Mahabharata characters 67 – Karna 1 – Did life give him a raw deal?

This talk is a part of the “Fascinating Mahabharata Characters” series. To know more about this course, please visit: bhakticourses.com

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
characters series. Now, we are going to discuss one of the most controversial characters in the Mahabharata. Controversial because he is in many ways virtuous, but he chooses the side of wise and he is often thought of as a character against whom a lot of injustice has happened and that character is Karna.
Karna is born through the sun god to Kunti before her marriage and because Kunti has been given, and she’s just a teenage girl and she’s given a blessing by Durvasa Muni because of the sincere service that she does to him. She gives him mantra. She’s given a mantra by which she can invoke any of the gods and get a son from them.
So, in playful curiosity, she invokes mantra, Surya comes and then Surya gives her a son. Now, we discussed earlier how things worked out that she said, I’m horrified. I’m a maiden.
How can I accept a son like this? He says, you have called me and I have come here and it’s expected that when a god comes, he has to give blessings and this particular mantra is meant to give the blessing of a son. A son is itself considered a blessing. All children are blessings.
Sons are blessings and then especially a son given by a god is a special blessing. He says, if you called me and I’m giving you a blessing, how can you reject this blessing? And now here, it seems as if Surya makes it a prestige issue. He says, for a god to offer himself and offer a son to an earthly woman itself is a great blessing and for an earthly woman to reject that would be a great insult to the sun god.
So, he says, all the other gods will laugh at me to see how I have been rejected by you. So, it appears as if Surya is very prestige conscious and he’s not conscious of the predicament of Kunti nor is he concerned about what will happen to the child that is born out of wedlock like this. But it is not like that.
He guarantees Kunti that your virginity will be protected and why is he so insistent that a son like this be given? So, actually Karna in his previous life is a demon named Sahasrakavacha. He was the Ambhodbhava. He and he did a lot of austerities to the sun god, pleased him and based on those austerities, he got… he… Surya was pleased and Surya came to him and he came… he told him that I want the blessing to be immortal.
Now, Surya couldn’t grant immortality because he himself is not immortal. So, then Sahasrakavacha decided to try to extract immortality in some other way and so he stated that I want the blessing that I should have a thousand armours, thousand Kavachas. So, that’s why his name was eventually Sahasrakavacha and not only did he ask for a thousand Kavachas, he also asked for something more.
He said, let these Kavachas be in such a way that to kill… to destroy one Kavacha, it will require the opponent to have performed austerity for a thousand years and after having performed austerity for a thousand years, once one gets the power to destroy one Kavacha, immediately because of destroying that Kavacha, that person will fall and that person will perish and so in this way for destroying one one Kavacha, the person will require one thousand years of austerity and the person will perish after that. So, now Surya knew that this was a dangerous benediction but Devatas are often obliged. When they are worshipped, they have to give some benedictions.
So, he felt obliged and he also… this demon had propitiated him. So, he gave that benediction and once he had got the benediction, he started terrorising the universe and nobody could face him. The Devatas went to Brahma and Brahma, back to Lord Vishnu to especially to the incarnation Naranara and Rishi and then when Naranara and Rishi heard of this, the Nambhodbhava, he himself was so angry that he… this Sahasrara Kavacha, he himself decided to… there was a fight between Naranara and Rishi because he realised that because there was no one else to fight with him.
So, he thought I’ll fight with the Naranara and Rishi also. Now, Naranara and Rishi had already been performing. Both of them are actually… they are… the Lord Nara is human being, Narayana is the shelter of all human beings, the supreme Lord and the Lord come together, this Lord and his devotee come together in these two forms.
So, they are actually in one sense Krishna and Arjuna are Narayana and Nara. So, here they had already been performing austerities and they exemplify the path of austerity for the welfare of the world. But when they are… when it’s required, they can fight also and they are formidable warriors.
So, they decided… so they were decided to tackle this threat of Nambhod… of Sahasrara Kavacha and there was a fierce fight. So, now they had already been performing austerities. So, Nara performed austerity, had already performed austerities and with those austerities, he broke one Kavacha of the Sahasrara Kavacha and when that… as soon as that Kavacha broke from his body, immediately Nara’s body fell.
