Karṇa

Karṇa, born Vasūsheṇa, was the eldest son of Kuntī. He was born before her marriage to Pāṇḍu, when she called on Bhagavān Sūrya, the deva of the sun, with a mantra (sacred formula) given to her by the ṛshi Durvāsa. He is also called Rādheyā (son of Rādhā) and, later, Aṅgarāja (king of Aṅga). He was born with a natural golden armour (kavaca) joined to his body and with divine earrings (kuṇḍala) in his ears.

Kuntī could not keep the child as an unmarried girl, so she set him adrift on a river. A charioteer of the Kuru household found him and raised him. Karṇa grew up as a sūta-putra (charioteer’s son), became a master of archery, and came to the āstra-darśana (display of weapons) at Hastināpura to challenge Arjuna. He was refused because of his birth. Duryodhana crowned him king of Aṅga on the spot, and Karṇa stayed loyal to him for life. The Mahābhārata shows Karṇa as the eldest Pāṇḍava who never knew his brothers, the great rival of Arjuna, and the most generous man of his age.

Birth and abandonment

In her girlhood Kuntī lived in the house of Kuntibhoja. She served the difficult ṛshi Durvāsa with such perfect hospitality that he gave her a mantra. With it she could call any deva she chose and conceive a son by him. Kuntī was not yet married. Out of curiosity, she called on Bhagavān Sūrya to test whether the mantra worked.

Bhagavān Sūrya appeared before her in a dazzling divine form. Kuntī was startled and asked him to go back. Bhagavān Sūrya told her that the mantra could not be called and then cancelled. It had to bear its fruit. He promised that her virginity would be restored after the birth and that no one would know.

From this union Karṇa was born fully formed. He wore a natural golden kavaca grown from his own skin and golden kuṇḍala in his ears. The kavaca and kuṇḍala were understood to make him safe in battle as long as he kept them.

Kuntī could not keep the child without bringing disgrace on her family. She placed the infant in a sealed wooden box lined with cloth. She set it afloat on the Aśva river, then on the Yamunā, and finally on the Gaṅgā.

Adoption and upbringing

Adhiratha, a charioteer in the service of the Kuru household, found the floating box. He and his wife Rādhā had no children and were overjoyed. Rādhā took the infant as her own son and loved him fully. The child was named Vasūsheṇa, meaning one born with wealth, for the kavaca and kuṇḍala. He grew up knowing himself as the son of the charioteer Adhiratha and his wife Rādhā, and he was devoted to them. Because of Rādhā he was also called Rādheyā.

Training in archery

Vasūsheṇa loved archery. He went to Droṇācārya and asked to be taught, but Droṇa refused. Droṇa trained only kshatriyas and brāhmaṇas, not those of sūta birth.

Vasūsheṇa then went to Paraśurāma, the great Bhārgava warrior and ṛshi, who trained only brāhmaṇas. He presented himself as a brāhmaṇa. Paraśurāma accepted him and taught him every weapon, including the Brahmāstra.

Paraśurāma slept, and a painful creature bored into Vasūsheṇa’s thigh. Vasūsheṇa did not cry out. This great endurance showed that he was not a brāhmaṇa, and Paraśurāma saw the deception. He put a śāpa (a curse) on Vasūsheṇa: at the most critical moment of his life, when he needed the Brahmāstra most, it would not come to his mind.

Bhagavān Sūrya’s warning

The Vana Parva (Chapters 300–302) tells how Karṇa learned of Indra’s plan and made his decision before the meeting. Bhagavān Sūrya came to Karṇa in a dream in the form of a brāhmaṇa. He warned Karṇa that Indra, the father of Arjuna, planned to come disguised as a brāhmaṇa and ask for the kavaca and kuṇḍala. Bhagavān Sūrya urged him not to give them.

Karṇa heard the warning and understood it. He knew the dream-brāhmaṇa was Bhagavān Sūrya, and he refused to follow the advice. He said he could not turn away any true seeker who came to him at the proper time for giving. For Karṇa, kīrti (fame) won through complete dāna (giving) was worth more than life, and far more than safety in battle. He promised one thing. If the disguised Indra asked for the kavaca and kuṇḍala, Karṇa would ask in return for the Śakti weapon, the divine spear that kills one great warrior.

