Chapter 2 · Verse 4·Spoken by Arjuna
कथं भीष्ममहं संख्ये द्रोणं च मधुसूदन। इषुभिः प्रतियोत्स्यामि पूजार्हावरिसूदन
kathaṁ bhīṣhmam ahaṁ sankhye droṇaṁ cha madhusūdana iṣhubhiḥ pratiyotsyāmi pūjārhāvari-sūdana
Arjuna said: How can I fight with arrows in battle against Bhishma and Drona? They are worthy of reverence.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his verse is Arjuna's reply, and it begins his pushback against Krishna. In the previous verse Krishna had reproached Arjuna for weakness. Here Arjuna answers, but the commentators stress that he answers without really taking in what Krishna meant. He is still overwhelmed by grief, so instead of absorbing the higher counsel, he simply restates his own settled view. The word for 'how' (katham) sets the tone: it is not a request for instruction but a protest. Arjuna is saying, in effect, that fighting this battle is simply not something he can do.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
The heart of his protest is about who stands on the other side: Bhishma and Drona. Bhishma is his grandsire (pitamaha), the eldest of the family, and Drona is his teacher (acharya), the very man who taught him archery. The commentators agree that these two are 'worthy of worship' (pujarha): they deserve to be honored with flowers, not struck with arrows. The contrast Arjuna draws is sharp. The proper response to such men is reverence, offering at their feet; what Krishna is asking of him is the exact opposite, to send sharpened shafts against them. To turn the skill Drona himself taught against Drona feels to Arjuna like a betrayal of his very teacher.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Many commentators sharpen the argument by an 'a fortiori' step: if even a small offense against such venerable men is wrong, then killing them is far worse. With those worthy of worship, even mock-fighting in play, even a harsh word, is unfitting; how much more a deadly attack on a battlefield. Several cite the traditional rule that violating the honor due to the venerable obstructs one's own welfare, so that the offense is not just cruel but spiritually ruinous to the one who commits it. The reasoning moves from the lesser to the greater: the verbal offense is already forbidden, so the killing is beyond defense.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
The commentators read meaning into Arjuna's two names for Krishna in this verse: 'slayer of Madhu' (slayer of the demon Madhu) and 'slayer of foes' (arisudana). The dominant reading is that Arjuna chooses these epithets pointedly. He is reminding Krishna that Krishna himself destroys only enemies and the wicked, like the demon Madhu, never the worthy or his own teacher. The implied rebuke is: you of all people, who strike down only foes, should not be urging me to strike down the blameless and the revered. A second reading, also widely noted, is humbler: the doubled address is simply the disorder of grief, a man so shaken that he loses the thread of his own speech and repeats himself; on that reading the repetition is no fault and no hidden argument.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators frame the verse as a clash of intentions: Krishna meant one thing, and Arjuna, not grasping it, substitutes his own. On this reading Arjuna is no longer pleading ordinary grief or cowardice. He has shifted his ground to a claim about dharma itself: he argues that this war lacks the nature of righteousness and has the nature of unrighteousness, so abandoning it is not a failure of duty but a moral refusal. One source builds the full a-fortiori case: fighting elders like Bhishma and Drona is not enjoined anywhere, like the duty of worship is unenjoined; and it cannot be excused as merely 'not unrighteous' just because no text forbids it, because a verbal offense to a teacher is already shown to bring evil fruit, so battle against them is far worse. On the doubled address, this school carries both options openly: either Arjuna is hinting that Krishna slays only the guilty, or the repetition is just grief unsettling his sense of before and after.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This school reads Arjuna's distress as a tangle of three feelings at once: affection, pity, and fear of incurring sin (the dread of merit and demerit). It also draws heavily on the following verse to fill out this one, so the objection is not only that killing teachers is wrong, but that the spoils would be unbearable. Even if Arjuna grants that he must somehow make a living, the begging-life of a renouncer would be more praiseworthy than enjoyments won by killing his guru, because the suffering such killing brings in the next world is enormous. The sources press the grim image: to slay these men and then sit and enjoy the very pleasures they had enjoyed would be like sprinkling those enjoyments with their blood, food made impossible to eat. One source adds close grammatical glosses, reading the optative mood as a particle of censure and unpacking the difficult compound for those 'excessively attached to enjoyments,' and states the school's positive principle plainly: true devotion to a teacher is shown by fighting those who oppose the teacher, never by fighting the teacher himself.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This reading gives the two epithets a devotional weight rather than a rebuking one. The doubled address 'slayer of Madhu' and 'slayer of foes' is the devotee expressing, again and again and in due order, his reliance on the Lord. The verse is then read with the next: better to live by begging in this world than to slay these noble-souled elders; for if he kills them, then even though they crave wealth he would be enjoying pleasures smeared with their blood.
