FIRST CHAPTER

KURUKSHETRA

1. Dhritarashtra¹ said: _On the field of Kurukshetra, the field of the working out of the Dharma ², gathered together, eager for battle, what did they, O Sanjaya.my people and the Pandavas?

1. THE peculiarity of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to its inexorable completion. It matters little whether or no, as modern criticism supposes, the Gita is a later composition inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author in order to invest its teaching with the authority and popularity of the great national epic. There seem to me to be strong grounds against this supposition for which, besides, the evidence, extrinsic or internal, is in the last degree scanty and insufficient. But even if it be sound, there remains the fact that the author has not only taken pains to interweave his work inextricably into the vast web of the larger poem, but is careful again and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has arisen; he returns to it prominently, not only at the end, but in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We must accept the insistence of the author and give its full importance to this recurrent preoccupation of the Teacher and the disciple. The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life.

2. We might symbolically translate the phrase as the field of human action which is the field of the evolving Dharma. The Gita takes for its frame such a period of transition and crisis as humanity periodically experiences in its history, in which great forces clash together for a huge destruction and reconstruction, intellectual, social, moral, religious, political, and these in the actual psychological and social stage of human evolution culminate usually through a violent physical convulsion of strife, war or revolution. The Gita proceeds from the acceptance of the necessity in Nature for such vehement crises and it accepts not only the moral aspect, the struggle between righteousness and unrighteousness, between the self-affirming law of Good and the forces that oppose its progression, but also the physical aspect, the actual armed war or other vehement physical strife between the human beings who represent the antagonistic powers. A day may come, must surely come, we will say, when humanity will be ready spiritually, morally,

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2. Sanjaya said :- Then the prince Duryodhana, having seen the army of the Pandavas arrayed in battle order, approached his teacher and spoke these words:-

3. “ Behold this mighty host of the sons of Pandu, O Acharya, arrayed by Drupada's son, thy intelligent disciple.

4-6 Here in this mighty army are heroes and great bowmen who are equal in battle to Bhima and Arjuna; Yuyudhana, Virata and Drupada of the great car, Dhrishtaketu, Chekitana and the valiant prince of Kashi, Purujit and Kuntibhoja, and Shaibya, foremost among men; Yudhamanyu, the strong, and Uttamauja, the victorious; Subhadra's son {Abhimanyu} and the sons of Draupadi; all of them of great prowess.

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socially for the reign of universal peace; meanwhile the aspect of battle and the nature and function of man as a fighter have to be accepted and accounted for by any practical philosophy and religion. The Gita, taking life as it is and not only as it may be in some distant future, puts the question how this aspect and function of life, which is really an aspect and function of human activity in general, can be harmonised with the spiritual existence.

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7. On our side also know those who are the most distinguished, O best of the twice-born, the leaders of my army; these I name to thee for thy special notice.

8-9. Thyself and Bhishma and Karna and Kripa, the victorious in battle, Ashvatthama, Vikarna, and Saumadatti also; and many other heroes have renounced their life for my sake, they are all armed with diverse weapons and missiles and all well-skilled in war.

10. Unlimited is this army of ours and it is marshalled by Bhishma, while the army of theirs is limited, and they depend of Bhima.

11. Therefore all ye standing in your respective divisions in the different fronts of the battle, guard Bhishma.”

12. Cheering the heart of Duryodhana, the mighty grandsire (Bhishma), the Ancient of the Kurus, resounding the battlefield with a lion's roar, blew his conch.

13. Then conchs and kettledrums, tabors and drums and horns, suddenly blared forth, and the clamour became tremendous.

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14. Then, seated in their great chariot1, yoked to white horses, Madhava (Sri Krishna) and the son of Pandu (Arjuna) blew their divine conchs.

