Kunti herself next made an effort to win over Karna to the side of the Pandavas. For this purpose she stealthily followed him to the banks of the Ganges and stood silently behind him while he piously performed his devotions. When he discovered her, and respectfully inquired the object of her presence there, she disclosed to him the secret of his parentage, and with well-chosen arguments urged him to join his brothers. An affectionate voice issuing from the sun, the voice of Surya himself, confirmed the statements and supported the advice of Kunti. But Karna, “firmly devoted to truth,” even though thus solicited by both his parents, protested his determination to remain firmly faithful to the cause of his friends. He gently reproached his mother for her abandonment of him in his infancy and her subsequent neglect of her maternal duties, but, with noble generosity, he made an important concession in favour of the Pandavas. “I will not speak deceitfully unto thee;” said the hero, “For the sake of Dhritarashtra’s son I shall fight with thy sons to the best of my strength and might! I must not, however, abandon kindness and the conduct that becometh the good. Thy words, therefore, however beneficial, cannot be obeyed by me now. This thy solicitation to me will not yet be fruitless. Except Arjuna, thy other sons--Yudhisthira, Bhima, and the twins, though capable of being withstood by me in fight, and capable also of being slain--shall not yet be slain by me.” Thus did the magnanimous Karna worthily close one of the most interesting incidents in the great epic. War was now inevitable. Krishna returned to Yudhisthira, and both parties prepared to join issue on the famous field of Kurukshetra.[92] The Pandavas gave the supreme command of their forces to Dhrista-dyumna who, as the reader will remember, was the destined slayer of Drona. The Kauravas marshalled their cohorts under the leadership of the terrible Bhisma. This ancient chief had performed mighty deeds in his day; and proudly recounted, in the camp at Kurukshetra, his terrible and successful duel with Rama, the son of Jamadagni, a hero who had, single-handed, vanquished all the Kshatriyas of the earth. The old man’s end was, however, approaching, and he himself was well aware that he must fall by the hand of one Cikhandin, an ally of the Pandavas, since that prince in a previous existence (being then a woman, the Princess Amba (page 107), and subjected to great humiliations through Bhisma’s conduct) had undergone the most dreadful austerities for the express purpose of compassing his destruction, and, by the favour of Siva, would succeed in so doing.