Verse 1·37

तस्मान्नार्हा वयं हन्तुं धार्तराष्ट्रान् स्वबान्धवान् ।स्वजनं हि कथं हत्वा सुखिनः स्याम माधव ॥

tasmānnārhā vayaṁ hantuṁ dhārtarāṣṭrān svabāndhavānsvajanaṁ hi kathaṁ hatvā sukhinaḥ syāma mādhava

Sin will take hold of us in slaying them, though they are the aggressors. So it is not fit that we kill the sons of Dhritarashtra, our kinsmen; indeed how may we be happy, O Madhava, killing our own people.

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

The first result is a violent sensational and physical crisis which produces a disgust of the action and its material objects and of life itself. He rejects the vital aim pursued by egoistic humanity in its action,1·32–40 —happiness and enjoyment; he rejects the vital aim of the Kshatriya, victory and rule and power and the government of men. What after all is this fight for justice when reduced to its practical terms, but just this, a fight for the interests of himself, his brothers and his party, for possession and enjoyment and rule? But at such a cost these things are not worth having. For they are of no value in themselves, but only as a means to the right maintenance of social and national life and it is these very aims that in the person of his kin and his race he is about to destroy. And then comes the cry of the emotions. These are they for whose sake life and happiness are desired, our “own people”.1·28 Who would consent to slay these for the sake of all the earth, or even for the kingdom of the three worlds? What pleasure can there be in life, what happiness, what satisfaction in oneself after such a deed? The whole thing is a dreadful sin,—for now the moral sense awakens to justify the revolt of the sensations and the emotions. It is a sin, there is no right nor justice in mutual slaughter; especially are those who are to be slain the natural objects of reverence and of love, those without whom one would not care to live, and to violate these sacred feelings can be no virtue, can be nothing but a heinous crime. Granted that the offence, the aggression, the first sin, the crimes of greed and selfish passion which have brought things to such a pass came from the other side; yet armed resistance to wrong under such circumstances would be itself a sin and crime worse than theirs because they are blinded by passion and unconscious of guilt, while on this side it would be with a clear sense of guilt that the sin would be committed. And for what? For the maintenance of family morality, of the social law and the law of the nation? These are the very standards that will be destroyed by this civil war; the family itself will be brought to the point of annihilation, corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race will be engendered,1·38–42 the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family will be destroyed. Ruin of the race, the collapse of its high traditions, ethical degradation and hell for the authors of such a crime, these are the only practical results possible of this monstrous civil strife. “Therefore,” cries Arjuna, casting down the divine bow and inexhaustible quiver given to him by the gods for that tremendous hour,1·46 “it is more for my welfare that the sons of Dhritarashtra armed should slay me unarmed and unresisting. I will not fight.”

But such is not the compassion which actuates Arjuna in the rejection of his work and mission. That is not compassion but an impotence full of a weak self-pity, a recoil from the mental suffering2·8 which his act must entail on himself, — “I see not what shall thrust from me the sorrow that dries up the senses,” — and of all things self-pity is among the most ignoble and un-Aryan of moods. Its pity for others is also a form of self-indulgence; it is the physical shrinking of the nerves from the act of slaughter, the egoistic emotional shrinking of the heart from the destruction of1·37 the Dhritarashtrians because they are “one’s own people” and without them life will be empty. This pity is a weakness of the mind and senses, — a weakness which may well be beneficial to men of a lower grade of development, who have to be weak because otherwise they will be hard and cruel; for they have to cure the harsher by the gentler forms of sensational egoism, they have to call in tamas, the debile principle, to help sattwa, the principle of light, in quelling the strength and excess of their rajasic passions. But this way is not for the developed Aryan man who has to grow not by weakness, but by an ascension from strength to strength. Arjuna is the divine man, the master-man in the making and as such he has been chosen by the gods. He has a work given to him, he has God beside him in his chariot, he has the heavenly bow Gandiva in his hand, he has the champions of unrighteousness, the opponents of the divine leading of the world in his front. Not his is the right to determine what he shall do or not do according to his emotions and his passions, or to shrink from a necessary destruction by the claim of his egoistic heart and reason, or to decline his work because it will bring sorrow and emptiness to his life or because its earthly result has no value to him in the absence of the thousands who must perish. All that is a weak falling from his higher nature. He has to see only the work that must be done, kartavyaṁ karma, to hear only the divine command breathed through his warrior nature, to feel only for the world and the destiny of mankind calling to him as its god-sent man to assist its march and clear its path of the dark armies that beset it.

