BG 1.4 — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga

Bhagavad Gītā 1.4Chapter 1 · Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga · Sañjaya → Dhṛtarāṣṭra · anuṣṭubh

अत्र शूरा महेष्वासा भीमार्जुनसमा युधि ।

युयुधानो विराटश् च द्रुपदश् च महारथः ॥

atra śūrā maheṣvāsā bhīmārjuna-samā yudhi

yuyudhāno virāṭaś ca drupadaś ca mahārathaḥ

spokensingle-voice recital; rendered via IndicF5 conditioned on a Sanskrit reference clip

meaning

Here stand heroes with mighty bows, each a match for Bhīma and Arjuna in battle: Yuyudhāna, Virāṭa, and Drupada the great chariot-warrior.

ekras · bhāṣya

Duryodhana keeps speaking. Now he starts naming names. Each name is chosen for what it will do to the teacher in front of him. "Here stand heroes with mighty bows, equal to Bhima and Arjuna in battle: Yuyudhana, Virata, and Drupada the great chariot-warrior." Maheshvasa means a warrior who carries a great bow. A great bow takes real strength to draw, and what it sends travels with weight. To be called a maheshvasa is to be marked as a warrior whose strike actually lands. Bhimarjuna-sama means equal to Bhima in raw strength, equal to Arjuna in skill with weapons. Bhima and Arjuna are the two strongest Pandavas. Duryodhana is saying: every name on this list is at the level of the best on their side. Then the names. Yuyudhana comes first. He is the personal student of Arjuna — learned the weapons from Arjuna directly. Even when Krishna later gave Duryodhana a great army called the Narayani sena, Yuyudhana stayed loyal to Arjuna and fought on the Pandava side. Duryodhana puts him at the head of the list so Drona feels it: your beloved Arjuna has trained someone who is now standing against you. Virata is the king who sheltered the Pandavas during their year of disguise. Drupada is Drona's old enemy — they had been friends as boys, then Drupada humiliated Drona when he came asking for help, and Drona later split Drupada's kingdom in half through Arjuna. Drupada is the father of Dhrishtadyumna. So Duryodhana names Yuyudhana to remind Drona of Arjuna's loyalty trained somewhere else, names Virata to remind Drona of the family that took the Pandavas in, and names Drupada to remind Drona of the enmity that started everything between them.

Context

where

Chapter 1 · Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga · meter anuṣṭubh

who speaks

Sañjaya → Dhṛtarāṣṭra

preceded by — BG 1.3

Duryodhana says: Teacher, look at this great army of the Pandavas, so skillfully arrayed by Drupada's son, your own student.

What's going on

Here stand heroes with mighty bows, each a match for Bhīma and Arjuna in battle: Yuyudhāna, Virāṭa, and Drupada the great chariot-warrior.

Vyavahāra · try it in your life

Advaita

When you catch yourself cataloguing rivals — counting their advantages, naming their strengths — pause and ask: who is the one doing the counting? The enumeration of Duryodhana is the vyavahārika (conventional) mind at work, mistaking nāmarūpa (name-and-form) for ultimate reality. Practice: in any competitive moment, identify the awareness behind the comparing mind — that awareness is the ātman, unchanged by any catalogue of others' excellence.

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Rāmānuja sees Kṛṣṇa governing every antarbāhya-karaṇa (inner and outer faculty) of every warrior in this verse. The everyday application: when you encounter someone whose skill or strength exceeds yours, recognize that their excellence is not a threat but an expression of the same Lord you serve. Dedicate your own work — at its full quality — as kainkarya (loving service), and meet their excellence with wonder rather than fear.

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Dvaita

Madhva's insistence that each jīva (individual soul) is eternally distinct means no one else's achievement diminishes yours — you are not in competition with Bhīma and Arjuna but on your own paratantra (dependent) path, given a specific capacity by Hari. The everyday discipline: refuse both false equality ('I am as good as anyone') and false diminishment ('I am nothing beside them'); instead identify the specific śakti (capacity) Hari placed in you and deploy it with precision.

Śuddhādvaita

Vallabha reads even Duryodhana's anxiety as Kṛṣṇa's prasāda — the grace that initiates awakening. The everyday application: when you feel genuinely outmatched — when you survey a field and recognize your bala (force) is aparyāpta (insufficient) — do not suppress the recognition. Sit with it. Vallabha's Puṣṭi-mārga teaching is that the moment of honest inadequacy, surrendered to Kṛṣṇa, becomes the entry point of grace.

Bhakti

Śrīdhara defines the mahā-iṣvāsa (great bowman) as one whose bow is formidable enough to scatter the enemy before engagement — a long-range weapon of preparation. The bhakti application: invest deeply in your preparation, in the quality of your tool, before you arrive at the moment of direct contest. Śrīdhara's śaurya (valor) is always paired with kṣātradharma (the disciplined ethic of one's function) — excellence without dharma is archery without aim.

Advaita-Bhakti

Madhusūdana's smṛti citation demands both śastra (weapon / technical skill) and śāstra (scripture / wisdom) for the title mahāratha. The synthesis teaching: in any serious undertaking, identify where you have developed only one of the two — the craftsman who has śastra but no śāstra grows brittle under novel pressure; the scholar with śāstra but no śastra cannot land the work in the world. True mahāratha-hood requires both, and Kṛṣṇa-bhakti provides the integrating fire that makes the two into one capacity rather than two competing demands.

Adhiṣṭhāna · substrate signature

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parserByT5-Sanskrit-multitask (Nehrdich/Hellwig/Keutzer EMNLP 2024)

mūlaGRETIL e-text of the Bhagavadgītā with Śaṅkara's commentary (data entry: Gaudiya Grantha Mandira) for chapters 1-17; sanskritdocuments.org sd_bgnew.itx for chapter 18; ingested via a local Ambuda TEI build; per-verse repairs logged in post_generation_repairs

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weightsa=1 · b=0.01 · e_v=0.005 · z=0.2 · h=0 · th=0.01

anchorfit on Ramsukhdas's Sādhak Sañjīvanī (1980), frozen across the eight-commentator panel; cross-validated R@4 = 71.6% on Śaṅkara

extracted2026-04-21

methodPaper 1, Section II.B

↓ view raw per-verse object (JSON)↗ per-verse-object schema ↗ substrate code (MIT) + data (CC-BY 4.0)

The schema generalizes to any bounded-polysemy corpus with discrete primary text units, attested witness traditions, identifiable schools, and formal substrate. Port the per-verse object; refit weights on a domain-appropriate Layer-3 anchor; ship.

Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 1, Verse 4: Sañjaya to Dhṛtarāṣṭra — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga