Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 1, Verse 3: Arjuna to Krishna — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga
Duryodhana says: Teacher, look at this great army of the Pandavas, so skillfully arrayed by Drupada's son, your own student.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
Duryodhana's address to Droṇa — *paśyaitāṃ pāṇḍu-putrāṇām ācārya mahatīṃ camūm* — belongs to the order of *vyavahāra* (conventional appearance), the theatre of *ahaṃkāra* (ego-identification) and its projections. The great army (*mahatī camū*) is a spectacle of *nāmarūpa* (name and form), differentiated objects arrayed before a mind that takes distinctions as ultimately real. Duryodhana catalogues force, lineage, and the teacher–student bond between Droṇa and Dhṛṣṭadyumna (*tava śiṣyeṇa dhīmatā*) — all *māyā* (the power of appearance that veils non-dual *brahman*)-constructed relations, taken by the *ajñānin* (one in ignorance) to be self-subsistent facts. The field of Kurukṣetra is the *kṣetra* (field of experience), and the armies filling it are *vikāra* (modification) upon *vikāra*, none with ultimate standing. *Brahman* alone is *nirguṇa* (without attributes) and undivided; the vast formations Duryodhana sees are *adhyāsa* (superimposition) of multiplicity upon the one *ātman*. The speech is the fever of *saṃsāra* (conditioned existence), not yet the moment of inquiry — *viveka* (discriminative discernment) has not arisen, and so the ācārya's teaching proper has not begun.
divergence: Śaṅkara's bhāṣya is silent on 1.3; this reading follows advaita *siddhānta* directly from the mūla, reading Duryodhana's military survey as an instance of *ahaṃkāra*-driven *vyavahāra* and *adhyāsa*, consistent with Śaṅkara's framing of chapter 1 as pre-inquiry context and his identification of Kurukṣetra with the *kṣetra* of experience.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
Rāmānuja reads Duryodhana's address to Droṇa as the first dramatic disclosure of the battle's real stakes: the armies of the Pāṇḍavas, arrayed by Dhṛṣṭadyumna (drupada-putra, 'son of Drupada'), are not merely a military force but the occasion on which Bhagavān — the sarveśvareśvara seated as Pārtha's sārathi — will make Himself manifest as protector of the śaraṇāgatā (those who take refuge). Duryodhana's alarm at the Pāṇḍava vyūha (battle formation) measures his ignorance of this svarūpa: he sees only bala (strength) and aparyāptatā (inadequacy of his own side), missing the Antaryāmin who sustains every warrior's prāṇa. The vyūha arranged by a śiṣya of Droṇa himself ironically prefigures that no worldly guru-śiṣya bond rivals the unconditional kainkarya owed to the Lord.
- Madhvadvaita
Duryodhana addresses Droṇa as *ācārya* (qualified teacher) — a title marking the chain through which Viṣṇu's will descends into the world of instruction. *Paśya* — 'behold' — is itself an act of dependent cognition: every perceiving *jīva* (the individual self) cognizes only insofar as *svatantra* (the independently real, self-sufficient) Hari sustains that cognition from within. The *camū* (battle array) drawn up by Dhṛṣṭadyumna, *drupada-putreṇa tava śiṣyeṇa dhīmatā* — Drupada's son, that wise pupil of yours — stands as an instrument of Hari's dispensation, not a product of *jīva* autonomy. Duryodhana catalogues Pāṇḍava strength as if his own appraisal were self-grounded; in this he enacts the cardinal error Dvaita diagnoses throughout *saṃsāra*: a *paratantra* (eternally dependent) *jīva* mistaking its conditioned seeing for sovereign agency. The *pañca-bheda* (the five-fold real distinction: Lord–jīva, Lord–matter, jīva–jīva, jīva–matter, matter–matter) governs the scene: Droṇa and Duryodhana are ontologically distinct from each other, from the *camū*, and from the Lord who alone arrays and dissolves armies according to his will.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
Vallabhācārya's commentary on the 1.2–1.11 block notes that Duryodhana, surveying the Pāṇḍava forces and his own, reports the imbalance to the ācārya and is inwardly afflicted (viṣaṇṇa, 'downcast') — a mood that Vallabha reads as the soul's unwitting mimicry of viraha (separation-anguish) from Kṛṣṇa. In Puṣṭi-mārga the battlefield is Kṛṣṇa's own līlā-raṅga (play-stage); every array of warriors is His prasāda, configured for His delight. Duryodhana's fear before the great camū is precisely the jīva's bewilderment when it encounters the overwhelming fullness of Kṛṣṇa's śakti without yet knowing it as ānanda.
- Śrīdharabhakti
Śrīdhara Svāmī reads the verse with clean precision: Duryodhana directs Droṇa's attention — 'O Ācārya, behold this great army of the Pāṇḍavas' — to the vyūha (battle formation) set by Dhṛṣṭadyumna, son of Drupada. The pointing word 'paśya' (behold) is not idle; it is a rhetorical summons designed to unsettle the teacher's composure by making him see, with his own eyes, the disciplined formation arrayed against them. By naming Dhṛṣṭadyumna as 'drupada-putra' rather than by his personal name, Duryodhana invokes the old enmity between Drupada and Droṇa, stoking the teacher's awareness that his own former rival's son now commands the enemy — a carefully aimed prod toward anger.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī unpacks Duryodhana's address to Droṇa as a layered act of psychological manipulation: by calling Droṇa 'ācārya of the Pāṇḍavas' rather than 'my ācārya,' Duryodhana signals covertly that the teacher's deeper affection belongs to the other side — a subtle accusation of divided loyalty intended to inflame Droṇa's pride and override his natural reluctance to fight pupils he loves. The epithet 'dhīmatā' (intelligent, wise) applied to Dhṛṣṭadyumna is doubly barbed: this 'wise' student learned the very martial art from Droṇa that is now turned against him — making Droṇa's own pedagogical generosity the instrument of his potential destruction. Madhusūdana notes that Duryodhana thus reveals a concealed dveṣa (enmity) toward the ācārya himself, and that one who plots this way even on dharma-kṣetra has an irredeemably tainted āśaya (inner disposition) — setting up the entire Gītā as the Lord's response to such moral corruption.