Writings in Bengali

পাপমেবাশ্রয়েদস্মান্ হত্বৈতানাততায়িনঃ।
তস্মান্নার্হা বয়ং হন্তুং ধার্ত্তরাষ্ট্রান্ সবান্ধবান্।
স্বজনং হি কথং হত্বা সুখিনঃ স্যাম মাধব॥৩৬॥

এই উক্তিতে মোহিত হইয়া বলেন, “অহো! অর্জ্জুনের কি মহান্ উদার নিঃস্বার্থ প্রেমময় ভাব। রুধিরাক্ত ভোগ ও সুখ অপেক্ষা পরাজয়, মরণ, চিরদুঃখ তাঁহার বাঞ্ছনীয়।” কিন্তু যদি অর্জ্জুনের মনের ভাব পরীক্ষা করি, আমরা বুঝিতে পারি যে অর্জ্জুনের ভাব অতি ক্ষুদ্র, দুর্ব্বলতা-প্রকাশক, ক্লীবোচিত। কুলের হিতার্থে বা প্রিয়জনের প্রেমে, কৃপার বশে, রক্তপাতের ভয়ে ব্যক্তিগত স্বার্থ ত্যাগ করা অনার্য্যের পক্ষে মহৎ উদার ভাব হইতে পারে, আর্য্যের পক্ষে তাহা মধ্যম ভাব, ধর্ম্ম ও ভগবৎপ্রীতির জন্য স্বার্থত্যাগ করাই উত্তমভাব। অপর পক্ষে কুলের হিতার্থে, প্রিয়জনের প্রেমে, কৃপার বশে, রক্তপাতের ভয়ে ধর্ম্ম পরিত্যাগ করা অধম ভাব। ধর্ম্ম ও ভগবৎপ্রীতির জন্য স্নেহ, কৃপা ও ভয় দমন করা প্রকৃত আর্য্যভাব। এই ক্ষুদ্রভাবের সমর্থনার্থ অর্জ্জুন স্বজনহত্যার পাপ দেখাইয়া আবার বলিলেন, “ধার্ত্তরাষ্ট্রদের বধে আমাদের কি সুখ, কি মনস্তুষ্টি হইতে পারে? তাঁহারা আমাদের বন্ধু-বান্ধব, আত্মীয়-স্বজন, যদিও অন্যায় করেন ও আমাদের শত্রুতা করেন, রাজ্য অপহরণ করেন, সত্যভঙ্গ করেন, তাঁহাদের বধে আমাদের পাপই হইবে, সুখ হইবে না।” অর্জ্জুন ভুলিয়া গিয়াছিলেন যে, তিনি ধর্ম্মযুদ্ধ করিতেছেন, নিজ সুখের জন্য বা যুধিষ্ঠিরের সুখের জন্য শ্রীকৃষ্ণ দ্বারা ধার্ত্তরাষ্ট্রবধে নিযুক্ত হন নাই, ধর্ম্মস্থাপন, অধর্ম্মনাশ, ক্ষত্রিয়ধর্ম্ম পালন, ভারতে ধর্ম্মপ্রতিষ্ঠিত এক মহৎ সাম্রাজ্য স্থাপন এই যুদ্ধের উদ্দেশ্য। সমস্ত সুখকে জলাঞ্জলি দিয়া জীবনব্যাপী দুঃখ ও যন্ত্রণা সহ্য করিয়াও এই উদ্দেশ্যসিদ্ধি অর্জ্জুনের কর্ত্তব্য।