Five Sons, One Each
Draupadi, married to all five Pandava brothers under the arrangement explained through her prior-life boon covered elsewhere in this series, bore one son by each husband: Prativindhya by Yudhishthira, Sutasoma by Bhima, Shrutakarma by Arjuna, Shatanika by Nakula, and Shrutasena by Sahadeva. Collectively these five sons are known as the Upapandavas, meaning the lesser or junior Pandavas.
The Mahabharata gives them relatively little individual narrative space compared to their fathers, mentioning their births, occasional appearances at court and family events, and their eventual participation in the war itself once they were of age, fighting alongside their fathers and uncles at Kurukshetra and, by the epic's account, acquitting themselves well and surviving the full eighteen days of fighting.
The Night After the War Was Already Over
By the eighteenth night, the war was effectively decided: Duryodhana was mortally wounded, most of the great Kaurava commanders were dead, and only three warriors remained on the Kaurava side, Ashwatthama, Kripa and Kritavarma. Ashwatthama, Drona's son, consumed by grief and rage over his father's death, an episode covered elsewhere in this series, and over Duryodhana's own dying condition, resolved on a final act of vengeance rather than accepting defeat.
He crept into the Pandava camp at night, invoking dark powers and, in some tellings, receiving a boon or sanction from Shiva himself for what followed, and entered the sleeping camp. Finding the Pandava brothers themselves absent, having gone to Krishna's camp that night, Ashwatthama instead found the five sleeping Upapandavas along with the remainder of the Panchala forces, mistaking or deliberately targeting the young men as the next generation of his enemies, and killed them all in their sleep, along with Dhrishtadyumna, Draupadi's brother, and Shikhandi.
The text is unflinching that this was not combat in any sense the epic elsewhere honours: sleeping, unarmed men killed in darkness, a massacre rather than a battle, and the Mahabharata treats it as one of the war's genuinely unjustifiable acts even by the standards of a conflict that had already seen its share of morally compromised decisions on both sides.
Draupadi's Grief and What Followed
Draupadi's grief on learning of her sons' deaths is given extended, direct treatment in the text, and she demands justice specifically, insisting the Pandavas pursue and punish Ashwatthama rather than let the act pass. Arjuna eventually captures him, and in the confrontation that follows, Ashwatthama's own guilt is compounded when it is revealed he had already, before this night, invoked the Brahmastra irresponsibly against Uttara's unborn child, Parikshit, an episode covered elsewhere in this series.
Rather than execute Ashwatthama outright, which Draupadi herself, despite her grief, argues against on the grounds that killing a Brahmin's son would only compound the tragedy, Krishna orders a different punishment: Ashwatthama's gem, a jewel embedded in his forehead from birth that gave him certain protections, is forcibly removed, and he is cursed to wander the earth for thousands of years, diseased and friendless, unable to die, a fate covered in detail in the entry on his curse elsewhere in this series.
The Upapandavas' deaths, arriving after the war's military outcome was already settled, function in the epic's structure as a reminder that victory did not arrive clean: even after Kurukshetra's eighteen days were done, grief found new and specifically cruel ways to extend itself into the peace that was supposed to follow.
Quick Answers
Why were the Pandavas themselves not in the camp that night?+
The text describes them staying overnight at Krishna's camp on Krishna's own advice, a decision that inadvertently spared their lives and left the Upapandavas and Panchala forces vulnerable to Ashwatthama's raid.
Did Ashwatthama act alone in the night raid?+
Kripa and Kritavarma, the two other surviving Kaurava-side warriors, accompanied him and guarded the camp's perimeter, though the text places the actual killing inside the camp specifically on Ashwatthama.
Is Shikhandi's death in this raid connected to the Amba story?+
Shikhandi, whose earlier life as Amba is covered elsewhere in this series, dies in this same night raid alongside the Upapandavas and Dhrishtadyumna, closing that long-running thread on the same night rather than in open combat.
About the author
Anjali Mehta · Editor, M.A. Religious Studies
Anjali is the managing editor for Vandnaa and oversees the festival and vrat coverage. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies and reviews every published article for accuracy, accessibility, and tradition-fidelity.
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