Chapter 11 · Verse 25·Spoken by Arjuna
दंष्ट्राकरालानि च ते मुखानि दृष्ट्वैव कालानलसन्निभानि। दिशो न जाने न लभे च शर्म प्रसीद देवेश जगन्निवास
danṣhṭrā-karālāni cha te mukhāni dṛiṣhṭvaiva kālānala-sannibhāni diśho na jāne na labhe cha śharma prasīda deveśha jagan-nivāsa
Seeing your mouths, terrible with their teeth, blazing like the fire of dissolution, I have lost all sense of direction and find no peace. Have mercy. You are the Lord of gods, the abode of the universe.
Word by Word
Saved for this reading session
Three movements · tap a label to switch
Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
Synthesis · a glossed leaf
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rjuna describes the mouths of the cosmic form as fearsome with tusks (danshtra-karalani) and likens them to the kala-anala, the fire of dissolution. Several commentators unpack kala-anala the same way: it is the samvartaka or pralaya fire that, at the end of an age, rises and burns the three worlds to ash. So Arjuna is not just calling the mouths scary; he is saying they look like the very fire that ends everything. One voice notes that Time itself (kala) is the consumer of all that is manifest, which is why this image of a world-ending blaze fits the vision Arjuna is seeing.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
The terror comes from the mere sight, not from any contact. Arjuna says 'having only seen' (drishtva eva) these mouths he is already undone, and at least one commentator draws attention to that small word eva: it rules out any reaching or attaining; just looking is enough to overwhelm him. Another makes the same point by saying the fright follows simply from seeing, not from being reached. This matters because it shows how immediate and total the dread is. The vision alone, without anything happening to him, strips Arjuna of his composure.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Puruṣottama
Overwhelmed, Arjuna loses his bearings: he says 'I do not know the directions' (disho na jane), meaning he can no longer tell east from west, north from south. Commentators read this as a real disorientation born of fear, a bewilderment about which way is which. One voice gives a striking reason for it: directions are normally known by where the sun rises and sets, but here the sun has become the eye of the cosmic form and is swallowed into the universal vision, and on every side there is only an endless blazing light that neither rises nor sets, so there is no longer any fixed point from which to take one's bearings.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vedānta Deśika · Sant Jñāneśvar
Having lost his bearings, Arjuna finds no sharma, that is, no ease, no peace, no happiness, even inside the very vision he had asked to see. Commentators stress this irony: the seeing itself, which Arjuna sought, brings him no joy because fear has crowded it out. So he turns to plea and addresses the Lord twice, as Devesha (Lord of the gods) and as Jagannivasa (the dwelling-place or abode of the world), and prays 'prasida,' be gracious, be pleased, be favorable to me. One commentator hears these two titles as deliberate: by them Arjuna acknowledges that he has indeed beheld the Lord's lordship over all and His holding of the whole world, so the plea is fitting. Others read prasida as the request that the Lord soften the vision, ease its weight, and restore Arjuna to calm.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīla Baladeva · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse closely around the word 'eva' (only, merely) in 'having only seen.' Their point is precise: Arjuna's loss of composure comes from the bare seeing of the mouths, not from any reaching or contact with them. One notes that this 'eva' explicitly excludes attaining, so that even with the Lord's body fully in view, contentment is still absent. The plea 'prasida' is then read as a request for grace so that, fear removed, Arjuna may at last gain the happiness that should come from seeing the form. The reading stays grammatical and psychological: the verse traces how mere vision, untouched by any event, produces terror and the prayer for relief.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This school sets the verse inside a larger purpose. One commentator says the Lord is showing Arjuna the bringing-down of the earth's burden: the withdrawal of Dhritarashtra's sons, who stand disguised in kingly dress, and of the portions of asuras that had entered the opposing side, a withdrawal the Lord will Himself carry out. Arjuna, having beheld the Lord as creator and ruler of all, sees with the divine eye granted by grace this withdrawal even before it has come to pass, and it is this he is reacting to. The plea 'prasida' is read as Arjuna, who is himself the great lord even over Brahma and the rest, asking to be restored to his natural state. The other voice in this school frames Arjuna as a candidate or devotee who has honestly acknowledged how overwhelming the vision is, and reads 'prasida' as the straightforward plea for the easing of that vision.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
