The Death of Karna

On the seventeenth day of the war at Kurukshetra, the field waited for the duel that all had known must come: Karna against Arjuna, the son of the Sun against the son of Indra, the two greatest archers of the age. Karna had taken command of the Kaurava host after the fall of Drona, and he had sworn to Duryodhana that he would slay Arjuna or die in the attempt; and Arjuna, grieving still for his son Abhimanyu and burning to end the war, came against him at last. The two great warriors drove toward one another across the dust and the dead, and the armies of both sides drew back to watch, for they knew that the fate of the war hung upon this single combat.

Karna rode in a splendid chariot, and to drive it he had demanded a charioteer the equal of Krishna, who drove for Arjuna; and so Duryodhana had prevailed upon Shalya, the mighty king of Madra, to take Karna's reins. But Shalya, though he drove for Karna, was no friend to him in his heart; for Shalya was uncle to the Pandavas Nakula and Sahadeva, and had been tricked into the Kaurava cause, and bore Karna a grudge besides. And so the man who held Karna's reins was a hidden enemy, and would prove it before the day was out.

As the duel drew near, Shalya, holding Karna's reins, began to wound him with words instead of weapons. For Shalya had secretly promised Yudhishthira, before the war, that if ever he were made to drive Karna's chariot he would sap his spirit at the crucial hour; and now he kept that promise. He belittled Karna at every turn, praising Arjuna and mocking Karna's hopes, telling him he was no match for the son of Indra, that he was a low-born boaster who would surely die, that his courage was empty and his boasts vain.

Karna, stung and enraged by the taunts of his own charioteer, answered him with anger, and the two quarreled bitterly even as they rode against the foe; and the poison of Shalya's words ate at Karna's confidence and clouded his mind in the very hour he most needed steadiness. So Karna went into the greatest battle of his life with a charioteer who despised him and worked to unman him, his spirit shaken and his heart divided by the contempt of the man at his reins. It was the first of the things that conspired against him that day, and not the least; for a warrior is only as steady as the one who holds his reins, and Karna's held him in contempt.

Two curses, laid upon Karna long before, now waited to claim their hour. The first had been spoken by his own teacher, the great Parashurama, from whom Karna had learned the use of the mightiest weapons by pretending to be a brahmana, for Parashurama would teach no warrior. When the deception was discovered, the master had cursed his pupil: that the knowledge of his greatest weapon, the brahmastra, would fail him and desert his memory at the very moment he most needed it. The second curse had been spoken by a brahmana whose cow Karna had killed by accident; the brahmana had cursed him that, in his hour of greatest peril, the earth itself would seize the wheel of his chariot and hold it fast.

Karna had carried these curses through all his life, the prices of an old deception and an old mischance; and now, on the seventeenth day, both came due at once. For this was the hour of his greatest need and his greatest peril; and the curses, patient as fate, were ready to take from him, at the decisive moment, both his weapon and his footing. So a man may be undone not only by his foes in the present, but by the deeds and mischances of his past, whose reckoning waits for the worst possible hour; and Karna, for all his valor, went into his last battle already half-defeated by the curses he carried.

The duel was joined, and it was terrible beyond all others, the two great archers loosing volleys that darkened the sky, each countering the other's divine weapons, neither able at first to gain the mastery. Then Karna laid upon his bow a deadly arrow, blazing and unerring, that he had kept for this hour. But within that arrow there lurked a serpent named Ashwasena, whose mother Arjuna had slain long ago at the burning of the Khandava forest, and who had crept into Karna's quiver to take his revenge by riding the arrow to Arjuna's death.

Karna loosed the serpent-arrow, and it flew straight for Arjuna's head with deadly force. But Krishna, ever watchful, pressed down the chariot with his foot so that it sank, and the horses crouched; and the arrow, instead of taking Arjuna's head, struck only his crown, knocking the diadem from his brow but sparing his life. The serpent Ashwasena returned to Karna and begged him to lay him on the bowstring once more and shoot again, promising to finish Arjuna this time. But Karna refused: 'I do not strike the same foe twice with the same arrow,' he said; 'I will not stoop to win by a serpent's aid, nor shoot one shaft a second time. My honor will not have it.' And so, by his own code of honor, Karna let slip his surest chance of victory; and the serpent, scorned, departed to its own death.

