People of the epic · Mahabharata questions
How many Kauravas were there?
A hundred brothers, born to Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, plus a daughter named Dussala and a half-brother, Yuyutsu, born to a woman of the household. All hundred died at Kurukshetra; Yuyutsu, who fought for the Pandavas, survived.
The number is a hundred, and the epic lists their names in the Adi Parva, though most appear nowhere else. Gandhari was granted a boon of a hundred sons; her pregnancy lasted two years and ended in a lump of flesh, which Vyasa divided into a hundred and one pieces and kept in pots of clarified butter until the children formed. The extra piece became Dussala, their sister, who was married to Jayadratha of Sindhu.
Yuyutsu is the complication in the count. He is a son of Dhritarashtra by a vaishya woman of the palace, born on the same day as Duryodhana, and is not numbered among the hundred. He is also the only one of them with a conscience visible in the text: he objects during the dice game, and on the first morning of the war, when Yudhishthira calls out to ask whether anyone wishes to change sides, Yuyutsu walks across.
Of the hundred, four matter to the plot. Duryodhana drives everything. Dushasana carries out what Duryodhana orders, including the assault on Draupadi in the assembly hall, and Bhima kills him on the sixteenth day in the manner he swore to. Vikarna alone speaks for Draupadi in the hall and dies later at Bhima hands, who kills him with visible reluctance. Chitrasena and the rest are names in battle lists.
Bhima had sworn to kill all hundred, and he did. By the evening of the eighteenth day Duryodhana is the last, and dies after the mace duel by the lake.