The story

Krishna drove out of Hastinapura with Karna standing beside him in the chariot, and on the way he offered him the world.

Sanjaya later reported the conversation to the blind king. Krishna began with the law, because Karna knew the law. A son born to an unmarried girl, the authorities say, belongs to the man who later marries her. Karna was that son, Kunti's first child, and so by dharma he was Pandu's son, older than Yudhishthira. Come and be king, Krishna said. The five brothers would clasp his feet. Yudhishthira would ride behind him as heir with the white fan, Bhima would hold the royal umbrella, Arjuna would drive his chariot, and Krishna himself would consecrate him.

Karna's answer begins by telling Krishna nothing new. He already knew that Kunti had conceived him by the Sun as a girl and had given him up at birth. Then he said what that knowledge did not change.

Adhiratha the charioteer had found him and carried him home, and given him to Radha. Her milk came for love of him, Karna said, and she cleaned his filth when he was an infant. How could a man who knows dharma take the ancestral offering away from her? Adhiratha had performed his birth rites, named him Vasushena and found him his wives; his sons and grandsons were born among the charioteers, and his heart was bound there. Not for the whole earth or heaps of gold would he be false to them.

There was a second bond. For thirteen years he had shared Duryodhana's kingdom, and Duryodhana had gone to war relying on him to meet Arjuna.

Then he asked Krishna to keep the secret. If Yudhishthira learned that Kunti's eldest son was alive, he would refuse the throne, and Karna, receiving it, would hand it straight to Duryodhana. Let Yudhishthira be king always, he said, the king whose guide is Krishna and whose warrior is Arjuna.

He described the coming war as a great sacrifice: Krishna and Arjuna its priests, the Gandiva its ladle, blood its offering, and its closing rite the widows of Dhritarashtra's house weeping with Gandhari among the vultures. He regretted, he said, the harsh things he had said to the Pandavas to please Duryodhana.

Krishna smiled. If Karna did not want the earth he was being offered, the Pandavas' victory was certain. He gave Karna a message for Bhishma, Drona and Kripa: the new moon was seven days away, and the battle could be joined then.

Karna answered that he already knew. He had dreamed. He saw Yudhishthira seated on a heap of bones, eating rice and ghee from a golden bowl. He saw himself with Bhishma, Drona and Duryodhana in a cart drawn by camels, travelling south, the direction of death. And it is Karna, of all people, who says the sentence: yato dharmas tato jayah, where dharma is, there is victory. He embraced Krishna, climbed down, and rode back downcast.

Kunti tried next. When Vidura came to her in distress after the failed embassy, she found herself thinking of one man. Drona and Bhishma, she thought, would never truly harm their pupils. Karna would. She remembered trying the sage Durvasa's mantra on the Sun as a girl, out of nothing but curiosity, and went down to the Ganga.

Karna was at his prayers, facing east with his arms raised. She stood behind him in the shade of his upper garment, wilting in the heat like a garland of lotuses, and waited until the sun had moved round to warm his back. He turned, folded his hands, and named himself: I am Radheya, son of Adhiratha, Karna. What can I do for you? She told him he was not Radheya but Kaunteya, born to her in her father's house with the earrings and the armour, and asked him to join his brothers. Karna and Arjuna together would be like Balarama and Krishna. No one should call him a charioteer's son again. Then a voice came from the Sun itself, like a father's, saying that Pritha spoke the truth.

His mind did not move. He did not doubt her. But she had cast him away, and that act had destroyed his name. Born a kshatriya, he had never received a kshatriya's rites. What enemy could have done worse? She had shown him no pity when it would have mattered, and spoke to him now for her own sons' good. If he crossed over now, every warrior would say he feared Arjuna and Krishna, and Duryodhana's people were counting on him as a boat to carry them across.

Yet her coming would not be wasted. He would not kill Yudhishthira, Bhima, Nakula or Sahadeva, though he might have them at his mercy. He would fight Arjuna alone. She would always have five sons, he told her: with Karna and without Arjuna, or with Arjuna if Karna was killed. Kunti, trembling, embraced him. Fate is stronger, she said, and asked him to remember his promise of safety for the four. Then they went their separate ways.

The secret of Karna's birth is told twice before the war, to the one man it would most change, and both times it changes nothing except where his arrows will fall. In battle he spares her other sons more than once, remembering her words. He keeps both bargains: he dies on the side of the people who raised him, and his mother keeps her five sons.

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.
• Krishna — Cousin, envoy and charioteer — the one who shapes the war's course without ever lifting a weapon in it.
• Kunti — Mother of three Pandavas and, before any of them, of the son she set adrift on a river and had to watch her other children fight.
• Vidura — The half-brother kept from the throne by his mother's rank, who gives the correct advice at every turn and is overruled at every turn.
• Theme: Birth and worth
• Theme: Kinship and enmity
• Theme: The impossible choice

Elsewhere in this parva

• Krishna chooses sides — Arjuna picks Krishna unarmed over Krishna's whole army, and Shalya is won for Duryodhana by a row of roadside halls
• Vidura's counsel on a sleepless night — A king who cannot sleep sends for the half-brother he has ignored all his life, and is told exactly what to do while there is time to do it
• Krishna's embassy to Hastinapura — Krishna goes to Hastinapura to ask for peace, is refused even a needle's point of land, and shows the hall who he is
• The story of Amba — Bhishma explains why he will not fight Shikhandi and, in telling Amba's story, names the one way he can fall

Questions to explore

• Why does Karna refuse the throne when Krishna tells him he is Kunti's son?
• Why does Karna promise Kunti that she will still have five sons?
• Did Karna know he was Kunti's son before Krishna told him?