01Envy from boyhood
He was born on the same day as Bhima, and at his birth the jackals howled. All through boyhood Bhima beat the hundred brothers at every game, and Duryodhana could not bear it. He tried to drown Bhima at Pramanakoti and to poison him. When the people began to say Yudhishthira should be king, he persuaded his father to send the Pandavas to Varanavata, where his minister Purochana had built a house of lac to burn them in. Of the hundred he was the boldest, and the one his father could never refuse.
02Maya’s hall
Staying at Indraprastha after the Rajasuya, he walked through Maya’s hall. He lifted his clothes at a crystal floor he took for water, then walked into a pool he took for floor and fell in. The servants laughed, and so did Bhima, Arjuna and the twins. He went home burning, and with Shakuni planned the dice game. The line in which Draupadi mocks him as the blind son of a blind father is not in the Critical Edition; it belongs to later retellings and the screen.
03Not a needle-point
In the forest years he went out with a royal procession to count his cattle near Dvaitavana, really to flaunt his wealth before the exiles, and was taken captive by the Gandharva Chitrasena. The Pandavas freed him. The shame made him sit down to fast to death, until the danavas of the underworld came and told him he was born to win this war. When Krishna came to ask for five villages, Duryodhana answered him before the assembly: as much land as the point of a sharp needle can pierce, I will not give the Pandavas.
04The lake and the thigh
On the eighteenth day, his army gone, he went into the lake Dvaipayana and by his power held the water still over him. The Pandavas found him, and Yudhishthira offered him a fight with any one of them, any weapon, the kingdom to the winner. He chose the mace and Bhima. Krishna reminded Arjuna of Bhima’s vow, Bhima struck him on the thighs, and he fell. Dying, he named Ashvatthama commander. When Yudhishthira reached svarga he found Duryodhana there, shining, for a kshatriya who died facing the foe. The line “I know dharma but cannot follow it” is from a later devotional anthology, not from the Mahabharata.
Famous verses
यावद्धि सूच्यास्तीक्ष्णाया विध्येदग्रेण माधव । तावदप्यपरित्याज्यं भूमेर्नः पाण्डवान्प्रति ॥
As much land as the point of a sharp needle can pierce, Madhava, not even that much will we give up to the Pandavas.Mahabharata 5.125.26 (BORI CE), Duryodhana to Krishna