BG 1.47 — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga

Bhagavad Gītā 1.47Chapter 1 · Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga · Sañjaya → Dhṛtarāṣṭra · anuṣṭubh

एवमुक्त्वार्जुनः संख्ये रथोपस्थ उपाविशत् ।

विसृज्य सशरं चापं शोकसंविग्नमानसः ॥

evam uktvārjunaḥ saṃkhye rathopastha upāviśat

visṛjya saśaraṃ cāpaṃ śoka-saṃvigna-mānasaḥ

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

meaning

Having said this on the battlefield, Arjuna sank into the chariot seat, let fall his bow and arrows, and sat there with his mind shaken by grief.

ekras · bhāṣya

Sanjaya speaks for the first time in nineteen verses. "Having said this, Arjuna — his mind shaken through with grief — sat down in the middle of the chariot, throwing aside his bow along with the arrows." The first chapter ends with a body. Not an argument. Not a counter-thesis. Arjuna has finished talking. The arguments have been laid out, the elders cited, the social cost named, the prayashchitta proposed. Now the body answers in its own language. The left hand sets down the Gandiva. The right hand sets down the arrows. The man who came to the field eager, asking to be wheeled into the gap between armies, lowers himself onto the chariot floor and sits.

Ramsukhdas Maharaj points to the cause that runs under all the fine reasoning. The reasoning was correct in form. Cite the elders, name the social damage, fear naraka. Anyone hearing it would say: this is a thoughtful, dharma-respecting man. But the engine that produced the reasoning was not viveka. It was kautumbika-moha — the fog that wrapped itself around family-attachment, took the shape of dharma-talk, and made the most clear-eyed warrior in the world unable to see his own situation. The chapter that opened with Dhritarashtra asking what is happening on the field of dharma ends with Arjuna becoming the answer. The colophon names this chapter Arjuna-vishada-yoga — the yoga of Arjuna's despondency. Despondency is being treated as the first yoga. The body that has collapsed is the necessary precondition for the teaching to begin. Tomorrow's verse opens chapter two.

Krishna is finally going to speak.

Context

where

Chapter 1 · Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga · meter anuṣṭubh

who speaks

Sañjaya → Dhṛtarāṣṭra

preceded by — BG 1.46

If the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra slay me here, unarmed and unresisting, that would be the greater good for me.

What's going on

Having said this on the battlefield, Arjuna sank into the chariot seat, let fall his bow and arrows, and sat there with his mind shaken by grief.

Vyavahāra · try it in your life

Advaita

When a professional faces total breakdown — burnout so complete that the usual strategies have run out — Advaita reads that emptiness as the cracking of the false 'doer-self' (kartā). The instruction is not to rebuild the ego-machinery faster but to sit with the collapse long enough to ask whose collapse this is. The dropped bow is permission to stop performing competence for a moment and inquire into the witness who remains.

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Rāmānuja's Arjuna sweats and shakes not from cowardice but from the weight of caring too much. When a caregiver or leader is paralysed by the scale of harm they might cause — a doctor choosing between treatments, a manager forced to downsize a team — Viśiṣṭādvaita says: this anguish is not weakness; it is your dharmic sensitivity speaking. Sit in the chariot-seat; let the Bhagavān (the deeper intelligence present with you) instruct what compassion actually requires.

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Dvaita

Madhva's framing insists that the jīva is never acting alone. When every plan has failed and you find yourself helpless, Dvaita's everyday counsel is: stop treating this as your solo problem. The Lord who has been present throughout is not absent now. The collapse is the moment the dependent self finally stops over-riding the partnership. Act next as a junior partner asking the senior for the brief — not as someone who has given up.

Śuddhādvaita

Vallabha's ārtatvam points toward a specific devotional posture: when you have genuinely exhausted yourself in service — for a child, a cause, a community — and find yourself sarvatoduhkhena nirviṇṇa ('utterly disheartened on every side'), Puṣṭi-mārga says that is not the time for fresh strategies but for receiving. Put down the instrument (the plan, the project, the argument) and open to grace. The affliction itself is the credential for receiving Kṛṣṇa's unconditional prasāda.

Bhakti

In Śrīdhara's devotional reading, the first requirement for learning is emptiness — the teacher can only fill a vessel that has been set down. Practically: before entering a difficult conversation, a mentoring session, or a retreat, there is value in a deliberate act of 'setting down the bow' — disarming the prepared arguments and the defended identity — so that genuine exchange can begin. Viṣāda as voluntary preparation rather than involuntary collapse.

Advaita-Bhakti

Madhusūdana's synthesis suggests that the deepest grief and the deepest love arrive at the same threshold. In practice: when confusion about 'what is really true' (Advaita inquiry) and grief over what you are about to lose (bhakti longing) coincide, that intersection is not pathological — it is the optimal entry-point for transformation. Do not resolve the paradox prematurely into either pure detachment or pure emotional surrender; hold both, as Arjuna holds the chariot-seat between the two armies.

Adhiṣṭhāna · substrate signature

substratev2.6-frozen

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

show all metadata

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 47: Sañjaya to Dhṛtarāṣṭra — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga