Verse 2·1

तं तथा कृपयाविष्टम् अश्रुपूर्णाकुलेक्षणम् ।विषीदन्तमिदं वाक्यम् उवाच मधुसूदनः ॥

taṁ tathā kṛpayāviṣṭam aśrupūrṇākulekṣaṇamviṣīdantamidaṁ vākyam uvāca madhusūdanaḥ

Sanjaya said: To him thus by pity invaded, his eyes full and distressed with tears, his heart overcome by depression and discouragement, Madhusudana spoke these words.

Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy

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

Essays on the Gita

his eyes full and distressed with tears, his heart overcome by depression and discouragement,

His translation

SUNJOY To him thus besieged with pity and his eyes full & bewildered with crowding tears, to him weak with sorrow Madhusudan spake this word.

Essays on the Gita

The answer of a hero to a hero, shall we say, but not that which we should expect from a divine Teacher from whom we demand rather that he shall encourage always gentleness and saintliness and self-abnegation and the recoil from worldly aims and cessation from the ways of the world? The Gita expressly says that Arjuna has thus lapsed into unheroic weakness, “his eyes full and distressed with tears, his heart overcome by depression and discouragement,”2·1 because he is invaded by pity, kṛpayāviṣṭam. Is this not then a divine weakness? Is not pity a divine emotion which should not thus be discouraged with harsh rebuke? Or are we in face of a mere gospel of war and heroic action, a Nietzschean creed of power and high-browed strength, of Hebraic or old Teutonic hardness which holds pity to be a weakness and thinks like the Norwegian hero who thanked God because He had given him a hard heart? But the teaching of the Gita springs from an Indian creed and to the Indian mind compassion has always figured as one of the largest elements of the divine nature. The Teacher himself enumerating in a later16·1–3 chapter the qualities of the godlike nature in man places among them compassion to creatures, gentleness, freedom from wrath and from the desire to slay and do hurt, no less than fearlessness and high spirit and energy. Harshness and hardness and fierceness16·4–20 and a satisfaction in slaying enemies and amassing wealth and unjust enjoyments are Asuric qualities; they come from the violent Titanic nature which denies the Divine in the world and the Divine in man and worships Desire only as its deity. It is not then from any such standpoint that the weakness of Arjuna merits rebuke.

1. Gita, II. 1–38.

Writings in Bengali

তং তথা কৃপয়াবিষ্টমশ্রুপূর্ণাকুলেক্ষণম্।
বিষীদন্তমিদং বাক্যমুবাচ মধুসূদনঃ॥১॥

মধুসূদন অর্জ্জুনের কৃপার আবেশ, অশ্রুপূর্ণ চক্ষুদ্বয় ও বিষণ্ণভাব দেখিয়া তাঁহাকে এই প্রত্যুত্তর করিলেন।

The Arya — text not in the CWSA

* Gita II. 1–38.