People of the epic · Mahabharata questions
Who was Karna?
Karna was the first son of Kunti, born to her by the sun god before her marriage and set adrift on a river. Raised by a charioteer, mocked for low birth, he was made king of Anga by Duryodhana and fought for him against the brothers he did not know were his.
Kunti, as a girl, was given a mantra that summoned any god. She used it on the sun out of curiosity and bore a son already wearing golden armour and earrings fused to his skin. Unmarried and frightened, she set the child in a basket on the river. He was found by Adhiratha, a charioteer of Hastinapur, and raised by him and his wife Radha, which is why Karna answers to Radheya and to suta-putra, son of a charioteer, the insult that follows him everywhere.
He learns archery by deceiving Parashurama, who teaches only brahmins, and is cursed for the lie to forget his weapon-mantra when he needs it most. At the tournament in Hastinapur he matches every feat of Arjuna and is refused a duel because he is not a kshatriya; Duryodhana crowns him king of Anga on the spot, and Karna gives him a loyalty he never withdraws. He is also relentlessly generous: he never refuses a request made in the morning, and Indra exploits this to beg away the armour that made him invulnerable.
Before the war both Krishna and Kunti tell him the truth about his birth. Krishna offers him the throne itself, since as the eldest son of Kunti he would be the rightful heir and the Pandavas would follow him. He refuses, because Duryodhana trusted him when no one else would. He promises Kunti only that he will kill none of her sons except Arjuna, so that she will have five living sons in any case.
The epic is unsentimental about him. He mocks Draupadi in the assembly hall and he helps surround Abhimanyu. It also gives him the closest thing it has to a tragic architecture: a man punished all his life for an accident of birth, who chooses gratitude over advantage and dies for it.