Because of this warning, Karṇa’s gift was not innocent generosity. It was a fully conscious choice to give up his safety for the sake of his vow of dāna.

The kavaca and kuṇḍala

The natural kavaca and kuṇḍala made Karṇa nearly unbeatable in battle. Indra knew that his son Arjuna would face Karṇa and feared the result. He came disguised as an aged brāhmaṇa and asked for alms.

Karṇa knew Indra at once and said so. He knew who was asking and why. He gave anyway. He took a knife and cut the kavaca from his own living flesh. He took the kuṇḍala from his own ears and gave them to Indra. Indra was moved by this unmatched generosity. In return he gave Karṇa the Śakti-astra, a divine spear. When thrown, it would kill any one great warrior Karṇa aimed it at. It could be used only once and would then return to Indra’s hands.

The āstra-darśana

The Kuru and Pāṇḍava princes showed their training in the āstra-darśana before the court of Hastināpura. Vasūsheṇa came in uninvited. He repeated everything Arjuna had done, shot for shot, to the amazement of the assembly. He then called for single combat with Arjuna.

Kṛpācārya stepped in. Before any combat, he said, the family of the challenger must be known, and a king can fight only a king. What was Vasūsheṇa’s lineage? He was known as a charioteer’s son and could not meet Arjuna as an equal.

Duryodhana then stepped forward. He said that lineage is shown by conduct and achievement, not only by birth. He crowned Vasūsheṇa king of Aṅga at once, pouring the royal water on his head in the arena. From that moment Vasūsheṇa was Karṇa, king of Aṅga, and Duryodhana’s closest ally. Kuntī watched from the royal enclosure, knew her firstborn, and fainted.

At the dice game and the insult to Draupadī

In the Dyūta Parva, Karṇa took a central part in the wrong done in the assembly. Vikarṇa rose and argued that the staking of Draupadī was not valid, for two reasons. Yudhishṭhira had already lost himself before he staked her, and she was the joint wife of all five brothers. Karṇa answered with a counter-argument. He said Yudhishṭhira’s right over Draupadī was valid when he staked her, and so the Kauravas had won her fairly.

Karṇa went further. He called the Pāṇḍavas slaves, men who had gambled themselves into bondage. He said that Draupadī’s protests were those of a dāsī (a female slave) complaining in her master’s court. He approved of Duḥśāsana dragging Draupadī and taking off her garment. Karṇa was himself a son abandoned by his mother, and a warrior denied recognition at every turn. Here he urged the full humiliation of the woman who had called out for justice.

Bhīmasena heard every word. The Dyūta Parva records that fire poured from his ears and nose. He held back only because Yudhishṭhira put a hand on Bhīma’s arm. Arjuna swore in the assembly that he would kill Karṇa. The fulfilment of that oath became one of the main threads of the war.

The Paraśurāma curse in the Udyoga Parva

The Yānasandhi Parva of the Udyoga Parva (Chapters 62–65) returns to Karṇa’s study under Paraśurāma and the śāpa that followed. It says Karṇa bore the bite of a scorpion in silence while Paraśurāma slept, and that his kshatriya courage gave away who he was. Paraśurāma’s śāpa was that the Brahmāstra would leave him at the moment of greatest need. The text gives it here during the talks before the war. Both sides, weighing their chances, know that Karṇa has supreme weapons but lies under this śāpa.

The plot to arrest Kṛshṇa

Kṛshṇa came to Hastināpura as the Pāṇḍava messenger. Duryodhana told Karṇa and Śakuni his plan to arrest Kṛshṇa before the formal session of the sabhā (assembly) (Chapter 88). If Kṛshṇa could be seized and shamed, the whole Pāṇḍava mission would be defeated and the war could be fought on Duryodhana’s terms. Bhīshma heard of the plan, was seized with fury and walked out of the assembly. The plan broke every rule of dūta dharma (the law protecting a messenger), because it meant seizing a messenger and a king. Karṇa’s alliance with Duryodhana made him a party to this adharma (wrong).

Karṇa stands aside, days 1 to 10

Before the Kurukshetra war began, Karṇa quarrelled with Bhīshma Pitāmaha over the ranking of warriors, the ratha-tally. This was the formal count of which warriors on the Kaurava side were mahārathas (great chariot-warriors), ardharathas (half-charioteers) or rathas. Bhīshma’s tally ranked Karṇa as an ardharatha, not a full mahāratha, in public and before all the assembled kings. Karṇa took this as a deliberate insult from the grandsire, who had never warmly accepted him.

Bhīshma saw Karṇa as a man whose real achievements did not match those of Arjuna. Karṇa’s earlier mockery of the Pāṇḍavas, especially at the dice game, also troubled him. Karṇa felt that Bhīshma’s view came from prejudice and old dislike.

Karṇa therefore took a vow. He would not fight while Bhīshma lived. Either Bhīshma would fight or Karṇa would fight, not both. For all ten days that Bhīshma was supreme commander of the Kauravas (the Bhīshma Parva war account, Chapters 43–122), Karṇa stood aside. He watched the war from the Kaurava camp and kept his vow while his allies fought and died. He did not lift his bow while Bhīshma held command.

Bhīshma’s account of the warriors

In Chapters 97–98 of the Bhīshma Parva, Bhīshma gave Duryodhana a long account of the chief warriors on both sides. On the Pāṇḍava side he named Arjuna as the supreme mahāratha, the greatest warrior of the age, equal to five thousand ordinary warriors. Kṛshṇa was his sārathi (charioteer) and the Gāṇḍīva was in his hands.

Bhīshma admitted Karṇa’s good qualities: his descent from the sun, his great natural strength and the weapons taught by Paraśurāma. Yet he held that against Arjuna, with Kṛshṇa beside him, Karṇa was not an equal. Arjuna with Kṛshṇa was a different class from any other pair of warriors. Bhīshma also spoke of Karṇa’s part in the humiliation of Draupadī, his mockery of the Pāṇḍavas and his alliance with adharma.

The meeting on the bed of arrows

Bhīshma fell on the tenth day and lay on his śaraśayyā, the bed of arrows. Karṇa came to him (Chapter 122). This was their first private talk at close quarters. Bhīshma had fallen and was no longer the commander whose authority Karṇa had resisted. Karṇa was free of his vow and about to enter the war.

Bhīshma received Karṇa with recognition. He named him the son of Bhagavān Sūrya and the eldest Pāṇḍava. He said he had ranked Karṇa as an ardharatha as a plain judgement, not out of contempt. Against Arjuna with Kṛshṇa, no single warrior, however great, stood clearly as an equal. The loss of the kavaca and kuṇḍala was part of this judgement. Karṇa had given away his divine protection, and without it even his great skill placed him in a lower class.

Bhīshma told Karṇa what he had told Duryodhana: the Pāṇḍava side would win. He urged Karṇa to think before fighting Arjuna.

Karṇa heard all this calmly. He thanked Bhīshma and took his blessing. This was the recognition he had never been given in public. He then left to join the war. His loyalty to Duryodhana, born from that one act of friendship at the āstra-darśana, did not waver. He would fight knowing the odds.

Return to battle in the Droṇa Parva

After Bhīshma fell on the tenth day, Karṇa’s self-imposed exile from the battlefield ended. He returned on day 11, when Droṇācārya became the new Kaurava senāpati (supreme commander). Karṇa’s arrival gave new strength to the Kaurava army, which Bhīshma’s fall had shaken badly. He spoke to Duryodhana and the Kaurava lords and told them the war could still be won. He then took his place under Droṇa’s command and fought as one of the foremost Kaurava warriors (Droṇa Parva, Chapters 1–2).

