The story

Karna asked for the finest charioteer in the world, and was given the one man who had promised to break his spirit.

Arjuna had Krishna to drive him, so Karna asked Duryodhana for Shalya, king of the Madras and the Pandavas' own maternal uncle, who had been tricked into fighting on the Kaurava side. When Duryodhana asked him, Shalya's eyes went red with anger. A king, he said, could not hold the reins for a charioteer's son. Duryodhana flattered him until he gave way. Shalya set one condition. He would say whatever he liked to Karna's face.

He did not mention that, before the war, he had made Yudhishthira a promise. If he ever drove Karna's chariot in the duel with Arjuna, he would wear down Karna's spirit from the driver's seat.

He kept that promise all morning. When Karna offered rich rewards to anyone who would point Arjuna out to him, Shalya laughed at him. He told him the fable of a crow, fat on scraps from a merchant's table, that challenged the swans to a flying race over the ocean and nearly drowned. Karna answered with insults to Shalya's own people. He also said what he carried into the field. He was not afraid of Arjuna or of Krishna, he said. What frightened him was two curses.

He told Shalya both. Long ago he had lived with Rama, the son of Jamadagni, whom later tradition calls Parashurama, disguised as a brahmin, to learn a great weapon. Indra, wanting to protect Arjuna, entered the body of an insect and bored into Karna's thigh. Karna held still for fear of disturbing his teacher. When Rama woke and saw it, Karna confessed that he was a charioteer's son. Rama cursed him. A weapon won by deceit would not come to him when his time came. The second curse was a brahmin's. Karna had carelessly shot the calf of the brahmin's sacrificial cow as it wandered in a lonely place. The brahmin told him that in battle his chariot wheel would fall into a hole. Karna offered him elephants, cattle and his whole house. The brahmin refused. What he had said could not be unsaid.

The day went badly for him before the duel began. Bhima had just killed Duhshasana. Then Arjuna killed Karna's son Vrishasena while Karna watched.

Karna came close to winning. He set a serpent-mouthed arrow to his bow, one he had kept for Arjuna for years, lying in sandal powder in a golden quiver. Shalya told him to aim again, because it would not reach the neck. Karna refused. Karna does not set an arrow twice, he said, and men like him do not deal in tricks. He shot. Krishna pressed the chariot down into the earth with his feet so that the horses sank to their knees. The arrow tore away Arjuna's crown, the gift of Indra, instead of his head. Arjuna tied up his hair with a white cloth and went on fighting.

Then Karna's wheel went into the ground. The text puts the two curses together at this moment. His chariot reeled because of the brahmin's curse, and the weapon he had from Rama would not come to him. He threw up his hands and railed at dharma. Those who know dharma always say it protects its followers, he said, but it does not protect me. He fought on for a while, and then the earth swallowed the wheel.

Karna wept with fury. He asked Arjuna to wait a moment while he lifted the wheel out. A man on the ground should not be struck from a chariot, he said. Brave men do not strike a man whose hair is loose, who has turned away, who has joined his palms or laid down his arms, or who is in distress. You are a kshatriya, he said, so remember what dharma teaches. I am not afraid of you or of Vasudeva.

Krishna answered him from the chariot. How fortunate, he said, that you remember dharma now. Low men in trouble blame fate and never their own deeds. Then he asked his questions. Where was your dharma when Draupadi was dragged into the hall in a single garment? Where was it when Shakuni, who knew the dice, beat Yudhishthira, who did not? Where was it when you laughed at her in Duhshasana's grip? Where was it when you called the Pandavas back to play again, for a kingdom? Many retellings lengthen the list with the poison, the house of lac and the boy Abhimanyu, and some manuscripts do too. The constituted text keeps it to the dice hall.

Krishna's words lit Arjuna's anger. Karna fought back with the weapon of Brahma and kept straining to free the chariot. Arjuna cut down his great standard, and as it fell the Kaurava army groaned. Then he took the anjalika arrow from his quiver and made a declaration of truth over it. If I have practised austerity, he said, if I have pleased my elders and listened to my friends, then by that truth let this arrow kill my enemy Karna.

It took off Karna's head. It was afternoon, and the text compares the falling head to the red sun setting. A light rose from the fallen body and passed into the sky. Krishna took Arjuna to Yudhishthira, who came to see the body for himself. Today I am king, Yudhishthira said.

He did not know what he was saying. Karna was Kunti's son, born before her marriage, Yudhishthira's elder brother. Kunti knew it, and so did Krishna, but none of the five brothers did. The episode establishes the war's hardest moral ledger, where an appeal to the rules is answered by a list of the times the man appealing broke them. It also leaves a debt Yudhishthira cannot yet see, which will fall due on the riverbank after the war.

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.
• Arjuna — The archer the whole war is arranged around, who arrives at its opening unable to lift his bow because of who is standing on the other side.
• Krishna — Cousin, envoy and charioteer — the one who shapes the war's course without ever lifting a weapon in it.
• Shalya — The Pandava twins' uncle, won to the Kaurava side by hospitality on the road, who drives Karna's chariot and talks him toward defeat.
• Duryodhana — The eldest Kaurava, who never disputes that the kingdom is contested and never concedes that this makes the Pandavas' claim equal to his.
• Yudhishthira — The eldest Pandava, called the king of dharma, who gambles away his brothers, his wife and himself without anyone forcing his hand.
• Theme: Curse and consequence
• Theme: The impossible choice
• Theme: Kinship and enmity

Elsewhere in this parva

• Bhima keeps his oath — Thirteen years after the dice hall Bhima tears open Duhshasana's chest on the battlefield and drinks his blood, as he swore he would

Questions to explore

• What were the curses that made Karna's chariot wheel sink and his weapon fail him?
• Was it right for Arjuna to shoot Karna while he was trying to free his wheel?
• Why did Shalya keep taunting Karna while driving his chariot?