As per Surya’s blessing, he fell dead. But now, Narayana had also performed austerities and by the performance of those austerities, he had… he had got the power, the Mahamrityunjay Mantra, the mantra by which one could conquer death, that means one could bring the death back to life. So, immediately he chanted the mantra and he revived Nara and he told Nara, you perform austerities and then Narayana fought with Sahasrara Kavacha and then Narayana was fighting Sahasrara Kavacha, keeping him in Nara performed austerities and for a thousand years, Nara performed austerities and when Narayana eventually broke the Kavacha of Sahasrara Kavacha, Narayana fell as if dead and the second Kavacha also fell.
But immediately Nara revived Narayana and Nara took on the fight and in this way, Narayana and Narayana, both being one as well as different, they alternated and one by one, they broke the Kavachas of Sahasrara Kavacha. Now, initially Sahasrara Kavacha was laughing when he saw that they broke his Kavacha and then they themselves fell. His opponent was falling.
But one by one, he saw that his Kavachas were getting destroyed and in 599 Kavachas were destroyed. At that time, he became fearful and he ran to Surya for shelter, shelter, shelter, trahi, trahi. Now, one of the principles of a Kshatriya is that if somebody begs shelter, one has to offer shelter and moreover, Surya was a Deva also and Sahasrara Kavacha was his worshipper.
So, Surya offered him shelter and when he offered him shelter, at that time, Narayana Rishi came and he said, now where is the Sahasrara Kavacha? We want to kill him. So, Surya said, no, I cannot hand him over. He has come to my shelter and it is the principle that I should offer him shelter.
So, Narayana Rishi requested again and again, but then they deferred to Surya because even when the Lord appears in this world, at that time, he does not disturb the balance of cosmic forces and authorities. So, respecting Surya’s words, they departed from there. Now, Sahasrara Kavacha was with Surya because he had worshipped Surya and because he lived in the association of Surya for some time, he also developed some godly qualities.
But because of his demoniac nature from the past, he had demoniac qualities also. And this demon who was left with Surya, then Surya was eager to ensure that he was placed somewhere else. So, it was this demon whom Sahasrara Kavacha injected into Kunti and that was born as Karana.
So, Karana, the word literally means ears. So, that is often said to be reference to his ears. Now, Surya had to give, he already had a Kavacha on his body, the last sculpture that was remaining.
And Surya blessed him with his Kavacha. So, special earrings were there on his body, which indicated, which gave him power and that Kavacha, that armour which made him invincible. So, he was this demon who was born through Surya and Kunti.
And Kunti saw this child, she was amazed to see the extraordinary armour and earrings. But knowing that she could not take care of a child before her marriage, she placed him very carefully in a wooden box which could float and she placed abandoned jewels over there, she placed cushions so that the baby would be comfortable. And the jewels were placed so that whoever would take care, whoever would find the baby, know that this baby came from a wealthy family and seeing that, well, at least they would protect the baby.
And then he put the baby in the water. Now, she had kept her whole pregnancy and everything secret by just staying in her chambers. And then when she sent that wooden basket off into the river, the baby gradually went out of sight, but he never went out of the heart of Kunti.
And Kunti, as the child was going, she prayed to the wind, please direct this child to safety. She prayed to the water god, Varuna. He says, please let your baby go in such a way that he finds a safe destination.
And then she prayed to Surya, he is your son, please protect him. And she prayed to Lord Narayan. And eventually she departed once the baby was out of sight of her.
And gradually, the movement of the wind took the basket to another side. Now, in the Kuru dynasty, there was Sutas. Sutas are charioteers.
Now, these charioteers can also, they are also chivalrous in many ways, but they are not exactly warriors. So as compared to the higher Varunas of Brahmin and Kshatriyas, they are considered lower. So they are known as Sutas.
So there was a family of charioteers. So Adhirath was the father and Radhe, Radha was his wife. And they had been expecting sons for a long time and they had not got sons.
