Duryodhana is humiliated in Maya's palace

Classical

After the Rājasūya was done, the kings went home. Duryodhana and Śakuni stayed behind in the Pāṇḍavas' palace to look around. This is the story as Duryodhana tells it afterwards to his father, in his own bitter words. He had been put in charge of the tribute, and seeing the wealth pour in had worn him out and filled him with envy. Then came the hall. First, he saw a crystal floor that looked like a lotus pond. Thinking it was water, he lifted his clothes to cross, and found he was walking on solid floor. Bhīma laughed at him. Duryodhana said he wanted to kill Bhīma on the spot, but remembered Śiśupāla's fate.

Then he took a real pool for a crystal floor and fell into it. Bhīma and Arjuna laughed, and so did Draupadī and the women. The Pāṇḍavas' servants brought him dry clothes, which made it worse. Then he walked into a wall painted as a doorway, and struck his forehead. Nakula and Sahadeva ran to help him. Sahadeva, trying to be kind, pointed at the 'door', but Bhīma burst out laughing and mocked him again. Duryodhana said that there were many gems in the hall he had never heard of. All of these, he told his father, were what tormented him. The epic does not say the Pāṇḍavas set out to humiliate him, and Maya's tricks were meant for visitors.

But in Duryodhana's mind the laughter, above all Draupadī's and Bhīma's, became a grievance which the loss at dice would repay. He told Dhṛtarāṣṭra that his enemies' wealth, and the sound of the conches at the consecration, which made him faint, were more than he could bear. He was pale and thin, and wished for death. Śakuni then took up the matter. He told Duryodhana not to envy the Pāṇḍavas, who were only enjoying their own fortune, and pointed out that Duryodhana had many allies too. He said open war could not defeat the Pāṇḍavas, but he knew how to defeat Yudhiṣṭhira at dice, a game Yudhiṣṭhira loved though he played it poorly.

This is the moment the dice game was planned, and it came directly from an old insult and a mocking laugh. The humiliation scene is told by Duryodhana to his father, which means it reflects his anger as much as the facts. In Ganguli's version Draupadī and the women laugh along with Bhīma and Arjuna, but the famous sneer attributed to her, 'the blind man's son is blind', is not in the text at all; it is a popular later addition, and it is worth keeping the two apart. What matters in the epic is that Duryodhana experiences it as an insult, and that Śakuni, a clever man, knows how to use that feeling.

Told by Duryodhana → Dhṛtarāṣṭra; Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Duryodhana, Śakuni, Bhīma, Arjuna, Draupadī, Nakula, Sahadeva, Dhṛtarāṣṭra

Bound to

Maya builds the Sabhā for the Pāṇḍavas origin

Śiśupāla's death at the Agra-pūjā origin

Śakuni's plan: Dhṛtarāṣṭra agrees to the dice match origin

Duryodhana's thigh: Maitreya's curse and the Danava armour mirror

Places: Indraprastha (Maya's palace)

Where this comes from

read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Sabha Parva, Section XLV (Vyāsa's prophecy; Duryodhana and Śakuni remain)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Sabha Parva, Section XLIX (Duryodhana tells Dhṛtarāṣṭra of the crystal lake, floor and false door)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Sabha Parva, Section L (the tributes)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (mahabharataonline.com) Sabha Parva, Section LII (the consecration; conches; Duryodhana's despair)

See it on the tree · All stories

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