This commentator hears the prayer as having two distinct prongs asked of the Purushottama in a single breath. First, 'I do not know the directions' is taken to mean Arjuna does not know the place to be reached, the place where he should go and stand, so he asks the Lord to show him that place. Second, he asks for the joy whose very form is the looking upon the Lord, a face on which to rest his sight. So 'prasida' here is not only a plea for the vision to soften but a request for both a place to stand and a face to behold, both granted by the Lord who is the joy-and-standing-form of the world.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
For this school the verse is the chapter's first explicit prayer for prasada (grace), and the key point is that it comes from within the very vision Arjuna had sought. The devotee who asked for the darshana is now, inside that darshana, asking the Lord to be gentle, and one commentator stresses that these two requests, to see and to be spared, belong to the same single devotion. Another voice expands the terror vividly: the gaping mouths are like the deadliest venom-filled viper, like the night of universal death, like world-conflagration fanned by the wind of annihilation, and Arjuna, his courage gone and a grievous delusion upon him, prays to be shielded and saved from being swallowed, asking that grace dawn and tear off the veil of Maya. A third simply glosses the terms, taking kalanala as the fire of dissolution and sharma as happiness.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīla Baladeva
Modern
These voices read the verse plainly and devotionally. One explains the lost sense of direction concretely: direction is normally fixed by the sun's rising and setting, but the sun has become the Lord's eye within the cosmic form, and on every side only an endless blaze appears that neither rises nor sets, so no bearing is possible; and he reads the double address as Arjuna's logic that, frightened, whom else could any god or human call upon but the Lord of all the gods in whom the whole world abides, so Arjuna, sensing the Lord had come as if in great wrath, prays for Him to be pleased. Another glosses Jagannivasa as the substratum of the universe and kalanala as the fires that consume the worlds at final dissolution, adding that Time is the consumer of all that is manifest. The third renders the verse as Arjuna being discomposed before mouths like the Destructional Fire and pleading that the God of gods be appeased.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
A Seeker Asks
If this is the very vision Arjuna begged to see, why does it bring only terror and a plea for it to stop rather than the joy he expected?
Because the vision Arjuna receives is the Lord in His world-ending aspect: the mouths look like the kala-anala, the fire of dissolution that burns all three worlds to ash at the close of an age. What he sought was a glimpse of the cosmic form; what he meets is the form as Time the consumer of everything manifest, and that is simply too vast and too final for the human mind to hold as a pleasant sight.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar
The terror is so total that the mere seeing, without anything happening to him, undoes Arjuna; he loses even his sense of direction and can find no ease at all inside the vision. The joy he expected cannot arise while fear fills the whole field of sight, and one reading notes that this is exactly why he prays for grace: so that, fear removed, the happiness that should come from beholding the Lord can finally be born.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śaṅkarācārya
So his plea is not a rejection of the vision but the right response to it. Still facing the Lord, addressing Him as Lord of the gods and abode of the world, Arjuna asks 'prasida,' be gracious, be gentle; the very devotion that asked to see now asks to be spared, and the two belong together. The vision was real and the seeking was right; what Arjuna learns is that this form must be approached not as a spectacle to enjoy but as a power before which one bows and begs grace.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Notice that Arjuna does not turn away or abandon the vision he asked for; from inside the very sight that frightens him, he keeps facing the Lord and prays for grace. The asking to see and the asking to be spared are not two opposed impulses but one and the same devotion. When something you sincerely sought turns out to be more than you can bear, you do not have to choose between staying and fleeing. You can stay, and within the staying, ask for gentleness. That honest plea, made while still facing what overwhelms you, is itself an act of trust, not a failure of it.
Sit with this · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.