And they were praying to the gods and hoping for sons. And one day, they had come to the banks of the river to bathe and they saw this extraordinary sight. They saw a wooden basket floating by.
And they immediately took the basket and they opened it and they saw there this amazing baby. You know, there’s so much wealth with him and the baby looked effulgent with the armour and earrings. And they thought this baby must be a blessing of the gods.
So they decided to take care of that baby as their own. And then after they got this child, they also got other children. And they raised their son, raised this boy as their own son very affectionately.
And he grew up. Now, as he was born in Suta’s family, as a charioteer’s family, he was identified as a charioteer. But he never felt at home as a charioteer.
He, from his childhood, had an aspiration to be a warrior. And he practised himself, whatever he knew. Even the warriors, Suta’s knew some skills of war because they would sometimes need to assist the warriors.
So some basic skills of war they would know. But he desired to know much more and he became excelled at whatever he knew. Then he decided where to go.
The most famous teacher at that time was Drona. And he went to Drona and he asked to learn under him. Drona said that, I train only Kshatriyas.
So, I cannot train you. So Karna was disappointed. Now, this may seem at one level caste discrimination.
And this seems to be a defining characteristic within the Mahabharata, that there is discrimination that happens based on caste. But although this sort of discrimination does happen, we have to understand that, that society is not the ideal society. Krishna speaks in the Bhagavad Gita, and when he speaks in the Bhagavad Gita, that is contemporaneous with the Mahabharata.
Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata. And in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is telling, So he says in Bhagavad Gita 4.2, that by the power of time, the eternal dharma has become lost, things have become degraded. The social situation in the Mahabharata is not considered ideal.
So, the original Vedic standard as is told in the Bhagavad Gita also, By qualities and activities, the duties are to be the nature of a person, the varna of a person is to be determined. So, that is how it is meant to be. But things had declined over there at that time.
And that dharmic glani, that dharmic decline affected karma adverse. Now, we have to understand that every age, no age is perfect. Even when the Lord descends, that is not perfect.
In fact, often when dharma becomes very low and adharma becomes very high, the Lord descends. So, just as sometime in history, blacks were discriminated against, sometime in history, when the Europeans were ruling the world, they considered, we are the, we are the grace of the world, and all the rest of the world is white man’s burden, as Rutier Kipling said in his poem. And actually, they often, the Britishers discriminated against other people all over the world.
So, they considered them lower than human beings. And similarly, we see that Hitler considered Nazis, Jews to be undesirable, wanted to root out their existence. When the British, when the Europeans went to America, they discriminated against Native Americans, millions of them were killed.
So, we see that this is just a sad fact of the material world. This sort of discrimination happens. In today’s society, it is so materialistic.
You may say there is not much racial discrimination, caste discrimination, but when the society is so materialistic, there is by default, financial discrimination. People look down upon those who do not have wealth. So, every age has its blind spots.
And through those blind spots, we get our own karmic deals. We get whatever bad karma we have done, the reactions to us come in different ways. So, one of the ways in which they come is through the socio-cultural problems that are there in the age in which we are born.
So, that is how Karna, yes, he suffered, but not being able to get the Kshatriya’s honour, although he had been born in Kshatriya family, that was the result of his past life karma. What was the karma? He had been a demon and he had acted demonically in his past life and that reaction came to him as the lack of the honour of a Kshatriya and that hurt him terribly. So, that was the way he got his karmic reaction.
Now, of course, that does not mean that life gave him a raw deal entirely. He did get a very positive advantage from the starting point itself. What was that? He got an impenetrable armour.
The Pandavas were also born from the gods, but none of the Pandavas had an armour which is impenetrable like this. So, if you look overall, yes, he had a disadvantage, but he also had a big advantage. And life, this is how it works out.
If we just look at things from this life’s perspective, life does seem unfair. Some people are born poor, some people are born wealthy, some people are born very intelligent, some people are born relatively less proficient in memory, in expression, in comprehension. Their intelligency is lower level.
