Chapter 11 · Verse 41·Spoken by Arjuna
सखेति मत्वा प्रसभं यदुक्तं हे कृष्ण हे यादव हे सखेति। अजानता महिमानं तवेदं मया प्रमादात्प्रणयेन वापि
sakheti matvā prasabhaṁ yad uktaṁ he kṛiṣhṇa he yādava he sakheti ajānatā mahimānaṁ tavedaṁ mayā pramādāt praṇayena vāpi
Not knowing your greatness, thinking you only a friend, I spoke to you rashly, out of carelessness or affection, calling you Krishna, friend, comrade.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rjuna is asking Krishna for forgiveness. Having just praised the cosmic form (the visva-rupa, the universal body in which Arjuna saw all worlds), he now turns to apologize for how casually he used to treat Krishna. The verse opens a plea that continues into the next verse; commentators note these two verses should be read together as a single apology. Arjuna's reason for asking pardon is that he committed offenses out of ignorance: he simply did not recognize who Krishna really was.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
The specific offense Arjuna names is the familiar way he addressed Krishna. Thinking 'this is my friend, my equal in age,' he called out casually, 'O Krishna, O Yadava, O friend.' The word the verse uses, prasabham, means 'forcibly,' 'overbearingly,' or 'with disrespect.' Several commentators draw out why each address carried disrespect: 'Krishna' is a bare personal name without an honorific; 'Yadava' points merely to descent from the Yadu clan, treating him as one ordinary man of a lineage; and 'friend' (sakha) presumes mere equality of age and standing. Calling a person by such names is the speech of intimacy between equals, not the reverence owed to the supreme Lord.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
Arjuna gives the cause of his familiarity: he was 'not knowing this greatness of Yours' (ajanata mahimanam tava idam). The 'greatness' (mahima) here is identified by the commentators with the cosmic form itself and the supreme lordship it reveals. He acted, the verse says, either through pramada, meaning heedlessness or a scattered, inattentive mind, or through pranaya, meaning affection, the trust and fondness born of love. Commentators take care to define pranaya not as a fault but as the warmth of genuine friendship: it is the confidence that flows from real love. So Arjuna pleads two causes, one a lapse of attention and one the tenderness of intimacy itself.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Among the devotional commentators a shared reading emerges: the apology does not cancel the friendship but deepens it and sets it in a larger frame. The cosmic vision has not displaced the dear friend; it has placed that friendship within a vaster measure, and the devotee is the first to acknowledge the new measure. The very fact that Arjuna apologizes for having leaned on Krishna proves the friendship was real, for only one who has truly leaned on a friend apologizes for having leaned. The intimacy is not renounced; the coming verses, which restore Krishna's gentle two-armed form, will confirm that the awe is gathered back into the closeness, not set against it.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vedānta Deśika
Divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita
The greatness Arjuna failed to recognize is spelled out in concrete attributes: Krishna's endless valor, measureless might, his being the inner self of all and the creator. The apology is the unfolding of the devotee's deepening reverence. Reading this verse together with the next, the offense being confessed is the whole easy familiarity of camp life: treating the ever-honorable Lord without honor in jest, in play, while lying, sitting, and eating together, alone or before others. The prior intimacy is not thrown away; it is contextualized within the now-known supreme nature of the Lord, and Arjuna begs pardon of him as the immeasurable one.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
This verse is the very heart-key of the chapter for the Pushtimarga, the 'path of grace.' Here sakha, the friend-address, is not a slip to be deleted from the record; it is the standing form of the devotee's loving address to Krishna in Vraja. So Arjuna's plea is not a request to erase the friend-form of love but a request to keep it, the permission to hold the friend-address in the very mouth that has now seen the cosmic form. Krishna will grant exactly this prayer by hiding the universal form back into the two-armed friend, the sign that for this devotee the awful majesty is gathered back into intimate friendship, never opposed to it. One source further reads the three names finely: to call him 'Krishna' as a mere name and not as the self of all being, 'Yadava' as merely clan-born and not as one who appeared to lift up that lineage, and 'friend' by worldly understanding and not as the supreme self, is what Arjuna now sees as his error.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators dwell on the texture of the friendship and the remorse it now feels. Two of them note that Arjuna's affection had nothing to do with Krishna's high birth or family standing; his line, the Yadu line, held no kingship while Arjuna's own Puru line did, so the friendship rested on Krishna's own self alone. They detail the slighting jests: teasing him with backhanded words like 'You are truthful, guileless, utterly simple,' whether alone in private or before laughing comrades, a whole thousandfold heap of offense Arjuna now begs to have forgiven. One source pours out the regret through a cascade of images: we wasted nectar to scrub floors, traded a wish-fulfilling cow for a lamb, broke the gold-making touchstone for road-metal, cut a wish-granting tree for fencing, and dragged the very Supreme Brahman down to be our charioteer and messenger to the wicked, all the while gloating over jesting talk with the one who is the bliss of the sages' deepest meditation.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
This commentator frames the apology psychologically as a movement of memory. When Arjuna first saw the terrifying cosmic form he was so frightened that he forgot it was his own Krishna and asked, 'Who are You?' Now that the memory of Sri Krishna returns and he realizes this is the very same one, the memory of his old familiar behavior comes back too, and he asks pardon for it. The point of the apology, on this reading, is the ordinary failure to look: great souls are not called by bare names but addressed as 'aap' or 'maharaj,' yet Arjuna casually said 'Hey Krishna, Hey Yadava, Hey friend' because he had never once paused to consider who Krishna truly is, never turned his gaze toward Krishna's power, never grasped that countless universes rest in a single portion of him.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If Arjuna was loving Krishna sincerely all along, why should that love now need an apology at all?
The apology is not a rejection of the love but a recognition of its true scope. Arjuna acted out of pranaya, affection, the trust born of genuine love, and the commentators are careful to mark this as the warmth of real friendship, not a fault. What he is apologizing for is the heedlessness, the not-knowing: he simply had not recognized the greatness, the supreme lordship, now revealed in the cosmic form.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
Far from canceling the friendship, the apology is itself the proof that it was real, for only one who has truly leaned on a friend apologizes for having leaned. The vision of greatness does not displace the dear friend; it places that friendship within a vaster setting, and the devotee is the first to acknowledge the new measure.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vedānta Deśika
The deepest answer, given by the devotional commentators, is that Arjuna is not even asking for the friend-address to be erased. He is asking permission to keep it in the very mouth that has now seen the cosmic form, and Krishna grants exactly this by hiding the universal form back into the gentle two-armed friend. The awe is gathered back into the intimacy, never set against it; so the love does not end, it ripens by passing once through reverence.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Contemplation
Notice what the apology actually proves. Arjuna is not confessing that his friendship was fake; he is confessing that it was real. Only someone who has truly leaned on a friend apologizes for having leaned. So when reverence rises in you toward something you had taken for granted, that is not a sign your earlier closeness was a mistake. The vision of greatness has not pushed the dear friend out of the picture; it has set him within a vaster setting, and the loving heart is simply the first to admit the new measure. You can keep the intimacy and let it grow larger at the same time.
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