Karṇa

The training of the princes ended in a great public exhibition of arms. There Arjuna displayed such archery, wielding the celestial weapons, that the crowd was lost in wonder. And then a sound like thunder came from the gate, and the crowd parted, and there stood a youth of godlike bearing, radiant, armoured. It was Karṇa, the abandoned firstborn of Kuntī, wearing still the golden armour and earrings he had been born with, though none there, and least of all he, knew his true birth.

And Karṇa strode to Arjuna and matched, with careless ease, every feat Arjuna had performed.

Duryodhana, thrilled to see at last a rival to Arjuna, embraced Karṇa as a brother. But when Karṇa challenged Arjuna to single combat, Kripāchārya invoked the law of the arena: only a prince may fight a prince; let this youth name his lineage. And Karṇa bowed his head, for he could name none. Then Duryodhana stepped forward: if the bar is only that he is no king, then I make him a king; I crown Karṇa King of Anga, here and now. And he consecrated him on the spot with royal waters and gave him a crown.

Just then old Adhiratha the charioteer tottered into the arena, and Karṇa, newly crowned, at once knelt and touched the old man's feet in a son's reverence; and Bhīma laughed cruelly: he is only a charioteer's son, a suta; take up the whip, you are not fit to die by Arjuna's arrows. But Duryodhana cut through the mockery: valour is the mark of a warrior, not birth; can a tiger be born of an antelope? Look at his bearing, his armour, his skill; I hold him fit to rule the earth.

And in that defence, Karṇa's loyalty to Duryodhana was sealed forever, a gratitude that would bind him, to the end, to the wrong side of every quarrel.

And here is the tragedy of Karṇa, which runs through the whole epic. He was noble by birth and nobler by nature, born of the Sun, generous beyond any man of his age; and all of it was chained to Duryodhana by the debt of that one public rescue, so that his gratitude, itself a virtue, bound him to serve injustice.

His gifts were real and his loyalty was real, and both were spent in a bad cause; and that is his sorrow, that so great a soul, wronged from birth by his own mother's abandonment, gave his whole magnificent strength to the side of adharma out of love for the one man who had honoured him. Even his learning came at a price: he studied under Parashurāma by falsely claiming to be a brāhmaṇa, and when his endurance, a warrior's endurance, betrayed the lie, his teacher cursed him that his greatest weapon would fail him at his fated hour.

The curses gathered on him through his life like his armour, and he bore them all, and went on, loyal and doomed.