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STORIES · THE MAHĀBHĀRATA · Strī
Kuntī Reveals Karṇa's Birth at the Water-Offering
Classical
After the massacre of the camp and Gāndhārī's lament on the battlefield, the Kuru women go down to the Gaṅgā. They take off their ornaments and upper garments and offer water to their fathers, sons, husbands and brothers. The Pāṇḍavas have come with Dhṛtarāṣṭra at the head, and the shore is crowded with the weeping wives of the fallen.
In the middle of the rite Kuntī speaks to her sons in a broken voice. She points to the warrior who had been called a Sūta's son and the son of Rādhā, the hero whom Arjuna killed and whom the Pāṇḍavas had once dismissed, and says that he was their eldest brother. He was born to her from Sūrya, with earrings and armour from birth. They should offer him water as well.
The Pāṇḍavas are stunned. Yudhiṣṭhira, sighing like a snake, asks how she could have borne such a son and kept him hidden like fire in a cloth. He describes the Karṇa the war had shown them: an ocean of arrows, whose bow-twang shook armies, whom only Arjuna could withstand. He says that the grief he now feels for Karṇa is a hundred times greater than for Abhimanyu and Draupadī's sons.
He also grieves for what might have been. Had they known, he says, the Pāṇḍavas with Karṇa as an ally could have beaten even the gods, and this carnage would never have come. He weeps aloud, curses the secrecy that has destroyed them, and then offers water to Karṇa himself.
He has the widows and family of Karṇa brought to the bank to perform the rite with him, as for an eldest brother. The women on the shore break into a new wail, and Yudhiṣṭhira comes up out of the water shaken. In the Śānti Parva, shortly after, he tells Nārada that this secret is what weighs most on him, and in anger he lays a curse on women that they will never be able to keep a secret.
Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya
Who: Kuntī, Yudhiṣṭhira, Karṇa, Sūrya, Dhṛtarāṣṭra
Bound to
Kunti's mantra and Karna's birth birth
Yudhishthira's curse: women can no longer keep secrets curse
The Fall of Karṇa: the Sinking Wheel origin
Yudhiṣṭhira's Grief and Coronation origin
Places: Gaṅgā bank
Where this comes from
- read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (text as scanned on archive.org; mahabharataonline.com section pages could not be opened from the working environment) Stri Parva, Section XXVII (Jalapradanika Parva); Shanti Parva, Section I