Karna and the Bee

As Indra looked down upon the world, he couldn't help but notice his favored human, Arjuna.  His fellow gods had criticized him several times for how much he seemingly favored Arjuna, but who can blame him.  He is Indra's own son, after all.  He has never helped him directly so much as he nudged events in his favor.  However, even Indra could never have predicted some of the people and gods that Arjuna would meet during his travels.  Shiva was probably the most surprising of even those.  Shiva himself decided to fight him, and then once Arjuna recognized who he was, Shiva gifted him a powerful sacred weapon.  Indra knew that this would be important for Arjuna, because even at that time, Arjuna's brother and bitter rival was trying to obtain his own weapon.

As Indra continued scanning the earth, his gaze happened upon this bitter rival, Karna.  Currently Karna was training with the guru Parashurama.  Indra had tried to stop this training from happening, since Karna and Arjuna were such bitter rivals.  He knew that one day, whether five days from now or five years from now, the two brothers would eventually come to blows.  Even now, as he watched Parashurama train Karna, he couldn't help but desire to find a method of helping his son, Arjuna.  Indra knew he could not directly interfere, since that would alert his fellow gods.  Ultimately he knew his best method of disrupting the training would be making sure Parashurama became aware of Karna's treachery.  Karna had tricked Parashurama into thinking he was a Brahmin, or priest, in order to convince Parashurama to train him.  Parashurama swore to only train Brahmins, but Karna was a Kshatriya, or warrior, and Parashurama had sworn never to train warriors.

As it just so happened, the possibility of revealing Karna's trickery fell right into Indra's lap, so to speak.  After a hard day of training, Parashurama desired to take a nap.  At first Parashurama asked Karna to return to the ashram and to bring him a pillow, but instead Karna offered him his lap to sleep on.  At this moment, Indra saw his chance to perhaps strike back at Karna.  Deciding to transform himself into a large bee, he flew down and buzzed around Karna's head, attempting to distract him.  Almost at once, Indra recognized that he would have to directly influence Karna in some way.  Furthermore, what could he do to ensure Parashurama would discover his treachery?  Despite all of Indra's vaunted wisdom, he couldn't think of anything worthwhile.  When Indra chose this specific bee, he ensured it was particularly large with plenty of venom.  He didn't do this planning to attack Karna, but simply chose the most malicious and dangerous form he could think of.  However, this would play to Indra's advantage, since he decided to sting Karna.  Despite the obvious pain, Karna did not cry out or even twitch a muscle in fear of waking his teacher.  Indra started to dig his stinger into Karna's body, and eventually the blood overflowed the wound and awoke Parashurama.

As soon as Parashurama awoke, Indra flew off and returned to his palace in the heavens.  As he looked down upon the situation developing between Karna and Parashurama, he couldn't help but feel smug.  While he didn't really know what he was planning to do when he initially took the form of a bee, it couldn't have turned out better even if he had actually planned it this way.  As Parashurama was woken up by the blood, he immediately came to the conclusion that Karna was not a Brahmin, but he must be a Kshatriya, since only a Kshatriya could endure such agony as the wound must have caused.  Immediately Parashurama cursed Karna so that in the future, all that he learned from Parashurama would vanish from his mind.

Author's Note:  While this story isn't directly involving a rakshasa, that's a lot of what I was going for with it--I wanted to show you that gods, too, have characteristics very similar to rakshasas.  In the case of this story, Indra alters his shape into a large bee.  This shape shifting ability is very common among rakshasas, such as when Ravana changes his shape to fool people.  This is also to imply that Indra, even as a god, was not above being a cruel and malicious being in order to either get his own way, or to help one of his favored humans.  In the case of the rakshasas, one of the most important parts of the Ramayana is when Ravana's own brother, Vbhishana, changed sides and helped Rama defeat Ravana.  I really like this because it reinforces a lot of what I was going for with these stories.  In the first three stories, I showed you that the word rakshasa does not necessarily mean evil, and in this story I showed you that the gods and rakshasas have many characteristics in common.  This also leads me back to why I liked this story so much.  It deeply reminds me of the stories of Zeus in Greek mythology.  Frequently Zeus would favor certain humans and would even take on different forms in order to assist these special humans.  In a quirk of irony, the Greek word for god is even "daemon."  In the specific case of this story, I do not believe that the Mahabharata explicitly claims Indra was the bee that attacked Karna.  However, some of the research I put into the story suggests that there is a strong possibility that Indra was the one who attacked Karna.  This is why I wanted to write this story so much, since it has so many potential avenues of morality.

Biblography:
Wikipedia: Karna
Wikipedia: Arjuna


Bee attacking Karna.  Websource: Independent Shootfighters