Śrī Bhāskara
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads the verse philosophically, as the Lord exposing a false notion in Arjuna: the conceit that there is righteousness in what is actually unrighteousness, a notion to be set aside. The deeper diagnosis is about two kinds of clinging that block right action: dwelling on a particular action (Arjuna's 'we do not know this') and dwelling on a particular fruit (Arjuna's wish to 'enjoy enjoyments'). Action free of all such fixation is what is wanted; but Arjuna is caught, because one cannot fight while already resolved on defeat, and yet even victory looks to him like a calamity, since it brings the destruction of his own kinsmen. So Arjuna cannot even settle whether he longs for victory or for defeat, and concludes that begging would be better than slaying the elders.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Śuddhādvaita
This commentator stresses that Arjuna's withdrawal is not cowardice but a scruple of dharma, submitted as a careful case over several verses. The distinctive move is to ground the unfitness of each man in a specific status: Bhishma is a devotee, so slaying him is unfitting on that account; Drona is a teacher, and the small word 'and' (cha) attached to Drona quietly carries the same point. The address 'slayer of foes' is read as Arjuna's own signal that these two belong to the category of devotee-Brahmins, not the category of enemies, so it makes no sense for the Lord, the guardian of his devotees, to urge their killing.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators emphasize the relational and emotional logic of Arjuna's refusal, and several catch a note of pointed irony in the epithet 'slayer of foes': the very title Krishna bears names the skill Arjuna will not use against these particular men. One frames the refusal directly against the scriptural rule that dishonoring the venerable obstructs one's welfare, which is why Arjuna withdraws. Another dramatizes Arjuna's words to Krishna as friend to friend: at their feet I am fit to offer only flowers in devotion, not arrows in anger; and you too slay only enemies in battle, not your own teacher Sandipani nor your Yadu kinsmen, which is the very point of calling you 'slayer of Madhu' (your enemy was the demon Madhu). The Marathi voice in this group makes the cry intensely personal: this is no war but a crime, an open slaughter of one's own preceptors; my debt to Bhishma and to Drona is immense; how can I repay the teacher who gave me the art of arms by killing him with that very art, and so act like the demon who turned a granted boon against his benefactor.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These voices keep close to the plain force of the verse. One renders it almost as bare translation: how shall I counter-attack Bhishma and Drona, who are entitled to high reverence. The other dwells warmly on the two epithets and reads them as Arjuna's honest contrast: you, Lord, slew demons like Madhu and Kaitabha, who were wicked by nature, acted against dharma, and distressed the world, and you have slain enemies who bore malice and did harm without cause; but standing before me are my grandfather Bhishma and my teacher Drona, wholly noble in conduct, bearing me great affection, who taught me lovingly. The question lands on that gap: how shall I slay a most-loving grandfather and a knowledge-teacher of this kind.
Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
Is Arjuna right that reverence for elders should override the call to fight, or is he dressing up his grief and attachment as a principled stand?
The commentators do not let Arjuna's position settle into easy nobility, even as they take it seriously. Several point out that Arjuna has quietly shifted his ground: he is no longer admitting plain grief, he is now arguing that the war itself is unrighteous and so refusing it is a moral stand, not a weakness. That move is exactly what makes the question live, because a real scruple and a rationalized fear can look identical from the outside.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī
On its own terms his reverence is genuine and well-grounded. The tradition really does teach that dishonoring the venerable obstructs one's welfare, and the a-fortiori reasoning is sound: if even a harsh word to a teacher is wrong, killing one is graver still. Arjuna is not making this up; the weight he feels is the weight scripture itself assigns to a teacher and an elder.
Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri
Yet the same sources expose the tell-tale signs that something other than pure principle is driving him. His feeling is named as a tangle of affection, pity, and fear of sin, not clear discernment; and his very speech is unsteady, repeating Krishna's names because grief has loosened his grip on his own argument. One commentator goes further and calls the whole stance a conceit, mistaking unrighteousness for righteousness, and shows Arjuna so divided that he cannot even tell whether he wants to win or to lose. That self-contradiction is the giveaway: a man arguing from settled dharma does not also find victory itself a calamity.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
So the honest answer the verse invites is: both, and that is the point. The reverence is real and the attachment is real, braided together so tightly that Arjuna cannot pull them apart by himself. This verse only states the protest; it does not resolve it. That is precisely why the Gita's teaching has to begin, and why Krishna does not simply concede. The work ahead is to honor the genuine reverence while gently exposing the grief and clinging that have borrowed its language.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Sit for a moment with what Arjuna is actually feeling, because it is not abstract. He is not refusing some faceless enemy. He is looking at the grandfather who held him and the teacher who patiently taught him everything he knows, and both of them love him. Notice how naturally the heart recoils from harming those who have been good to us. That recoil is not a flaw; it is the tenderness that makes us human, and the Gita does not mock it. Ramsukhdas draws the contrast gently: the wicked who distress the world are one thing, but these two are wholly noble in conduct and bear Arjuna great affection. Let that honesty be your starting point too. Whatever the larger teaching turns out to ask of you, begin by honoring the real love and the real debt you carry, rather than pretending the cost is small.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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