The Death of Karṇa

After Droṇa fell, Karṇa was made supreme commander of the Kauravas at last, and took the field in his magnificent chariot, with King Shalya as his charioteer, that same Shalya who had secretly promised Yudhishthira to dishearten him. And over two days Karṇa displayed the full height of his legendary heroism.

On the sixteenth day, Bhīma took his long-awaited revenge on Duhshāsana, who had dragged Draupadī by her hair into the assembly all those years before: he caught him, tore him from his chariot, ripped open his chest, and drank his blood to fulfil the terrible vow he had sworn on the day of Draupadī's humiliation, and carried the blood to bind up Draupadī's long-unbound hair, washing away thirteen years of burning shame.

On the seventeenth day came the duel the whole war had been moving toward, between the two supreme archers of the age, Arjuna and Karṇa, the two sons of Kuntī, though only one of them knew it; and the gods and sages gathered in the heavens to watch. Karṇa loosed his deadly serpent-arrow at Arjuna's throat, and it flew like lightning; but Krishna, with a downward press of his foot, sank the chariot a few inches into the mud, and the arrow struck Arjuna's crown instead of his throat and burned it to dust.

And then the long-gathered curses of Karṇa's life came due all at once, and the wheel of his karma caught him. The left wheel of his chariot sank suddenly deep into the blood-soaked mire; and at the same moment he found he could not remember the sacred words to invoke his supreme weapon, the Brahmāstra, for his old teacher Parashurāma had cursed him, long ago, that his knowledge would fail him in his hour of greatest need, because he had won it by deceit.

And Karṇa climbed down from his chariot to free the sunken wheel with his hands, and appealed to Arjuna's chivalry to grant him a pause while he set his chariot right.

And here Krishna broke in with a denunciation that stripped the appeal bare. Where was your chivalry, Krishna demanded, when Draupadī was dragged into the assembly and stripped? Where was it when Yudhishthira was cheated at the dice? Where was it when six of you combined to slaughter the boy Abhimanyu, alone and unarmed? You who broke every law of honour when it served you, do not now appeal to honour to save your life.

And Karṇa, silenced by the truth of it, bowed his head in shame; and Krishna commanded Arjuna to strike before Karṇa could recover his weapons; and Arjuna, mastering his own reluctance, loosed the shaft that struck off Karṇa's head, and the mighty soul of the son of the Sun departed, and his body lay upon the field like a fallen golden mountain.

So died Karṇa, the great tragic figure of the whole epic, and the manner of his death gathers up his whole life. He appealed to a code of honour that he had himself broken, and was answered with his own broken honour, and cut down helpless beside his sunken wheel; and yet we grieve for him, for we know what the others on that field did not, that he was the eldest brother of the men who killed him, wronged from birth by his abandonment, chained by gratitude to the wrong side, bearing curse upon curse, and generous to the last.

His death was just, by the reckoning of his deeds; and it was also one of the saddest things in all the tale, the fall of a noble soul ruined by a wound dealt him before he could even speak.