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Arjuna is the fighter in the chariot with divine Krishna as his charioteer. There is a method of explaining the Gita in which not only this episode but the whole Mahabharata is turned into an allegory of the inner life and has nothing to do with our outward human life and action, but only with the battles of the soul and the powers that strive within us for possession. That is a view which the general character and the actual language of the epic does not justify and, if pressed, would turn the straightforward philosophical language of the Gita into a constant, laborious and somewhat puerile mystification. The language of the Veda and part at least of the Puranas is plainly symbolic, full of figures and concrete representations of things that lie behind the veil, but the Gita is written in plain terms and professes to solve the great ethical and spiritual difficulties which the life of man raises, and it will not do to go behind this plain language and thought and wrest them to the service of our fancy. But there is this . much of truth in the view, that the setting of the doctrine, though not symbolical, is certainly typical, as indeed the setting of such a discourse as the Gita must necessarily be if it is to have any relation at all with that which it frames.

There are indeed three things in the Gita which are spiritually significant, almost symbolic, typical of the profound- est relations and problems of the spiritual life and of human (existence at its roots ; they are the divine personality of the Teacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple and the Occasion of his teaching. The teacher is God himself descended into humanity; the disciple is the first, as we might say in modern language, the representative man of his age, closest friend and chosen instrument of the Avatar, his protagonist in an immense work and struggle the secret purpose of which is unknown to the actors in it, known only to the incarnate God- head who guides it all from behind the veil of his unfathomable mind of Knowledge ; the occasion is the violent crisis of that work and struggle at the moment when the anguish and moral difficulty and blind violence of its apparent movements forces itself with the shock of a visible revelation on the mind of its representative man and raises the whole question of the meaning of God in the world and the goal and drift and sense of human life and conduct.

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15-16. Hrishikesha (Krishna) blew his Panchajanya and Dhananjaya (Arjuna) his Devadatta (god-given); Vrikodara of terrific deeds blew his mighty conch, Paundra; the King Yudhishthira, the son of Kuniti, blew Anantavijaya; Nakula and Sahadeva, Sughosha and Manipushpaka.

(Yudhishthira, Vrikodara, Nakula and Sahadeva are the four brothers of Arjuna.)

17-18. And Kashya of the great bow, and Shikhandi of the great chariot, Dhrishtadyumna and Virata and Satyaki, the unconquered, Drupada, and the sons of Draupadi, O Lord of earth, and Saubhadra, the mighty-armed, on all sides their several conchs blew.

19. That tumultuous uproar resounding through earth and sky tore the hearts of the sons of Dhritarashtra.

20. Then, beholding the sons of Dhritarashtra standing in battle order, and the flight of missiles having begun,¹ the son of Pandu (Arjuna), whose embiem is an ape, took up his bow and spoke this word to Hrishikesha, O Lord of earth:

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The symbolic companionship of Arjuna and Krishna, the human and the divine soul, is expressed elsewhere in Indian thought in the heavenward journey of Indra and Kutsa seated

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21-23. Arjuna ¹ said: O Achyuta (the faultless, the immovable), stay my chariot between the two armies, so that I may view these myriads standing, longing for battle, whom I have to meet in this holiday of fight, and look upon those who have come here to champion the cause of the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra.

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in one chariot, in the figure of the two birds upon one tree in the Upanishad, in the twin figures of Nara and Narayana, the seers who do tapasya together for the knowledge. But in all three it is the idea of the divine knowledge in which, as the Gita says, all action culminates that is in view ; here it is instead the action which leads to that knowledge and in which the divine Knower figures himself. Arjuna and Krishna, this human and this divine, stand together not as seers in the peaceful hermitage of meditation, but as fighter and holder of the reins in the clamorous field, in the midst of the hurtling shafts, in the chariot of battle. The Teacher of the Gita is therefore not only the God in man who unveils himself in the word of knowledge, but the God in man who moves our whole world of action, by and for whom all our humanity exists and struggles and labours, towards whom all human life travels and progresses. He is the secret Master of works and sacrifice and the friend of the human peoples.

