An Introduction to the Bhagavad Gītā

On the holy plain of Kurukshetra the two vast armies stood arrayed, sheathed in steel, bearing weapons of terrible power. In all, eighteen akshauhinis stood gathered upon that field: eleven under the standard of the aged patriarch Bhīshma for the Kauravas, and seven under Dhrishtadyumna for the Pāṇḍavas; and the field was a great pageant of banners, the palm tree of Bhīshma, the ascetic's bowl of Droṇa, the bull of Kripa, the boar of Jayadratha, the outspread cobra-hood of Duryodhana.

The air was torn with the blowing of conches, the trumpeting of war-elephants, the thunder of the royal drums.

An akshauhini was reckoned by a fixed and ancient arithmetic. One elephant, one chariot, three horses, and five foot-soldiers made a patti; three pattis a sena-mukha; three sena-mukhas a gulma; three gulmas a gana; three ganas a vahini; three vahinis a pruthana; three pruthanas a chamu; three chamus an anikini; and ten anikinis, at last, one akshauhini -- 21,870 chariots, as many elephants, 65,610 horses, and 109,350 foot-soldiers. Eighteen such hosts stood that day at Kurukshetra: the greatest army the earth had ever borne to war.

And at this supreme moment, as the great conches sounded and the Gāṇḍīva was raised, Arjuna asked Krishna to drive his chariot into the space between the two armies, that he might look upon those he was about to fight. And Krishna drove him there, into the middle of the field, between the arrayed hosts.

And Arjuna looked, and what he saw undid him. For he did not see faceless enemies. He saw his own teachers, Bhīshma who had held him on his knee, Droṇa who had taught him the bow; he saw his uncles, his cousins, the companions of his childhood, standing there ready to be killed and to kill. And in an instant his whole resolve collapsed. His hands trembled; his mouth went dry; the mighty Gāṇḍīva slipped from his grasp; and he sank down in his chariot in an anguish of despair. What victory could be worth this? he cried.

What joy, what righteousness, could there be in a kingdom won by the slaughter of my own kinsmen, my elders, my teachers, my blood? Better to be killed myself than to win such a victory. And he cast down his bow and would not fight.

Let us understand what has happened here, for it is the doorway to the whole great teaching that follows, and it is not what it first appears. Arjuna's collapse is not cowardice; the greatest warrior of his age does not suddenly lose his physical courage. It is something deeper and more terrible: a crisis of the whole understanding, the moment when a soul, standing at the point of its hardest duty, is overwhelmed by the weight of it and by the tangle of its own attachments, and cannot see its way.

Arjuna is paralyzed not by fear but by grief and confusion, by the collision of his duty as a warrior with his love for those he must fight, by the sudden horror of the thing he was born and trained to do. And it is precisely here, at the bottom of this despair, when all his human resources have failed him and he turns at last, helpless, to Krishna and asks to be taught, that the greatest of all dialogues begins.

For it is only when we have come to the end of our own understanding, and know that we have, and turn for guidance to something higher, that the deepest teaching can reach us; and Arjuna, broken on the field between the armies, casting down his bow and turning to the Lord, becomes the pupil to whom the eternal wisdom can at last be given.