Chapter 1 · Verse 31·Spoken by Arjuna
निमित्तानि च पश्यामि विपरीतानि केशव। न च श्रेयोऽनुपश्यामि हत्वा स्वजनमाहवे
nimittāni cha paśhyāmi viparītāni keśhava na cha śhreyo ’nupaśhyāmi hatvā sva-janam āhave
And I see adverse omens, Krishna. I foresee no good in killing my own people in battle.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rjuna is reporting two warning signs at once. First, he sees 'nimittani viparitani', omens that are contrary or adverse. The commentators read these omens as forebodings of disaster. Some describe them as cosmic, world-disturbing omens like earthquakes; others add a long list of evil portents such as meteors falling from the sky, eclipses out of season, beasts and birds crying in terrible voices, and blood raining from the clouds. The shared point is plain: every sign Arjuna can read is pointing toward ruin, not victory.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The second half of the verse is Arjuna's own reasoning, separate from the omens. 'Na cha shreyo'nupashyami': even after looking hard at it, he sees no 'shreya', no real good, in killing his own kinsmen in battle. The omens are external signs; this is his inner conclusion. So Arjuna is being warned from two directions at once. Whether he reads the signs outside him or thinks the matter through for himself, the answer is the same: this war promises no benefit, here or hereafter.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Because he sees no good coming, Arjuna is sliding toward the conclusion that he should withdraw. The commentators note the practical drift of the verse: if harming kinsmen is fruitless and only invites disaster, then the fitting response is to desist, to stop. Several frame this as the natural link to what Arjuna says next, where he openly states he has no wish for such a victory.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Dhanapati Sūri · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
The name Arjuna chooses for Krishna here, 'Keshava', is read by several commentators as quietly loaded. They derive it from Krishna's slaying of the demon Keshin and his protection of his devotees, so that in calling him Keshava, Arjuna is half-pleading: as you have always guarded your devotees by destroying evil, guard me too by lifting this grief. On this reading the address is not a stray epithet but a hint of Arjuna's appeal for rescue from his own confusion.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as a clinical symptom of a deeper spiritual disease. Arjuna's grief, they hold, is what obstructs the knowledge of truth, and this grief produces a 'contrary understanding' that in turn drives contrary, wrong engagement; his seeing no good is the visible mark of that inner disorder rather than a sound judgment. One source presses the point about merit further: scripture promises a special heavenly reward to the warrior slain facing the foe in battle, but no merit at all to the slayer, so Arjuna is reasoning that if even killing those who are not one's own people brings no good, then killing one's own people in battle can bring still less. On this view the address to Krishna is also a request to one who is himself untouched by grief and ever of the nature of bliss, asking that very fullness to make the grieving, non-Self-knowing Arjuna grief-free.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri
Bhedabheda
This commentator does not take up the omens at all and instead unfolds Arjuna's refusal as a chain of renounced motives. Since the whole company of kinsmen is dying here and now, he does not even desire victory. If victory would win a kingdom, he does not want the kingdom; if a kingdom would bring enjoyments and pleasures, he does not want those either; and mere self-maintenance, he adds, is not the goal of a human life. The reason given is relational: kingdom, enjoyments, and pleasures were only ever wanted for the sake of one's elders and parents, and these very people now stand arrayed for battle, having staked their lives and their hard-to-surrender wealth. The good Arjuna cannot find is thus emptied out from the side of purpose, not from the side of omens.
Śrī Bhāskara
Modern
This commentator divides the omens into two kinds and draws a psychological lesson from them. There are the omens now appearing in Arjuna's own body, the slackening of the limbs, the trembling, the drying of the mouth described in the earlier verses, and there are the larger omens that came before, the meteors, untimely eclipses, earthquakes, and the rest; both kinds alike turned out badly. He adds a principle about action itself: the more enthusiasm one feels at the start of a work the more it aids success, but when that enthusiasm is broken at the very outset and the mind's resolves are in disorder, the outcome will not be good. He also fills in why there is no good hereafter, since one who destroys his own clan is a great sinner and only sin will cling to him, leading to hell.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Bhakti
This commentator voices Arjuna's distress as a moral revulsion against the war itself. If the Kauravas are to be killed, he asks, why not Dharma and the others too, since by kinship they are all of one and the same lineage. He calls down a 'fie' upon a war that does not appear pure to him and asks what could possibly be gained by committing so great a sin. Viewed from many angles, he says, the war can only end in something untoward, and it would be good if it could be avoided by any means at all. Here the 'no good' is felt as the wrongness of fighting one's own, more than as a calculation of merit or of forfeited gains.
Sant Jñāneśvar
A Seeker Asks
When every sign around me and my own honest reasoning all point to ruin, how do I tell whether that is real discernment or just grief speaking?
Begin by taking the warning seriously rather than dismissing it, because the verse itself does. Arjuna is being cautioned from two genuinely distinct directions: the outward 'nimittani viparitani', the adverse omens he reads in the world, and his own inward conclusion that he sees no 'shreya', no good, in the course before him. The commentators honor both as real signals worth weighing, not as noise to be brushed aside.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
But then look at the state of the one doing the reading. Several commentators point out that Arjuna's seeing-no-good is itself the symptom of a grief that is clouding his knowledge, a sorrow that breeds a 'contrary understanding' which then pushes him toward contrary, mistaken action. The very faculty he is trusting to judge is the faculty that grief has compromised. This is the heart of the difficulty: despair can disguise itself as discernment precisely because it speaks in the voice of careful conclusion.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri
There is also a concrete tell to watch for. One commentator observes that when enthusiasm breaks at the very outset of an undertaking and the mind's resolves fall into disorder, the conclusions formed in that broken state are not reliable; the collapse of nerve is being mistaken for a reading of the facts. So the practical answer is not to act on the verdict of a shaken mind, but to do what Arjuna is on the verge of doing well, which is to keep questioning, turn to a teacher untouched by the grief, and let the doubt be examined rather than obeyed.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri
Contemplation
Notice the quiet psychology this verse holds. When we stand at the threshold of something hard and feel the enthusiasm drain out of us at the very start, the limbs slackening, the mind's resolves and counter-resolves falling into disorder, we tend to read that collapse as a sign that the thing itself is wrong. Arjuna does exactly this: he gathers the trembling in his own body and the dark portents in the sky and concludes that no good can come. The teaching to carry from this is one of watchfulness. A broken heart and a clear judgment can wear the same face. Before you trust the verdict that 'nothing good will come', ask honestly whether you are reading the situation or reading your own fear, because the rest of the Gita turns on Arjuna's willingness to hold that question open rather than to act on the despair of this moment.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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