His part in the death of Abhimanyu

On the thirteenth day Abhimanyu made his great stand inside the Cakravyūha. Karṇa was one of six senior commanders who joined to surround and kill Abhimanyu together, against the rules of fair single combat. The six were Droṇa, Karṇa, Kṛpa, Aśvatthāmā, Bṛhadbala and Kṛtavarman.

Karṇa’s part was to come at Abhimanyu from behind and break his bow with an arrow while Abhimanyu faced other opponents. Striking from behind was the first step in the joint attack that took away Abhimanyu’s power to fight and led to his death. It broke the law of fair war, and this was recognised even then. Karṇa did it only out of loyalty to Duryodhana (Droṇa Parva, Chapter 48).

The Śakti of Indra and Ghaṭotkaca

Karṇa held the divine Śakti that Indra gave him for his kavaca and kuṇḍala. Thrown once, it would kill any one great warrior he aimed it at, and it would then return to Indra’s hands. Karṇa was saving it for Arjuna. It was his greatest advantage in the single combat he expected with the Pāṇḍavas’ greatest warrior.

On the fourteenth night, Kṛshṇa sent out Ghaṭotkaca, the rākshasa son of Bhīmasena, against the Kauravas in a night battle. His māyā-yuddha (war of illusion) did terrible harm in the dark. Night is the time of the rākshasas, and his powers grew greatly. The Kaurava army faced destruction. Duryodhana and the Kaurava leaders begged Karṇa to use the Śakti on Ghaṭotkaca.

Karṇa knew the cost. If he used the Śakti on Ghaṭotkaca, he would lose his greatest advantage against Arjuna. Yet the whole Kaurava force was being destroyed before his eyes. He chose to act. He hurled the Śakti at Ghaṭotkaca, and it killed him at once. The great rākshasa fell, and his huge body crushed a whole division of the Kaurava army as it came down.

Kṛshṇa heard of Ghaṭotkaca’s death. He wept for a short time for the loyal son of Bhīma, and then he laughed and embraced Arjuna. Grief and joy were together in him, for the Śakti was now spent. Karṇa had no supreme weapon left for the decisive meeting with Arjuna (Droṇa Parva, the chapters on the killing of Ghaṭotkaca).

The seventeenth day and Karṇa’s death

Command of the army

Droṇācārya fell on the fifteenth day. Karṇa was then made sarvasenapati, supreme commander of all the Kaurava forces. He had waited for this since the war began. First his vow not to fight while Bhīshma lived held him back, and then he served under Droṇa. Now Droṇa was dead, and Karṇa commanded. He chose Śalya, king of Madra, as his charioteer. Śalya was an expert in horsemanship and widely thought one of the finest charioteers in the world. The two men were not at ease with each other (Karṇa Parva).

The seventeenth day

On the seventeenth day Karṇa wounded Yudhishṭhira badly and forced him to leave the field for the Pāṇḍava camp. This set off the events in the Pāṇḍava camp, including the Gāṇḍīva-tyāga crisis, which brought Arjuna and Yudhishṭhira to the edge of killing each other.

Karṇa saw his son Vṛshasena killed by Arjuna. Arjuna had announced this aloud before the armies as an act of vengeance. Karṇa’s grief and rage over Vṛshasena’s death drove him into the last and decisive stage of his great duel with Arjuna (Karṇa Parva).

The exchange of astras

In the great duel of Chapters 87–89, Karṇa and Arjuna used the full range of divine weapons: the Āgneya, Vāruṇa, Vāyavya and brahma-level astras. Karṇa used the Bhārgava-astra given by Paraśurāma, with terrible effect. Arjuna’s bowstring broke several times during the exchange. The Karṇa Parva says that Brahmā and Śiva had confirmed Arjuna’s final victory. The devas took the side of Arjuna, and certain forces of the dānava world took the side of Karṇa. Brahmā himself declared that Karṇa stood on the dānava side of the war’s moral divide.

The nāga arrow and the wheel

In Chapter 90, the nāga Aśvasena entered the shaft of one of Karṇa’s arrows and aimed at Arjuna’s head. He had survived the burning of Khāṇḍava and held a grudge against Arjuna. Kṛshṇa pressed the chariot into the earth with his foot. The nāga-arrow struck only Arjuna’s divine crown (kirīṭa) and knocked it to the ground. Aśvasena came back and urged Karṇa to fire the arrow again. Karṇa held to the warrior’s code and refused to use the same arrow twice.