So, why is this like that? If you just stick to this lifetime’s perspective, then it will seem unfair. And we just have to accept, like in a game of cards, we have to accept the cards that we have got and play them as best as we can. So, now, of course, we do not get the cards.
In a game of cards, you might get the cards by chance, but in life, the cards do not come by chance. The cards come by our own past karma. But be that as it may, we all have to accept the conditions that we have been given and work through them to try to progress in life.
So, Karna, it was not his destiny to get only a raw deal. He got a raw deal, but he also got a good deal in terms of getting an armour. And Karna, becoming disappointed, decided that I want to become a greater warrior.
So, if Drona will not teach me, then I will go to Drona’s teacher. I want to become the greatest warrior in the world. So, I will go to Drona’s teacher.
And Drona’s teacher was Parashuram. Now, Parashuram had been especially angered by the world’s Kshatriyas, with the world’s Kshatriyas, because the Kshatriya had killed his father, Jamadavi. So, he had said that I will never teach any Kshatriyas.
I will teach only Brahmanas. So, Drona had been a Brahmana. That is why he had taught him.
And so, when Karna went to him, he dressed like a Brahmana and introduced himself as a Brahmana person. So, Parashuram trained him diligently, trained him and he also learned expertly. And eventually, he became such an expert.
He became very dear to Parashuram because of his diligence and his excellence, both. Diligence means application and assimilating and learning and excellence in the competition, which actually he showed. Not only did he strive to learn, but he actually learned also.
And then, he became his favourite student and he said, you have become, you have, you will have no equal in archery, Parashuram told him. So, you, so now you will have, you will become among the best archers in the world, Parashuram said. So, now, after that, as Karna was nearing the completion of education, Karna had got many celestial weapons, weapons, knowledge also from Parashuram.
So, one day, Parashuram, after training him for some time, decided to take a rest and Karna offered his lap. So, Parashuram slept on his lap and as he was sleeping on the lap, at that time, insect came over there. The insect started biting Karna and as his blood started oozing out because of the bite.
Now, Karna, he was devoted to his Guru and he felt that, if I try to remove this insect, then my Guru will be disturbed. So, he tried to tolerate that pain and tolerated and tolerated, but the blood was oozing out and the smell of the blood and the heat of the blood, that went near Parashuram and Parashuram woke up and when he saw that insect, remove it and then they removed the insect and then he turned towards Karna and he said, who are you? So, Parashuram at one level was pleased that this student of his had shown so much devotion, so much concern that he was ready to accept pain, such pain to ensure that he remained undisturbed. But at the same time, he said, a brahmana cannot endure such pain.
He says, a brahmana can do a lot of austerities in terms of going without physical necessities, but pain of bodily mutilation is something which a brahmana cannot experience. Kshatriyas are more capable of experiencing this kind of pain. Who are you, tell me? Are you really a brahmana? So, Karna had his hand down and he confessed that, I was so eager to learn from you and I had so much about you.
I wanted to learn. So, I spoke that I was a brahmana, although I was not. So, Parashuram smiled despite his anger and he said, because false words have come from your mouth, so therefore the words to invoke the mantras of the topmost weapons that I have given you, those words will not come out of your mouth.
You will not be able to recollect those words and you will not be able to utter those words at the time of your greatest need. And with this, he said, now I have taught you everything, you can go now. And he departed.
So, Karna, he would lose the memory of his most powerful mantras at the time of his greatest need. And then Karna was later on day practising. And as he was practising, now they would practise shooting targets and they would practise shooting wild, dangerous animals also.
So, he saw a sudden movement and he thought that it was a predator and he immediately shot an arrow. And he shot that arrow, it went and pierced the animal and it actually was a cow. And the cow was hit in the legs in such a way that the arrow had done so much damage, it was fatal.
And it happened to be a Brahmin’s cow. And the Brahmana came there and he said, oh, Bhai Luan, what have you done? You as a warrior are meant to protect cows. You are not meant to kill them.
In the society, five kinds of people have to be protected, the cows, the children, the women, the elderly and the Brahmanas. And this protection is primarily the duty of Kshatriyas. So, he said that you are meant to protect cows and what have you done? You have killed, you have left a cow helpless and then to die like this.
