Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Udyoga · 26 of 50
26. Kṛṣṇa's embassy
Udyoga (उद्योग)
Both sides gather friends. Kṛṣṇa offers a choice that is already a judgment. One side may have him, unarmed, as a charioteer who will not fight. The other may have his army. Duryodhana chooses the army. Arjuna chooses the unarmed man. The poem lets the choice stand as a portrait of what each cousin thinks power is.
Then Kṛṣṇa goes to the Kuru court as a messenger, which is the last serious attempt to stop the war. He asks for five villages. One for each brother. He is refused. The refusal hardens, in the telling, to a needle's point of earth: not even that. Dhṛtarāṣṭra loves his son and cannot command him. Vidura speaks for peace and is not heard. Gāndhārī speaks for peace and is not heard. Bhīṣma and Droṇa know the war is unjust and will fight it anyway, because the throne they serve has asked them.
Karṇa is the one who wants the war, and who has a private reason that is not only loyalty. He has been insulted at a wedding and patronized by a prince, and the war is the room in which a charioteer's son can be the equal of Arjuna. Kṛṣṇa leaves. The embassy has failed in public. In private, on the way out of the city, it is not quite over.
नेपालीमा
कृष्णले विकल्प दिनुभयो। एक पक्षले उहाँलाई निशस्त्र पाउँछ, अर्कोले उहाँको सेना। दुर्योधनले सेना रोज्यो। अर्जुनले निशस्त्र कृष्णलाई रोजे। अनि कृष्ण दूत बनेर कुरु दरबार जानुभयो। उहाँले पाँच गाउँ माग्नुभयो। अस्वीकार भयो। सुईको टुप्पो जति जमिन पनि दिइनेछैन भनियो। गान्धारी र विदुरले शान्तिका लागि बोले, तर सुनिएन। भीष्म र द्रोणले अन्याय जान्दाजान्दै लड्ने भए। कर्णले युद्ध चाहे। दूतकार्य असफल भयो।