Shloka 84
नरेन्द्र! श्रेष्ठ ब्राह्मणके शापसे उस समय उसका रथ डगमगाने लगा और उसका पहिया पृथ्वीमें धँस गया। यह देख सूतपुत्र कर्ण समरांगणमें व्याकुल हो उठा ।।
sañjaya uvāca |
narendra! śreṣṭha-brāhmaṇa-śāpena tasmin samaye tasya ratho ḍagamagāya, tasya cakraṃ ca pṛthivyāṃ nimagnaṃ babhūva | etad dṛṣṭvā sūtaputraḥ karṇaḥ samarāṅgaṇe vyākulo ’bhavat ||
sa-vedikaś-caitya iva atimātraḥ supuṣpito bhūmitalе nimagnaḥ | ghūrṇe rathe brāhmaṇasyābhiśāpād rāmad upāttaṃ tv avibhāti cāstre ||
Sañjaya said: O king, because of the curse of a noble Brahmin, at that moment Karna’s chariot began to reel and its wheel sank into the earth. Seeing this, Karna—the son of a charioteer—became distressed on the battlefield. It was as though a huge, beautifully flower-adorned shrine with its altar had sunk into the ground. With the chariot lurching under the Brahmin’s curse, even the weapon he had obtained from Rama (Parashurama) failed to shine forth—his mastery deserted him at the critical instant—leaving him shaken amid the moral and fateful consequences of past deeds.
संजय उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse underscores moral causality: past actions and ethical breaches can return as unavoidable consequences at decisive moments. Even great prowess and divine weapons may fail when one is entangled in adharma or in the results of earlier wrongdoing, symbolized here by the Brahmin’s curse and the sudden collapse of support (the chariot wheel sinking).
During the climactic battle, Karna’s chariot begins to wobble and its wheel sinks into the earth due to a Brahmin’s curse. The scene is compared to a massive shrine sinking into the ground. In that crisis, the weapon Karna had learned from Paraśurāma does not manifest effectively, and Karna becomes deeply agitated on the battlefield.