Thread by @MRavinderReddi

I agree with P. Strongman. Just want to add some more nuance and detail 🧵:

1/The Mahābhārata does not merely compare Karṇa to a demon slain by Indra. It says a demon Kṛṣṇa once killed was living inside Karṇa. And it records a standing plan, renewed nightly, to kill Kṛṣṇa himself. 1/11

https://x.com/MRavinderReddi/status/2077078615003635713

2/After Karṇa falls, Kṛṣṇa embraces Arjuna and says: Vṛtra was slain by the destroyer of Bala, Karṇa by you, Dhanaṁjaya. People will tell the death of Vṛtra and Karṇa as a doublet. 2/11

3/And this wasn't a one time compliment after the kill. Kṛṣṇa talks the same way all through the duel. When Karṇa gains the upper hand, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna to cut off his head the way Indra cut down the demon Namuci with his thunderbolt. When Arjuna hesitates to strike a wounded Karṇa, Kṛṣṇa rebukes him: no warrior lets an enemy recover, kill him as Indra killed Namuci. Arjuna obeys, and the text says he struck Karṇa as Indra struck Śambara, yet another demon. Vṛtra, Namuci, Śambara. Three demons slain by Indra, all invoked over Karna. 3/11

4/Now the interesting part most miss. Vana Parva. Duryodhana, humiliated by the gandharvas and rescued by the very Pāṇḍavas he exiled, resolves to fast to death. A kṛtyā, a female spirit of black magic, carries him down to the realm of the daityas. The demons revive him with a war briefing from below, and in it they tell him this: the soul of the slain Naraka has taken residence in the form of Karṇa. 4/11

5/ Epic's own narrator confirms it. Vaiśampāyana says Karṇa, his mind and soul possessed by the inner soul of Naraka, set his cruel mind on Arjuna's death. He adds the wider roster: Bhīṣma, Droṇa and Kṛpa seized by dānavas, the saṁśaptaka legions by rākṣasas. Kurukṣetra is the war of the gods and demons fought again in human bodies, and Karṇa is carrying one of the demons. 5/11

6/So, who was Naraka? Naraka Bhauma, son of the Earth, demon king of Prāgjyotiṣa in the east. He stole the earrings of Aditi, the mother of the gods, and Kṛṣṇa killed him to take them back. The dead demon picked the vessel best placed to strike back at his slayer. And the gods treated the possession as intelligence. The text says Indra went to beg away Karṇa's divine armour and earrings knowing this. 6/11

7/Which brings us to the plan. After Karṇa burns Indra's infallible spear on Ghaṭotkaca, Saṁjaya reveals what the Kaurava inner council, Karṇa in the room, had resolved every single night: Karṇa hurls the spear at Arjuna. If Arjuna cannot be reached, kill Kṛṣṇa, for he is the root of everything the Pāṇḍavas achieve. Some nights the resolve was to kill Kṛṣṇa first. 7/11

8/Every morning, Saṁjaya says, the plan dissolved in their heads, as if fate wiped it clean. Kṛṣṇa gives his own account: I confused Rādheya, and I sent the rākṣasa against him by night, because I protect Arjuna before my father, my mother, my brothers, my own breath. Dhṛtarāṣṭra wails at the waste. Karṇa stood on that field holding a spear that could not miss, and never sent it at Phālguna or at the son of Devakī. The intention is on record. Only the execution kept failing. 8/11

9/One more rhyme the poets planted. Vṛtra is the great serpent of the Veda. And in Karṇa's quiver rode Aśvasena, an actual snake, orphaned when Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa burned the Khāṇḍava forest, who waited years to become Karṇa's arrow. When Karṇa finally fired him at Arjuna's head, Kṛṣṇa pressed the chariot into the earth and the crown was struck off in place of the head. The man twinned with the serpent demon shot a living serpent, and Kṛṣṇa answered both. 9/11

10/Here is what I will concede to Karṇa's defenders. Moments after the Vṛtra speech, Kṛṣṇa calls Karṇa satpuruṣādhamaḥ, the vilest of good men. And in the final book, when Yudhiṣṭhira descends to hell for the sake of his loved ones, the narrator notes that Karṇa, the truth speaking hero, was not long worthy of Naraka. The word for hell is naraka. 10/11

11/Sources:
Primary: the Mahābhārata
Secondary: Alf Hiltebeitel, Krishna in the Mahabharata: The Death of Karna, in Edwin Bryant (ed.), Krishna: A Sourcebook (Oxford UP 2007). 11/11