यदृच्छया चोपपन्नं स्वर्गद्वारमपावृतम् ।सुखिनः क्षत्रियाः पार्थ लभन्ते युद्धमीदृशम् ॥
yadṛcchayā copapannaṁ svargadvāramapāvṛtamsukhinaḥ kṣatriyāḥ pārtha labhante yuddhamīdṛśam
When such a battle comes to them of itself like the open gate of heaven, happy are the Kshatriyas then.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
Essays on the Gita
There is no greater good for the Kshatriya than righteous battle, and when such a battle comes to them of itself like the open gate of heaven, happy are the Kshatriyas then. If thou doest not this battle for the right, then hast thou abandoned thy duty and virtue and thy glory, and sin shall be thy portion.
His translation
And now if yet thou deemest of the Spirit as ever born or ever dying, even so thou hast no cause to grieve for him, O strong-armed. For of that which is born the death is certain, and of that which is dead, the birth is sure; therefore in a thing inevitable thou oughtest not to grieve. Unmanifested in their beginning are creatures, manifested in the middle, O Bharata; they become but unmanifest again at death; what room is here for lamentation? As a Mystery one seeth Him, as a Mystery another speaketh of Him, as a Mystery a third heareth of Him, but even with revelation not one knoweth Him. The embodied One is for ever unslayable in the body of every man, O Bharata, and from Him are all creatures; therefore thou hast no cause for grief. Moreover if thou considerest the law of thine own being, thou oughtest not to tremble, for than battle in a just cause the Kshatriya knows no greater bliss. Happy are the Kshatriyas, O Partha, who win such a battle to their portion; ‘tis as though one came past by chance and found the door of Paradise open. Now if thou wilt not wage this just & righteous battle, then hast thou cast from thee thy glory and the law of thy being, and brought sin upon thy head; yea thy shame shall be eternal in the mouth of all creatures, and for one who has been honoured, shame is worse than death. The warriors will think that from fear thou hast ceased from battle, and in their eyes who thought highly of thee, thou shalt be belittled. And thine illwishers will speak of thee many unutterable words, disparaging thy might and thy greatness, than which there is no worse bitterness under the skies. Slain thou shalt conquer heaven, victorious thou shalt enjoy earth for thy kingdom, therefore, O son of Coonty, arise with a heart resolute for war. Make thou thy soul indifferent to pain and pleasure, to gain and loss, to victory & defeat, then gird thyself to the combat; sin shall not touch thee then.
Essays on the Gita
Therefore, says the Teacher, put away this vain sorrow and2·18 shrinking, fight, O son of Bharata. But wherefore such a conclusion? This high and great knowledge, this strenuous self-discipline of the mind and soul by which it is to rise beyond the clamour of the emotions and the cheat of the senses to true self-knowledge, may well free us from grief and delusion; it may well cure us of the fear of death and the sorrow for the dead; it may well show us that those whom we speak of as dead are not dead at all nor to be sorrowed for, since they have only gone beyond; it may well teach us to look undisturbed upon the most terrible assaults of life and upon the death of the body as a trifle; it may exalt us to the conception of all life’s circumstances as a manifestation of the One and as a means for our souls to raise themselves above appearances by an upward evolution until we know ourselves as the immortal Spirit. But how does it justify the action demanded of Arjuna and the slaughter of Kurukshetra? The answer is that this is the action required of Arjuna in the path he has to travel; it has come inevitably in the performance of the function demanded of him by his svadharma, his social2·31–32 duty, the law of his life and the law of his being. This world, this manifestation of the Self in the material universe is not only a cycle of inner development, but a field in which the external circumstances of life have to be accepted as an environment and an occasion for that development. It is a world of mutual help and struggle; not a serene and peaceful gliding through easy joys is the progress it allows us, but every step has to be gained by heroic effort and through a clash of opposing forces. Those who take up the inner and the outer struggle even to the most physical clash of all, that of war, are the Kshatriyas, the mighty men; war, force, nobility, courage are their nature; protection of the right and an unflinching acceptance of the gage of battle is their virtue and their duty. For there is continually a struggle between right and wrong, justice and injustice, the force that protects and the force that violates and oppresses, and when this has once been brought to the issue of physical strife, the champion and standard-bearer of the Right must not shake and tremble at the violent and terrible nature of the work he has to do; he must not abandon his followers or fellow-fighters, betray his cause and leave the standard of Right and Justice to trail in the dust and be trampled into mire by the blood-stained feet of the oppressor, because of a weak pity for the violent and cruel and a physical horror of the vastness of the destruction decreed. His virtue and his duty lie in battle and not in abstention from battle; it is not slaughter, but non-slaying which would here be the sin.