Then the curse took effect. Karṇa’s chariot wheel sank into the earth and could not be lifted. He got down to try to free it, and the Bhārgava-astra left him, as Paraśurāma’s śāpa had said at the critical moment. Karṇa called to Arjuna to wait and appealed to the warrior’s code against striking a helpless enemy. Kṛshṇa answered him sharply. He listed Karṇa’s own acts of adharma: the disrobing of Draupadī, the poisoning of Bhīma, the plot of the Lākshāgṛha (house of lac), and the killing of the unarmed Abhimanyu. Kṛshṇa said that those who had joined in adharma had no right to call on the protection of the law they had broken.

Death in Chapter 91

Karṇa stood beside his sunken chariot. Arjuna took up the Āñjalika-astra, the divine arrow he had always kept with ritual care. It was three hasta (cubits) long, six-winged and sharp as the vajra of Indra. He called on the Brahma mantra and let it fly from the Gāṇḍīva with full force. The arrow struck Karṇa at the neck and cut his head from his body.

Karṇa’s body fell to the earth. At the moment of death a great shining form, bright as the sun, rose from his body and went upward into the disc of the sun. The light was seen by all beings on the battlefield: devas, ṛshis, gandharvas, men and animals. This was the visible sign of what Karṇa had always been, the son of Bhagavān Sūrya, returning to his divine source. The Kaurava army watched their greatest warrior fall, and it broke up in grief and flight.

Gāndhārī’s lament and Kuntī’s revelation

In the Strī Vilāpa Parva, Gāndhārī surveyed the battlefield with divine sight. She gave Karṇa one of the longest and most moving laments of her whole survey. She mourned him as a warrior of supreme courage who had fought with full commitment, who had died facing his enemy, and who now lay in vīra śayana (the hero’s bed). She mourned the tragedy of his place. He was a man of supreme ability who fought on the wrong side, not from malice but from complete personal loyalty. That loyalty began when Duryodhana gave him dignity and a kingdom after the world had refused them. In Karṇa she saw how a man of great natural virtue can be ruined by circumstance: the accident of his birth, the cruelty of his abandonment and the unfairness of his social position (Strī Parva).

On the bank of the Gaṅgā, when the mourning on the battlefield was over, Kuntī came to Karṇa’s body. Before Yudhishṭhira and the others she said what she had never spoken. Karṇa was her firstborn son, born of Bhagavān Sūrya before her marriage to Pāṇḍu. She had given him away in infancy, and Rādhā and Adhiratha had raised him. He was the eldest Pāṇḍava. He had died on the opposite side of the war, fighting his own brothers without knowing who they were. Kuntī performed the jala pradāna (water offering) for him and so named him publicly as her son.

The news broke Yudhishṭhira. The brother he had never known had been the one man who stood between the Pāṇḍavas and defeat all through the war, and Arjuna had killed him. In grief and anger Yudhishṭhira put a śāpa on all women: from then on no woman would be able to keep a secret (Strī Parva).

Kuntī’s confession in the Śānti Parva

The Śānti Parva opens with Yudhishṭhira’s deep grief on the field of Kurukshetra. After the war, at the water’s edge, Yudhishṭhira and the Pāṇḍavas offered tarpaṇa (water offerings to the dead) for the fallen. Here Kuntī’s secret came out. She said that the great Karṇa, who had just died at Arjuna’s hands, was her firstborn son. She had conceived him by calling on Bhagavān Sūrya before her marriage to Pāṇḍu, and in her fear she had left him in a basket on the river.

Yudhishṭhira was devastated. Arjuna had killed their eldest brother without knowing it. The brother they had always dreaded as their greatest enemy had been their own blood. The curses of Paraśurāma and of Bhūmi-devī, which shaped Karṇa’s fate toward this end, are told in the Karṇa curse narrative (Śānti Parva, Chapters 1–5).

