The story

Indra was coming to Karna as a beggar, and the Sun reached him first, in a dream.

Years earlier, Indra had sent word to Yudhishthira through the sage Lomasha that he would remove a great fear that Yudhishthira never spoke about. The fear was Karna. He had been born wearing armour that grew from his body and a pair of earrings, and while he wore them he could not be killed. Now the twelfth year of the exile was over and the thirteenth had begun, and Indra, who wanted the Pandavas to win, decided to go and ask for them.

The Sun knew what Indra intended. The text says he went to Karna out of a father's love for his son, though Karna did not know he was the Sun's son. He came at night, in a dream, in the form of a learned brahmana. Indra will come to you disguised as a brahmana, he said, and ask for your earrings and your armour. Refuse him, and offer him anything else. The earrings and the armour came from the nectar of immortality. While you wear them, no enemy can kill you. Give them away and you give away your life.

Karna asked who his visitor was. He said he was the thousand-rayed Sun.

His vow, Karna said, was known to the whole world: he would give even his life to a worthy brahmana who asked. If Indra came begging for the Pandavas' sake, he would give, and the fame would be his and the disgrace would be Indra's. Fame keeps a man alive in the world as a mother does, he said, and infamy kills a man while he is still breathing.

The Sun argued back plainly. Fame is good for the living, he said. What use is fame to a dead man who has been reduced to ash? Fame after death is like a garland on a corpse. He added that there was a secret of the gods behind his warning, one he could not tell Karna now; Karna would learn it in time. And he named the stake. Wearing the earrings, Karna could not be defeated by Arjuna, even if Indra himself became Arjuna's arrow.

Karna did not move. He feared a lie, he said, more than death. As for Arjuna, he would beat him anyway, with the weapons he had learned from Rama Jamadagnya and from Drona. So the Sun gave him a second plan. If you must give, he said, make it an exchange. Ask Indra for his unfailing spear, the shakti, a weapon that never fails.

Karna woke and told the Sun the dream in his prayers, and the god smiled and confirmed it. After that Karna waited for Indra, wanting the spear.

Here the narrator pauses to tell where the armour came from: the young Kunti, a child born to the Sun, a basket set on a river, and the charioteer Adhiratha and his wife Radha, who raised the boy.

Karna worshipped the Sun every day at noon, standing in water with his hands joined. Brahmanas came to him then, because at that hour he refused nothing. Indra came at that hour too, dressed as a brahmana, and said, "Give me alms."

Karna offered him women, villages, herds of cattle, and finally a whole kingdom. The brahmana wanted none of it. He wanted the armour and earrings Karna was born with, cut from his body. Karna argued with him for a long time, and then he laughed. I knew you from the start, he said. It is not right that I give you something for nothing. You are the king of the gods, and you should give me a boon in return. Otherwise I become killable, and you become a laughing-stock.

Indra admitted that the Sun had warned him, and told him to ask for anything except the thunderbolt. Karna asked for the spear. Indra set its terms. In Indra's hand it killed enemies by the hundred and came back. In Karna's hand it would kill one mighty enemy, and then return to Indra. Karna said one was all he wanted, the one enemy he feared. Indra answered that the man Karna had in mind was protected by Krishna, whom the wise call Narayana. Karna took the spear anyway. Indra added a last condition: if Karna threw it carelessly, while he had other weapons and was in no real danger, it would fall on him. Karna promised to use it only in mortal danger.

Karna asked only that the cutting should not disfigure him. Indra promised no wound and no scar. Karna would keep the colour and radiance of his father, Indra said, without saying who that father was.

Karna took a sharp blade and cut the armour from his body, and gave it to Indra still wet. He cut away the earrings and gave them too. Gods and men cried out at the sight, but his face showed no sign of pain. He smiled while he cut, and flowers fell from the sky. From that cutting, the text says, he was called Vaikartana. Indra laughed. He had tricked Karna and also tied him to fame forever, and he flew back to heaven believing the Pandavas' work was done. Dhritarashtra's sons lost heart at the news, and in the forest the Pandavas rejoiced.

The spear did not go where Karna meant it to. On one night of the war it was spent to save the Kaurava army from Ghatotkacha, and Arjuna was never in its path again. The real loss happened here, before a single arrow was fired. Two fathers contested it before their sons ever met: the Sun warned his son, and Indra came begging for his. Karna knew exactly what he was giving. He gave it because he would not be a man who refused a brahmana, and that one choice made him both a byword for generosity and a man who could now be killed.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Karna — Kunti's first son, given away at birth and raised by a charioteer, who spends his life being told his skill does not outrank his upbringing.
• Theme: The binding vow
• Theme: Kinship and enmity

Elsewhere in this parva

• Arjuna and the hunter — Arjuna starves himself for four months to meet Shiva, and the god comes as a hunter who beats him senseless before giving him his weapon.
• Nala and Damayanti — A sage consoles a king who lost everything at dice with the story of another who did, and then teaches him the dice.
• Bhima and the old monkey — Bhima goes to fetch a flower for Draupadi and cannot lift the tail of an old monkey lying across the path, who is his brother Hanuman.
• The cattle expedition — Duryodhana rides out to mock his cousins in exile, is captured by gandharvas, and is freed by the Pandavas, which he cannot forgive.
• The abduction of Draupadi — Jayadratha carries Draupadi off from the forest, leaves with five tufts of hair and a slave's oath, and goes to Shiva for revenge
• Savitri and Satyavan — A princess marries a man fated to die within the year, follows Death into the forest, and talks him out of her husband
• The yaksha's questions — Four brothers drink before answering and fall beside the lake, and the fifth is asked what a man must be before he may drink

Questions to explore

• Why does Karna give away his armour and earrings when the Sun has warned him it will cost his life?
• What were the terms of Indra's spear, and why was it spent on Ghatotkacha instead of Arjuna?
• Is Karna's vow never to refuse a brahmana generosity or pride?