Dana (dāna)

Dana is giving, treated by the Mahabharata as the most reliably meritorious act available to anyone and analysed at length in the Anushasana Parva by proportion, recipient, time and spirit. Karna is the epic's emblem of it, having promised never to refuse a request, which is exactly how Indra strips him of the armour he was born in. The mongoose at Yudhishthira's horse sacrifice delivers the epic's verdict, that a starving family's handful of barley outweighs an emperor's entire rite.