So, he said, I curse you that you will also similarly when you are fighting the most important war of your life, you will be left immobilised like your left is, cow immobilised. The wheels of your chariot will sink into the ground and you will be immobilised. Karna hung his head in shame and went away.
So, these two curses would prove to be his undoing. Now, these may seem to be very unfair. Isn’t it that firstly, Karna was doing a virtue, serving his Guru.
Why should he be cursed for that? And secondly, it was a mistake. Why should he be cursed so severely for a mistake? So, actually we have to understand he was not cursed for serving his Guru. He was cursed for having spoken a falsehood.
And as far as curses are concerned, they also are ways in which our past karma comes to us and we have to accept curses and we have to move forward with life. It is not that Karna alone got curses. Now, Pandu also got a curse.
He accidentally shot an animal and then that animal turned out to be a sage. He had no weapon there and he was cursed that you will never be able to unite with your wives. Otherwise, you will also die.
And that was what caused his death eventually. Arjuna, he was also cursed. What was his curse? He refused to unite with Urvashi, seeing her to be like a mother, like Shachi or Kunti, because she had been the wife of Pururava, his ancestor.
And because he refused to unite with her, she cursed him. This is an act of such chivalry or such a virtue when a woman is offering herself to at that time to have such self-control to say no, how difficult it is. But Arjuna did that and what was the result? He was cursed to become a eunuch.
So now, if you see comparatively, what Arjuna did, the temptation that he resisted was immense as compared to resisting the pain of insect biting for a few minutes in which Karna did. Arjuna also resisted a far greater temptation and for that he was cursed also. It was quite mortifying for a Kshatriya to be cursed to become a woman.
Most Kshatriyas would have considered to be something worse than death. But what did Arjuna do? Arjuna transformed that curse so that it became a blessing for him. He utilised it during his Abhyantavasa to deal with this, to be able to act as a dance teacher, as a member of third gender.
So turning curses into blessings is the expertise of life. So now Karna also was cursed and these curses were also unfair, just like Arjuna’s curse was unfair. So what could he have done again to counter these unfair curses? He couldn’t do anything to counter the curses, but he could have equipped himself more.
Now Parashuram’s curse was that the weapons that he had learned, that Parashuram had imparted to Karna, he would forget that. But Karna could have done austerities, could have propitiated the gods and got other weapons, could have found out some way to deal with that curse. Arjuna did not get his weapons free.
Arjuna, we know how he went to the heavens and he performed austerities and he says how he pleased Lord Shiva, first by austerities and then by fighting with him and eventually then he got the weapons. It was painstaking every single weapon that Arjuna got. So Karna could have got other weapons.
He would not have forgotten the mantras for those weapons. It was only what Parashuram gave that he forgot. And then now, yes, this chariot was going to sing, but then that does not necessarily make him helpless against fighting.
Even from a mobile chariot, one can fight and we’ll see that later. And of course, one can always have alternative ways of fighting. One can fight on elephants, one can fight on foot also, as I said.
So these curses, all of us get curses in life. And we may not get curse, somebody may not chant some words and curse us, but often we get curse like situations in our life. So we may get some financial adversity, we may get some health problem, things like this happen.
So what do we do in such situations? We have to deal with those situations the best that we can and try to see the opportunity within them, cope with whatever way is possible. So trying to convert curses into blessings and not just getting a complex of a victim or a martyr because of getting those curses, that’s the art of life. So Karna came back determined to still against these curses to meet his, to make his mark on the world, as they say, to show the world how glorious he had become.
And then he saw what would be the opportunity when he could exhibit his Kshatriya skills. He thought there is the Pandavas and Kauravas had just completed education and while they had been taking education from Drona, he had been taking education from Parashurama. And when he came back, he heard that Drona was going to have a martial exhibition in which all the Pandavas and Kauravas would exhibit their skills.
So he thought that’s the time when I will make my entry into society and it will be a dramatic entry. So what happened then? We will discuss in our next session. Thank you.
Hare Krishna.