to curse anyone who makes him angry.
One victim of his wrath is the maiden
Shakuntala, who in her reverie on her
newfound love with King Dushyanta
does not notice and pay homage to
Durvasas. She is cursed that her love
would completely forget her. In another
case Durvasas curses all the gods to be
subject to old age and death. This is
provoked by an “insult” from Indra’s
elephant Airavata, which had flung a
garland given by Durvasas to the
ground. As with most cursesin Hindu
mythology, neither of these curses can
be withdrawn, but their severity is
reduced by mitigating conditions.
Shakuntala is told that King Dushyanta
will remember her if she shows him
some sign of their relationship, which
she does. The gods can avoid old age
and death by obtaining and consuming
the nectar of immortality (amrta).
As with all the sages, Durvasas can
also grant wonderful boons to people
with whom he is pleased. One such ben-
eficiary was Kunti, one of the heroines
in the epic Mahabharata. Durvasas
gives Kunti a powerful mantra (sacred
sound), which will allow her to have a
child by any of the gods simply by think-
ing about him. As soon as Kunti receives
this mantra, she tests it while looking at
the sun, and immediately bears the
golden child Karna. In her panic at
unexpectedly becoming a mother—she
is still unmarried, and understandably
concerned about what people might
think—she puts the child in a box and
abandons him in the Ganges. After her
marriage to Pandu (son of the sage
Vyasa and queen Ambalika), this
mantra is the only way that she is able to
have children, since Pandu has been
cursed to die the moment he sleeps with
one of his wives. She uses this mantra to
bear Yudhishthira, Arjuna, and Bhima,
then teaches it to her co-wife Madri,
who bears Nakulaand Sahadeva. Thus,
through the gift of Durvasas, all the
Pandavabrothers—the epic’s protago-
nists—are children of the gods.
Duryodhana
In the Mahabharata, the later of the
two great Hindu epics, Duryodhana is
the eldest son of King Dhrtarashtra,
and thus the leader of the Kauravas,
one of the two royal factions whose
struggle for power is at the heart of the
epic. Duryodhana and ninety-nine
brothers are born in an unusual man-
ner. Their mother Gandharigives birth
to a great lump of flesh, which is divid-
ed and put into one hundred pots of
clarified butter. In these pots the lumps
develop into infants. At the moment
Duryodhana is born there are a host of
evil omens, and when the court
astrologers are asked to interpret these,
they conclude that Duryodhana will be
the ruin of the country and his family,
and that it will be better to abandon
him to the elements. Fatherly feelings
prevent Dhrtarashtra from doing this,
which sets the stage for the final con-
flict. Even though the major force dri-
ving the epic’s plot is the animosity
between Duryodhana and his cousins,
the Pandavas, and this ends with the
Kauravas being utterly destroyed,
it would be inaccurate to paint
Duryodhana as an unredeemable vil-
lain. He is less evil than ill-starred—
proud, stubborn, unwilling to admit his
mistakes, and after a certain point,
unwilling to grant his cousins any
advantage. These character flaws are
magnified by the lack of strong guid-
ance from his father Dhrtarashtra, and
eventually spell his doom.
The rift between the cousins devel-
ops early, inflamed in part by the fact
that the Pandavas are more heroic than
Duryodhana and his brothers. As a
child, Bhima, the Pandava brother best
noted for his prodigious strength, used
to whip all hundred Kauravas at once.
Needless to say this does not endear him
to them. Later in adolescence, when
their archery teacher, Drona, requests
the capture of King Drupadaas his pre-
ceptor’s fee, the Pandava brother Arjuna
succeeds in doing this, whereas
Drupada defeats Duryodhana in battle.Duryodhana