defeated, and he could not pull the garment away. (Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Chapters 67–77)

The Droṇa Parva account of him says the same: in front of the gathered elders and kings, Duḥśāsana tried to strip Draupadī of her garment, and Bhagavān Kṛshṇa protected her through divine grace. The act drew the most terrible vow from Bhīmasena. He vowed that he would one day tear open Duḥśāsana’s chest with his bare hands and drink his blood. He also vowed that he would not call himself a man until this was done.

The mockery at the departure

In the Anudyūta Parva, the Pāṇḍavas put on deer-skin garments after losing the second dice game. Duḥśāsana then made a speech of great cruelty. He mocked their exile in harsh words and called them napuṃsakas (men without manhood). He urged Draupadī to choose a better husband from among the Kaurava kings. He said the Pāṇḍavas were no better than cattle that had been let out of a slaughterhouse only to be driven back in.

He also copied Bhīmasena’s walk, the lion-like stride of Bhīma, to show his contempt and to provoke him. Bhīma turned back, half-facing the assembly. He made plain what his first oath had left unsaid: “I will drink your blood. This is truth spoken before the entire assembly.” (Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Chapters 67–77)

Bhīma’s oath

Bhīmasena’s oath about Duḥśāsana is one of the most exact and striking vows in the Mahābhārata:

“The vṛkodara (wolf-bellied one), this son of Kuntī, will on the battlefield tear open the chest of this Duḥśāsana and drink his blood. If I do not do this, let me not reach the good worlds that are earned by righteous conduct.”

Bhīma repeated this oath after Duḥśāsana’s mockery at the departure. He made it clear that he would carry it out in person and without fail. (Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Chapters 67–77)

Duḥśāsana in the Kurukshetra war

Duḥśāsana fought as one of the senior Kaurava commanders throughout the war, under Bhīshma and then under Droṇa as commander of the army. His son, called Duḥśāsanīya, entered the field on the thirteenth day, during the battle of the Cakravyūha.

His son and the death of Abhimanyu

On the thirteenth day, Abhimanyu had destroyed thousands of warriors in his lone stand inside the Cakravyūha. Six of the greatest Kaurava commanders then plotted to surround him and kill him all together. They were Droṇa, Kṛpa, Karṇa, Aśvatthāmā, Bṛhadbala and Kṛtavarman. Even those who did it knew that this many-against-one attack lay outside the rules of righteous warfare.

Abhimanyu’s chariot was destroyed, his horses were killed, his charioteer was slain and his bow was broken. He came down to the ground and fought on with a chariot wheel as his weapon, and then with a mace. At last Duḥśāsana’s son came up behind Abhimanyu and struck him with a mace, when he was already surrounded and without weapons. This blow brought the great warrior down. Abhimanyu fell to the earth. The Kaurava forces broke out in cheers while the sky itself grew dark. (Mahābhārata, Droṇa Parva, Chapter 48)

Death at the hands of Bhīmasena

On the seventeenth day of the Kurukshetra war, Bhīma and Duḥśāsana met face to face on the battlefield. Bhīma struck Duḥśāsana with his mace so hard that he was thrown from his chariot to the ground. Bhīma stepped down from his own chariot.

What followed was the vow carried out just as it was sworn in the sabhā. Bhīma set his foot on Duḥśāsana’s chest and pinned him to the earth. He tore Duḥśāsana’s arm from his body with his bare hands. Then he split open the chest with his hands. He cupped the warm blood in his hands and drank it. He drank with satisfaction and declared aloud before all present that none of the drinks praised in the world was equal to the taste of this blood. The drinks he named were a mother’s milk, honey, ghee, divine waters and fine liquors.

Warriors on both sides who saw this fell back in horror. Weapons dropped from their hands. Men shut their eyes. Many cried out that Bhīma was not a man but a rākshasa. Even Karṇa, watching from a distance, was shaken.

After drinking, Bhīma stood up and called out in a great voice that carried across the battlefield: “Here, lowest of men! I drink your blood now. Call out again, ‘cattle, cattle!’, as you called us in the sabhā. This is the result of what Śakuni, Duryodhana and Karṇa planned together. This is payment for the dice game, for the poisoning, for the snakes, for the Lākshāgṛha, for the exile, and for the dragging of Draupadī by her hair. You are the root cause of all that pain. I have kept the first of my two vows.”

He then declared that he would keep his second vow, to kick Duryodhana’s head with his foot, before the war ended. (Mahābhārata, Karṇa Parva, Chapters 82–83)

Gāndhārī’s lament in the Strī Parva

In the Strī Vilāpa Parva, Gāndhārī looked over the battlefield of Kurukshetra with divine sight and mourned each of her sons in turn. She found the body of Duḥśāsana among them. She mourned him as her second son. He had been the instrument of Draupadī’s humiliation, and Bhīma had torn open his chest and drunk his blood on the battlefield to keep his terrible oath. Gāndhārī mourned both the man and his fate. (Mahābhārata, Strī Parva, Chapters 16–25)

After the war, in the Āśramavāsika Parva

For fifteen years after the war, Dhṛtarāshṭra lived at Hastināpura under the protection of Yudhishṭhira. In those years Bhīma alone could not put aside the memory of Duḥśāsana’s cruelty. He deferred to Yudhishṭhira on the outside, as his brothers did. But he privately recalled, striking his own arms in front of his companions, how those very arms had crushed “Duryodhana, Karṇa and Duḥśāsana” and sent them to the world of the dead. He took pride in the killing and did not repent of the anger that still burned in him. Dhṛtarāshṭra heard a report of this and grieved, though he said nothing to Bhīma. (Mahābhārata, Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapters 2–3)

Vidura brought Dhṛtarāshṭra’s request that Yudhishṭhira allow śrāddha (offerings for the dead) for Bhīshma, Droṇa, Somadatta and Bāhlīka before Dhṛtarāshṭra left for the forest. Bhīma refused. His refusal turned on the memory of the dice game and the thirteen years of exile, which Duḥśāsana’s own act of dragging Draupadī into the assembly had done so much to bring on. Bhīma asked Arjuna how the love Dhṛtarāshṭra now showed could be squared with his silence on that day.

Even so, Dhṛtarāshṭra held a ten-day dāna-yajña (a ritual of giving) at the close of the parva. In it Duḥśāsana was named by himself among Dhṛtarāshṭra’s hundred sons. He received the same śrāddha gifts as his brothers, which paid the debt a father owes to a son. (Mahābhārata, Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapters 11, 14)

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Dyūta Parva and Anudyūta Parva, Chapters 67–77
• Mahābhārata, Droṇa Parva, Chapter 48
• Mahābhārata, Karṇa Parva, Chapters 82–83
• Mahābhārata, Strī Parva, Chapters 16–25
• Mahābhārata, Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapters 2–3, 11, 14