abhishek_sharma wrote:>> Karna struggles throughout with having to prove himself, and the only person on his side is duryodhana ..which is the tragic part of the story,
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Can you explain how? Duryodhana was helping Karna because he wanted to get rid of Pandavs. There were no humanitarian reasons for that help. The fact that Karna fell for him shows his naivete.
You just explained it yourself. Whatever Duryodhanas reasons - base or otherwise - he appears to have grown genuinely fond of and dependent on Karna by the end of the war (judging by his words), Karna can only judge him by his actions. If Karna is constantly denied an outlet to prove that he is a warrior, despite a burning desire even if he does not know it flows from his divine heritage etc- and he is told it is because he is a suta, constantly mocked, and Duryodhana turns out to be the one person on his side.. that does count.
Which is what is tragic. Bhishma and other elders, even Krishna could have intervened earlier & made this guy come to the side of the "right side". They didn't. Which is what ties to the fate part, the destiny part.
Karna is tied to his destiny to lose, despite all his skills, despite all his prowess. But he goes through the actions nonetheless and still performs feats of incredible generosity when if he had purely been motivated by base instincts, he would have been hoarding his capabilities. That is the part which has Krishna praise him, and the Lord does not praise lightly.
Duryodhana was not on his side when Karna went to Parsuram. Duryodhana just bought the finished product from the market. The finished product was quite good. Unfortunately, it was made from stolen maal .
I think you are merely being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative here! Obviously Duryodhan saw something in Karna - a possible ally, a possible weapon or pure "stick it to the Pandavas" sort of issue, when he chose Karna. But Karna went to Parasuram, as I recall after Drona rejected him, because the latter being an avatar of Vishnu had the skills to teach him. And no, it was not "stolen maal", it was knowledge given to a student capable of absorbing the same who himself did not know what he was, all he had was raw talent & a burning desire to be what he was supposed to be.
For that matter, Parashuram did not do any extensive analysis, when he cursed Karna, he merely jumped to the supposition that because Karna had borne immense pain without a murmur, he was a Kshatriya. Or in turn, it was his divine capability to instantly recognize Karna even when the latter did not know what he was.
This actually is the other aspect of Parashurama, and the double edged sword in approaching one such as Him, for guidance. His raging temper, available instantly. There is also the story after all, of him approaching Ram in anger to see if the rumors of him being the next avatar were correct.
Anyways, the insect story by itself is not sufficient, because in the Mahabharata, Drona & Aswatthama - both Brahmins, accomplish tremendous feats of arms. They are surely wounded, but they fight & return to fight & are regarded as well nigh unstoppable! So clearly, being a Brahmin alone is not a clear indication one cannot bear pain. In fact, if not for the elephant trick, Drona himself would have whittled the Pandavas down to a pyrrhic victory. At the end, as we all know, Aswatthama curses the Pandavas and only Draupadis virtue saves them. Otherwise, war or not, this one man would have ended them all.
Karna would have been a truly great person if had learnt skills like other not-so-kshatriyas learnt (e.g., Satyaki, other Yadavs) and chosen the correct side in Kurushetra. Unfortunately, he did not have the wisdom to do so. Sad.
What the Mahabharata teaches is that choosing the correct side is not as easy as it appears. Your dharma may mean that you may have to fight on the wrong side, and even so, you have to do the best that you are supposed to do, because it is your dharma to do the best. This is the part which bedevils westerners because they are so used to nice classifications of black and white, and because of which a Wendy Doniger (an imbecile IMO) says the Mahabharata is not a nice book, and Krishna is not a nice person.
Right, it never strikes these experts, that by having to follow their dharma, individual warriors and entire armies on the Kaurava side are well nigh invulnerable when seen in their entirety.
Which by the way, is also the reason why the Lord has to resort to so many strategems - whether it be egging Arjuna to kill Karna when he is struggling to get his chariot out of the mud, or whether it is telling Bhima, Duryodhanas weakness. In short, the Kaurava side is so powerful, that even Krisha with his presence finds it tough to swing the battle since he cant fight directly, though he does manage it at the end. The lesson there will be no second chances, against demi Gods such as these, not without Krishna having to intervene directly.
And if memory serves, there is an instance when Shesh Nag aka Balram also steps forth in rage to confront what he perceives as breaking the rules of war, and Krishna has to humbly request him, his own protector, to not intervene, because Balram would devastate anyone on the Pandava side where he to intervene.
(Which also makes me wonder whether it is a uniquely Hindu/Indian trait, that we let things slide so bad, time and again, that God literally has to arrive amongst us to sort things out, and himself pay the price - as Krishna does in his human form - to salvage the situation).
So in that sense, Karna is as wise or unwise as most of the other characters, who too are fated to play their roles out in a story that is more of a tragedy, if anything, that a family slaughters itself and pretty much the entire country.
Check out the numbers killed - if the accounts are true, entire portions of the warrior caste would have been eliminated across the entire bharat of that time. The people who fought on the Kaurava side, as their allies, were following their dharma too.
Also, the powers granted to these people, wise or not, are for a definite period of time. When the Yadava's finally are destroyed, thanks to their hubris, Arjuna seeks to protect the caravan of the women & children fleeing from the carnage, on the way back to the Pandava kingdom. He fails. His skills are no longer available to him.
This when told by him to the rest of the Pandavas sends them into depression and has them realize their time on earth is over, and that they too have to retire.
In that sense, the entire Mahabharata can be interpreted in so many ways, depending on your perspective of life. As you are destined, so shall you reap. On the other hand, people rise despite the odds against them (though they fail since the odds are too high). Dharma does win. Perhaps the one immutable truth, is that he who sought complete solace in God - like Arjuna did in Krishna, will be victorious. Of course, in our ordinary lives, we will not have the avatar of God come visit us anytime, so its a tough call on leading such exacting lives.
As one wag mentioned to me, about the Gita - hard book to read, but much harder to follow in one's own life.
I will come to that in a little while. The reason I came here now was to sing glories of a book I lay hands on. I bought this for personal reasons.
Sorry, for generalization, I am a tamilian and sympathetic to Karna.