¹ The Gita starts from action and Arjuna is the man of action and not of knowledge. It is typical of the pragmatic

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24-25. Sanjaya said: Thus addressed by Gudakesha (one that has overcome sleep. Arjuna), Hrishikesha, O Bharata, having stayed that best of chariots between the two armies, in front of Bhishma, Drona and all the princes of earth, said: “O Partha, behold these Kurus gathered together.”

26. Then saw Partha standing upon opposite sides, uncles and grandsires, teachers, mother's brothers, cousins, sons and grandsons, comrades, father-in-law, benefactors.

27. Seeing all these kinsmen thus standing arrayed, Kaunteya, invaded by great pity, uttered this in sadness and dejection:

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man that it is through his sensations that he awakens to the meaning of his action. He has asked his friend and charioteer to place him between the two armies, not with any profounder idea, but with the proud intention of viewing and looking in the face these myriads of the champions of unrighteousness whom he has to meet and conquer and slay " in this holiday of fight" so that the right may prevail. It is as he gazes that the revelation of the meaning of a civil and domestic war comes home to him, a war in which not only men of the same race, the same nation, the same clan, but those of the same family and household stand upon opposite sides. All whom the social man holds most dear and sacred, he must meet as enemies and slay, all these social ties have to be cut asunder by the sword. It is not that he did not know these things before, but he has never realised it all; obsessed by his claims and wrongs and by the principles of his life, the struggle for the right, the duty of the Kshatriya to protect justice and the Jaw and fight and beat down injustice and lawless violence, he has neither thought out deeply nor felt it in his heart and at the core of his life. And now it is shown to his vision by the divine charioteer, placed sensationally before his eyes, and comes home to him like a blow delivered at the very centre of his sensational, vital and emotional being.

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28-29. Arjuna said: Seeing these my own people O Krishna, arrayed for battle, my limbs collapse ¹ and my mouth is parched, my body shakes and my hair stands on end; Gandiva (Arjuna's bow) slips from my hand, and all my skin seems to be burning.

30. I am not able to stand and my mind seems to be whirling; also I see evil omens, O Keshava.

31. Nor do I see any good in slaying my own people in battle; O Krishna, I desire not victory, nor kingdom, nor pleasures.

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1. The first result is a violent sensational and physical crisis which produces a disgust of the action and its material objects and of life itself. He rejects the vital aim pursued by egoistic humanity in its action,—happiness and enjoyment; he rejects the vital aim of the Kshatriya, victory and rule and power and the government of men. What after all is this fight for justice when reduced to its practical terms, but just this, a fight for the interests of himself, his brothers and his party, for possession and enjoyment and rule ? But at such a cost these things are not worth having. For they are of no value in themselves, but only as a means to the right maintenance of social and national life and it is these very aims that in the person of his kin and his race he is about to destroy. And then comes the cry of the emotions.

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32-35. What is kingdom to us, O Govinda, what enjoyment, what even life? Those for whose sake we desire kingdom, enjoyments and pleasures, they stand here in battle, abandoning life and riches_ teachers, fathers, sons, as well as grandsires, mother's brothers, fathers-in-law, and other kith and kin; these I would not consent to slay, though myself slain, O Madhusudana, even for the kingdom of the three worlds; how then for earth? What pleasures can be ours after killing the sons of Dhritarashtra, O Janardana ?

36. sin 1 will take hold of us in slaying them, though they are the aggressors. So it is not fit that we kill the sons of Dhritarashtra, our kinsmen; indeed how many we be happy, O Madhava, killing our own people ?