Karṇa in the praise of giving, Anuśāsana Parva

In the Anuśāsana Parva (Chapter 137), Bhīshma lists the kings who reached the highest lokas (worlds) through dāna. He names Karṇa, called Sāvitra, “son of the sun”, as one who gave away his divine kuṇḍala and so reached the most excellent lokas. This short mention agrees with the fuller Ādi Parva and Vana Parva accounts of how Karṇa gave his kavaca and kuṇḍala to Indra, who came as a brāhmaṇa. The Anuśāsana Parva marks that act as his greatest gift.

Karṇa in the Āśramavāsika Parva

Freed of blame, and Kuntī’s śrāddha (Chapters 10–11)

Dhṛtarāshṭra took leave of the people of Kurujāṅgala before going to the forest. The bahvṛca brāhmaṇa Sāmba spoke for the assembled people. He said that the destruction of the Kuru army at Kurukshetra had been daiva (fate) alone, and that Karṇa and Śakuni together had not caused it (Chapter 10).

Later Dhṛtarāshṭra proposed to perform śrāddha (rites for the dead) for Bhīshma, Droṇa, Somadatta and Bāhlīka. Bhīma told Arjuna that Kuntī would perform Karṇa’s śrāddha instead. In this parva it is a rare open statement that Karṇa’s rites belonged to his mother and not to the Kuru king (Chapter 11).

Revealed as Sūrya, and the reunion at the Gaṅgā (Chapters 30–33)

Years after the war, Kuntī confessed Karṇa’s birth a second time, now to Vyāsa himself. He fully absolved her and taught her about the five ways of divine conception (Chapter 30). Vyāsa then told the assembled Kuru household that Karṇa, “foremost of those who give warmth and light to the worlds”, had been Bhagavān Sūrya himself. Bhagavān Sūrya had divided his own body into two forms. One warmed the worlds, and the other came down as Karṇa (Chapter 31).

At the Gaṅgā, Vyāsa called up the whole host of the fallen. Karṇa rose from the waters restored to youth and splendour, just as he had looked in life, and free of all vaira (enmity). Kuntī saw her firstborn son again. The Pāṇḍavas met him with clear joy. Yudhishṭhira had grieved bitterly when he first learned who Karṇa was. By Vyāsa’s grace they moved among him with maitrī-bhāva (friendly feeling). After one night of reunion Karṇa returned to his loka (Chapters 30–33).

Svargārohaṇa Parva: among the Sūryas and return to Sūrya

Yudhishṭhira reached svarga, but the memory of Karṇa still burned in him. He grieved that he had unknowingly caused the death of his eldest brother, and above all he longed to see him. On the terrible road of naraka, many beloved voices begged Yudhishṭhira to stay, and Karṇa’s was the first he heard. Then the illusion was gone, and Yudhishṭhira passed into the true svarga. Indra showed him Karṇa in his own station, shining among twelve Sūryas, a warrior come at last into the light that was his birthright (Chapters 1–4).

When his allotted karma was used up, Karṇa, ever the son of Bhagavān Sūrya, “he who gives warmth to the worlds”, merged back into Ravi, the sun from whom he had come. The child cast adrift on the river, who was denied his lineage all his life, returned in the end to the source of his being. His aṃśa (part) was taken back into its aṃśī (whole) (Chapter 5).

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Ādi Parva, Sambhava Parva, Chapters 111–130
• Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Dyūta Parva, Chapters 65–72
• Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapters 300–310
• Mahābhārata, Udyoga Parva, Chapters 62–65, 88
• Mahābhārata, Bhīshma Parva, Chapters 43–122
• Mahābhārata, Droṇa Parva, Chapters 1–2, 48
• Mahābhārata, Karṇa Parva, Chapters 1–96
• Mahābhārata, Strī Parva, Chapters 16–25
• Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva (Rājadharmānuśāsana Parva), Chapters 1–5
• Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 137
• Mahābhārata, Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapters 10–11, 30–33
• Mahābhārata, Svargārohaṇa Parva, Chapters 1–5