Kuntī and Karṇa: the promise of five sons

Classical

After Kṛṣṇa's mission failed, Vidura came to Kuntī and told her, with sorrow, that Duryodhana would not listen and that the war was now certain. Kuntī sighed. She saw only grief in either result: war would mean a slaughter of kin, and not fighting would mean poverty and humiliation. She was most afraid of Karṇa. Droṇa and Bhīṣma, she thought, would not really fight their pupils and grandsons with all their might, but Karṇa, who hated her sons and egged Duryodhana on, was a real danger. She decided to go and speak to him. She remembered the mantra she had been given as a girl and the day she had used it, and she went to the bank of the Gaṅgā.

There she heard him chanting the Vedic hymns aloud, his arms raised and his face to the east. She waited behind him until the prayers were done. The sun was hot, and the poor woman, her skin wilting like a lotus garland, took shelter in the shadow of Karṇa's upper garment. When Karṇa finished and turned, he saw Kuntī and was astonished. He bowed to her and said, ‘I am Karṇa, son of Rādhā and Adhiratha. What can I do for you?’

Kuntī said, ‘You are Kuntī's son, not Rādhā's. Adhiratha is not your father. You were born from me when I was a maiden, in my father's palace, from the god Sūrya, with natural earrings and a natural coat of mail.’ She told him that it was wrong for him to serve Dhṛtarāṣṭra's son in ignorance of his brothers. The wealth of Yudhiṣṭhira had been taken by greed, and he should win it back. Let the Kurus see Karṇa and Arjuna united, like Rāma and Kṛṣṇa. Together they could do anything. ‘Let no one call you a charioteer's son. You are a Pārtha.’ A voice from the sun-disc, in Sūrya's own affectionate tones, confirmed what Kuntī said and told him to obey his mother.

Karṇa was not moved. He said that he could not accept her command as his highest duty, since she had thrown him away at birth, depriving him of the rites and standing of a kshatriya and ruining his fame. ‘What enemy could have harmed me more? You show mercy now, when you want something for yourself.’ If he went to the Pāṇḍavas on the eve of battle, everyone would say he did it from fear of Arjuna. He had been honoured by Duryodhana's family, who were counting on him as their boat to cross the ocean of battle. He would not betray them. ‘I will fight your sons for the sake of Dhṛtarāṣṭra's son, but I will not forget kindness.’

Yet he gave her a promise. Except for Arjuna, he said, he would not kill any of her sons in battle, even though he could: not Yudhiṣṭhira, nor Bhīma, nor the twins. He would fight only Arjuna, and either kill him or be killed. ‘The number of your sons will never be less than five. Five you will have, either with me and Arjuna dead, or with Arjuna and me dead.’ Kuntī, trembling, embraced him, and said that the Kauravas would be destroyed all the same, because fate rules all. She asked him to remember his pledge of safety for the four. She blessed him, he answered, ‘Be it so,’ and they parted, walking in different directions.

Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Kuntī, Karṇa, Sūrya, Vidura, Arjuna

Bound to

Kṛṣṇa and Karṇa: the offer of the throne mirror

Kunti's mantra and Karna's birth birth

Karna's curses: the beetle, the cow, and the sinking wheel curse

Jambhul Akhyan: Draupadi's confession about Karna mirror

Karṇa meets the fallen Bhīṣma; Droṇa made commander and the promise to seize Yudhiṣṭhira mirror

Places: Gaṅgā

Where this comes from

read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (read via archive.org copy of the sacred-texts text) Udyoga Parva, Sections CXLIV–CXLVI

See it on the tree · All stories

← Kṛṣṇa and Karṇa: the offer of the throne · Bhīṣma's conditions: the rathas and atirathas assessed →