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The whole thing is a dreadful sin,—for now the moral sense 'awakens to justify the revolt of the sensations and the emotions. It is a sin, there is no right nor justice in mutual slaughter; especially are those who are to be slain the natural objects of reverence and of love, those without whom one would not care to live, and to violate these sacred feelings can be no virtue, can be nothing but a heinous crime. Granted that the offence, the aggression, the first sin, the crimes of greed and selfish passion which have brought things to such a pass came from the other side; yet armed resistance to wrong under such circumstances would be itself a sin and crime worse than theirs because they are blinded by passion and unconscious of guilt, while on this side it would be with a clear sense of guilt that the sin would be committed. And for what? For the maintenance of family morality, of the social law and the law of the nation ? These are the very standards that will be destroyed by this civil war.

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37-38. Although these, with a consciousness clouded with greed, see no guilt in the destruction of the family, no crime in hostility to friends, why should not we have the wisdom to draw back from such a sin, O Janardana, we who see the evil in the destruction of the family ?

39. In the annihilation of the family the eternal traditions of the family are destroyed; in the collapse of traditions, lawlessness overcomes the whole family.

40. Owing to predominance of lawlessness, O Krishna, the women of the family become corrupt; women corrupted. O Varshneya, the confusion of the Varnas ¹ arises.

41. This confusion leads to hell the ruiners of the family, and the family; for their ancestors fall deprived of pinda (rice offering) and libations.

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1. Varna is usually translated as caste, but the existing caste system is a very different thing from the ancient social idea of Chatwvarna, the four clear-cut orders of the Aryan community, and in no way corresponds with the description of the Gita. See Ch. XVIII,

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42.By these misdeeds of the ruiners of the family leading to the confusion of the orders, the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family are the destroyed.

43. And men whose family morals are corrupted, O Janardana, live for ever in hell. Thus have we heard.

44. Alas! we were engaged in committing a great sin, we who were endeavouring to kill our own people through greed of the pleasures of kingship.

45. It is more for my welfare that the sons of Dhritarashtra armed should slay me unarmed and unresisting. (I will not fight.)

46. Sanjaya said: Having thus spoken on the battlefield, Arjuna sank down on the seat of the chariot; casting down the divine bow and the inexhaustible quiver (given to him by the gods for that tremendous hour), his spirit overwhelmed with sorrow.¹

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¹. Although Arjuna is himself concerned only with his own situation, his inner struggle and the law of action he must follow, yet the particular question he raises, in the manner in which he raises it does really bring up the whole question of human life and action, what the world is and why it is and how possibly, it being what it is, life here in the world can be reconciled with life in the spirit. And all this deep and difficult matter the Teacher insists on resolving as the very foundation of his command to an action which must proceed from a new poise of being and by the light of a liberating knowledge. But what, then, is it that makes the difficulty for the man who has to take

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the world as it is and act in it and yet would live, within, the spiritual life ? What is this aspect of existence which appals his awakened mind and brings about what the title of the first chapter of the Gita calls significantly the Yoga of the dejection of Arjuna, the dejection and discouragement felt by the human being when he is forced to face the spectacle of the universe as it really is with the veil of the ethical illusion, the illusion of self-righteousness torn from his eyes, before a higher reconciliation with himself is effected ? It is that aspect which is figured outwardly in the carnage and massacre of Kurukshetra and spiritually by the vision of the Lord of all things as Time arising to devour and destroy the creatures whom it has made. The outward aspect is that of world-existence and human existence proceeding by struggle and slaughter ; the inward aspect is that of the universal Being fulfilling himself in a vast creation and a vast destruction. Life a battle and a field of death, this is Kurukshetra; God the Terrible, this is the vision that Arjuna sees on that field of massacre.

We must acknowledge Kurukshetra; we must submit to the law of Life by Death before we can find our way to the life immortal; we must open our eyes, with a less appalled gaze than Arjuna's, to the vision of our Lord of Time and Death and cease to deny, hate or recoil from the universal Destroyer.

Thus in the Upanishad sung by the Lord, the science* of Brahman, the scripture of Yoga, the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, ends the first chapter entitled "The Yoga of the Dejection of Arjuna".

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