Then the curses came due. As the duel raged and Karna pressed Arjuna hard, suddenly the earth opened and seized the left wheel of Karna's chariot, swallowing it and holding it fast, just as the brahmana had cursed long ago. The chariot lurched and stuck, unable to move; and in the same moment, as Karna reached in his mind for the brahmastra, his supreme weapon, to turn the tide, he found that the knowledge of it had deserted him utterly, vanished from his memory just when he most needed it, exactly as Parashurama had cursed. Weaponless of his greatest power and stranded with a mired chariot, Karna was suddenly helpless in the midst of the decisive duel.

Karna leapt down and strained to lift the sunken wheel from the earth with his own hands, heaving at it desperately while the battle hung in the balance; but the cursed earth held it fast, and he could not free it. So the mightiest archer of the age, who had stood ready to conquer Arjuna, was brought low not by his foe's superior skill but by the curses of his past come due at the fatal hour, and by the charioteer who would not help him, and by his own honor that had spared his enemy. He stood beside his mired chariot, his weapon forgotten, his wheel in the earth, in the gravest peril of his life.

Struggling with the mired wheel, Karna called out to Arjuna, appealing to the rules of fair combat: 'Hold, Arjuna! It is against the code of warriors to strike a man whose chariot is disabled, who is unarmed and on foot and struggling with his wheel. You are a knower of dharma; wait, then, until I have freed my wheel and remounted, and we will fight again as equals. Strike me not now, in my helplessness, for that would be unworthy of you.' And Arjuna, who honored the code, hesitated.

But Krishna answered Karna with a hard and bitter reckoning. 'You speak of dharma now, Karna,' he said, 'who stood by and approved when dharma was trampled? Where was your code when Draupadi, a lone woman, was dragged into the hall and shamed, and you called her a harlot and bade them strip her? Where was your fair play when the Pandavas were cheated of their kingdom by loaded dice, when the lac house was set to burn them alive, when six great warriors surrounded the boy Abhimanyu and cut him down from behind, breaking every rule of war? You did not speak of dharma then, but laughed and approved. Do not now, in your peril, claim the protection of a code you helped to break.' So Krishna laid bare the long account of the Kauravas' broken dharma; and he bade Arjuna strike, for the time of reckoning had come, and Karna's own past had forfeited the mercy he now asked.

Arjuna, hardened by the memory of his son's unjust death and the long catalogue of wrongs, took up a great and deadly arrow, the Anjalika, and laid it on his bow as Karna struggled still with his wheel. And he loosed it; and the arrow struck Karna and took his head, so that the mightiest archer of the age fell at last, slain beside his mired chariot in the seventeenth day's dust. A great light, it is said, went up from his body and was lost in the sky or the sun, as the son of the Sun returned to his source; and a hush fell over both armies at the fall of so great a warrior.

Even his foes were moved at Karna's death, for all knew his valor, and his boundless generosity, and the cruelty of the fate that had hounded him: born of a god and a princess yet cast away at birth, raised as a charioteer's son and scorned for it all his life, faithful unto death to the friend who had honored him, undone at the last by curses and contempt and his own divided honor. The sun of the Kaurava host was set; and with Karna fell the last great hope of Duryodhana's cause. But the sorrow of his fall was not yet complete; for the deepest grief of it would come only after the war was done.

Only after the war was over did the deepest sorrow of Karna's death come to light. For it was then revealed to the Pandavas that Karna had been their own eldest brother: the firstborn son of their mother Kunti, conceived by the Sun-god in her maidenhood and set adrift on a river in shame and fear, raised by a charioteer, and grown to be the great warrior they had hated and at last slain as their enemy. Yudhishthira, learning that the man he had helped to kill was his own eldest brother, was overwhelmed with grief and remorse; and the Pandavas mourned the brother they had never known and had destroyed.

And it was learned, too, how Kunti had gone to Karna before the war and revealed his birth and begged him to join his true brothers; and how Karna, though he now knew the truth, would not abandon Duryodhana, who alone had honored him when all the world scorned him, but chose to stand and die with his friend, asking only that Kunti might still be called the mother of five sons, for he would spare all the Pandavas but Arjuna. So the tale of Karna's death is the most tragic of all the war: the tale of a great and generous soul, loyal beyond death to the one friend who had honored him, undone by the cruelty of his birth, the curses of his past, and the wrongs he had embraced for his friend's sake, and slain in the end by the brothers who never knew him until he was gone. In him, the war's tragedy of kin destroying kin in ignorance and pride reached its bitterest height.