Verse 1·31

निमित्तानि च पश्यामि विपरीतानि केशव ।न च श्रेयोऽनुपश्यामि हत्वा स्वजनमाहवे ॥

nimittāni ca paśyāmi viparītāni keśavana ca śreyo’nupaśyāmi hatvā svajanamāhave

I am not able to stand and my mind seems to be whirling; also I see evil omens, O Keshava. / Nor do I see any good in slaying my own people in battle ; O Krishna, I desire not victory, nor kingdom, nor pleasures.

Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy

AI translationAI-synthesised translation — not Sri Aurobindo’s text

His translation

“O Krishna, I behold these kinsmen and friends arrayed in hostile arms and my limbs sink beneath me and my face grows dry, and there are shudderings in my body and my hair stands on end, Gandeva falls from my hand and my very skin is on fire. Yea I cannot stand, my brain whirls and evil omens, O Késhove, meet mine eyes. I can see no blessing for me, having slain my kin in fight. I desire not victory, O Krishna, no nor kingship nor delights. What shall we do with kingship, O Govinda, what with enjoyments, what with life? They for whose sake we desire kingship and enjoyments and delight, lo they all stand in battle against us casting behind them their riches and their lives, our teachers and our fathers and our sons, our grandsires and uncles and the fathers of our wives and our grandsons and our wives’ brothers and the kin of our beloved. These though they slay me, O Madhusudan, I would not slay, no not for the empire of heaven and space and hell, much less for this poor earth of ours. Slaying the sons of Dhritarashtra what joy would be left to us, O Janardana? Sin, sin alone would find lodging in us, if we slew these though our adversaries & foes. Therefore we do not right to slay the children of Dhritarashtra and their friends, for how can we be happy, O Madhove, if we slay our kin? Even though these see not, for their hearts are swept away by greed, error done in the ruin of one’s house and grievous sin in treachery to natural friends, how shall we not understand and turn back from this sin, we who have eyes, O Janardan, for error done in the ruin of our house? When the family dwindles, the eternal ideals of the race are lost, and when ideals are lost, unrighteousness besets the whole race; in the prevalence of unrighteousness, O Krishna, the women of the race go astray, and when women grow corrupt, bastard confusion is born again; but confusion brings the slayers of their race and the race itself to very hell; for the long line of fathers perishes and the food ceases and the water is given no more. By these their sins who bring their race to perdition, fathers they of bastard confusion, the eternal ideals of the nation and the hearth are overthrown; and for men who have lost the ancient righteousnesses of the race, in hell an eternal habitation is set apart, ‘tis told. Alas a dreadful sin have we set ourselves to do, that from greed of lordship and pleasure we have made ready to slay our own kin. Yea even if the sons of Dhritarashtra slay me with their armèd hands, me unarmed and unresisting, it were better & more fortunate for me than this.”

Essays on the Gita

It is typical again of the pragmatic man that it is through his sensations that he awakens to the meaning of his action. He has asked his friend and charioteer to place him between the two armies, not with any profounder idea, but with the proud intention of viewing and looking in the face these myriads of the champions of unrighteousness whom he has to meet and conquer and slay1·22 “in this holiday of fight” so that the right may prevail. It is as he gazes that the revelation of the meaning of a civil and domestic war comes home to him, a war in which not only men of the same race, the same nation, the same clan, but those of the same family and household stand upon opposite sides. All whom the social man holds most dear and sacred, he must meet as enemies and slay,1·26–31 —the worshipped teacher and preceptor, the old friend, comrade and companion in arms, grandsires, uncles, those who stood in the relation to him of father, of son, of grandson, connections by blood and connections by marriage,—all these social ties have to be cut asunder by the sword. It is not that he did not know these things before, but he has never realised it all; obsessed by his claims and wrongs and by the principles of his life, the struggle for the right, the duty of the Kshatriya to protect justice and the law and fight and beat down injustice and lawless violence, he has neither thought it out deeply nor felt it in his heart and at the core of his life. And now it is shown to his vision by the divine charioteer, placed sensationally before his eyes, and comes home to him like a blow delivered at the very centre of his sensational, vital and emotional being.

Writings in Bengali

অর্জ্জুনের প্রথম কথা, ইঁহারা আমাদের স্বজন, আত্মীয়, ভালবাসার পাত্র, তাঁহাদিগকে যুদ্ধে হত্যা করিয়া আমাদের কি হিত সাধিত হইবে? বিজেতার গর্ব্ব, রাজার গৌরব, ধনীর সুখ? আমি এই সকল শূন্য স্বার্থ চাই না। লোকের রাজ্য, ভোগ, জীবন প্রিয় হয় কেন? স্ত্রী, পুত্র, কন্যা আছেন বলিয়া, আত্মীয়স্বজনকে সুখে রাখিতে পারিব বলিয়া, বন্ধু-বান্ধবের সহিত ঐশ্বর্য্যের সুখে ও আমোদে দিন