Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 1, Verse 29: Arjuna to Krishna — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga
My limbs are giving way, my mouth is parching, trembling runs through my body, and my hair stands on end.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
*Sīdanti mama gātrāṇi mukhaṃ ca pariśuṣyati | vepathuś ca śarīre me romaharṣaś ca jāyate* — the limbs sink, the mouth parches, trembling (*vepathus*) seizes the body, and *romaharṣa* (piloerection) arises. Each symptom belongs to the *upādhi* (limiting adjunct) of the gross body, not to the *ātman* (the self), which is untouched, changeless, and without limbs to sink or mouth to parch. That Arjuna registers these as *his* afflictions — *mama gātrāṇi*, *śarīre me* — is itself the first visible signature of *adhyāsa* (superimposition): the non-self, the *deha* (body), is taken as self. *Ajñāna* (ignorance), operating through identification with this *upādhi*, generates the entire cascade — distress, trembling, grief — because where non-dual *ātman* alone is real, no such collapse could touch the knower. The *viṣāda* (despondency) of this chapter is not an obstacle external to Arjuna's spiritual path but a dramatic disclosure of the *avidyā* (ignorance of the self) that must be burned by *jñāna-niṣṭhā* (steady establishment in knowledge). Śrī Kṛṣṇa's subsequent *upadeśa* (teaching) is necessitated precisely here, where the body's symptoms expose the *adhyāsa* most nakedly.
divergence: Ānandagiri (1.29) classifies *vepathus* and *romaharṣa* as *bhīti-liṅga* (signs of fear), distinguishing them from the *śoka-liṅga* (signs of grief) of the preceding verse. The advaita siddhānta reading absorbs both categories under *adhyāsa*: fear and grief alike presuppose body-identification, and their differentiation is secondary to that shared root.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
Rāmānuja reads the bodily collapse not as error but as the measure of Arjuna's greatness: the mahāmanā (great-souled), the paramakāruṇika (supremely compassionate), the dīrghabandhu (long-time protector of his kin), drenched in perspiration across every limb (atimātra-svinna-sarva-gātraḥ), speaks his refusal and sinks. The sweating limbs and the bow released are not weakness — they are the outward sign of bahu-bandhu-sneha (intense kin-love) conjoined with dharma-adharma-bhaya (terror at moral transgression). Bhagavān will now convert this very compassion, properly re-directed as kainkarya (service to the Lord), into the ground of liberation.
- Madhvadvaita
Madhvācārya's bhāṣya on 1.29 is absent from the supplied corpus. Reading from Dvaita first principles: Arjuna's physical collapse — the quivering limbs, the scorching within — is the jīva's natural state when it acts from svātantrya (self-sovereignty) rather than in dependent surrender to Hari. The body speaks what the intellect has not yet understood: the jīva can sustain nothing through its own volition. Only paratantrya (absolute dependence on Hari) stabilizes the instrument.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
Vallabha reads verses 1.28–1.30 as a single confessional arc in which Arjuna, through dehadharma-abhimāna (identifying himself with the body-dharma) and viṣaya-darśana (the sight of beloved objects before him), reveals his āśraya (refuge) as entirely Kṛṣṇa-bahya (outside Kṛṣṇa). The sinking limbs and spinning mind (bhramatīva ca me manaḥ) are not moral failure but Kṛṣṇa's own līlā-nimitta (occasion created in his sport): by letting Arjuna exhaust every worldly āśraya first, Bhagavān clears the field so that only puṣṭi-prasāda (sustaining grace freely given) can remain.
- Śrīdharabhakti
Śrīdhara Svāmī glosses with compressed precision: vepathus is kampa (trembling), romaharṣa is romāñca (piloerection), sramsate means the bow falls (nipatati, slipping from unsteady hands), and paridahyate means scorched on all sides (sarvataḥ santapyate — burning through). Four distinct physiological signals, each carrying its own testimony: the body has become ungovernable because the will behind it has fragmented. Bhakti reads these as the natural overflow of karuṇā (compassion) overwhelming the kṣatriya's trained composure — an honest body before a dishonest situation.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī offers the most layered physiological hermeneutic: vepathus is kampa (trembling), romaharṣa is pulakatva (thrilling piloerection); Gāṇḍīva falling from the hand (gāṇḍīva-bhraṃśa) is the outward sign of adhairya-lakṣaṇa-daurbalyam (the weakness that marks a failure of steadiness); and the burning of the skin (tvak-paridāha) discloses antaḥsantāpa (the scorching within). Each external symptom is a window onto an interior state. For Madhusūdana, who holds both the Advaita diagnosis of ajñāna and the bhakti affirmation of Kṛṣṇa's grace, this fourfold collapse is simultaneously a medical fact, a spiritual crisis, and the precise ground on which Kṛṣṇa's upadeśa will land.