The Teacher then turns aside for a moment to give another answer to the cry of Arjuna over the sorrow of the death of kindred which will empty his life of the causes and objects of living. What is the true object of the Kshatriya’s life and his true happiness? Not self-pleasing and domestic happiness and a life of comfort and peaceful joy with friends and relatives, but to battle for the right is his true object of life and to find a cause for which he can lay down his life or by victory win the crown and glory of the hero’s existence is his greatest happiness.2·31–32 “There is no greater good for the Kshatriya than righteous battle, and when such a battle comes to them of itself like the open gate of heaven, happy are the Kshatriyas then. If thou doest not this battle for the right, then hast thou abandoned thy duty and virtue and thy glory, and sin shall be thy portion.” He will by such a refusal incur disgrace and the reproach of fear and weakness and the loss of his Kshatriya honour. For what is worst grief for a Kshatriya? It is the loss of his honour, his fame, his noble station among the mighty men, the men of courage and power;2·33 that to him is much worse than death. Battle, courage, power, rule, the honour of the brave, the heaven of those who fall nobly, this is the warrior’s ideal. To lower that ideal, to allow a smirch to fall on that honour, to give the example of a hero among heroes whose action lays itself open to the reproach of cowardice and weakness and thus to lower the moral standard of mankind, is to be false to himself and to the demand of the world on its leaders and kings. “Slain thou shalt win Heaven,2·37 victorious thou shalt enjoy the earth; therefore arise, O son of Kunti, resolved upon battle.”
Other writings
A great man has fallen, perhaps the greatest force in the field of political action that the nineteenth century produced, the maker of Japan, the conqueror of Russia, the mighty one who first asserted Asia’s superiority over Europe in Europe’s own field of glory and changed in a few years the world’s future. Some would say that such a death for such a man was a tragedy. We hold otherwise. Even such a death should such a man have died, in harness, fighting for his country’s expansion and greatness, by the swift death in action which, our scriptures tell us, carry the hero’s soul straight to the felicity of heaven. The man who in his youth lived in imminent deadly peril from the swords of his countrymen because he dared to move forward by new paths to his God-given task, dies in his old age by a foreign hand because, at the expense of justice and a nation’s freedom, he still moved forward in the path of his duty. It is a difficult choice that is given to men of action in a world where love, strength and justice are not yet harmonised, and he who chooses in sincerity and acts thoroughly, whether he has chosen well or ill, gathers punya for himself in this world and the next. Then he was building a nation and he lived to do his work, for his death would not have profited. He was building an Empire when he died and by his death that Empire will be established. The soul of a great man, fulfilled in development but cut off in the midst of his work, enters into his following or his nation and works on a far wider scale than was possible to him in the body. Korea will gain nothing by this rash and untimely act, the greatest error in tactics it could have committed. The Japanese is the last man on earth to be deterred from his ambition or his duty by the fear of death, and the only result of this blow will be to harden Japan to her task. She has science, organisation, efficiency, ruthlessness, and she will grind the soul out of Korea until it is indistinguishable from Japan. That is the only way to perpetuate a conquest, to kill the soul of the subject nation, and the Japanese know it. A subject nation struggling for freedom must always attract Indian sympathy, but the Koreans have not the strength of soul to attain freedom. Instead of seeking the force to rise in their own manhood, they have always committed the unpardonable sin against Asiatic integrity of striving to call in a European power against a brother Asiatic. The Koreans have right on their side, but do not know how to awaken might to vindicate the right. The Japanese cause is wrong from the standpoint of a higher morality than the merely patriotic, but they believe intensely in their religion of patriotic duty and put all their might into its observance. It is not difficult to predict with which side the victory will lie.
Writings in Bengali
হিমাচল দুইদিকে মাপে ভীমবাহু। বাড়ে বহু ম্লেচ্ছজাতি পশ্চিমে। যেদিন অল্পায়ু পারস্য তেজঃ নিবারে যবনে, নিরাপদ এ দেশের। পরে চারিদিকে আক্রমণ, চারিদিকে সমুদ্র যেমতি ঘোষিবে ম্লেচ্ছ জগৎ বিপন্ন ভারতে। অতএব উঠ সাজ, ওহে সিংহজাতি। সন্নাহে আবরি দেহ তূরীরব ছাড়ি বাহিরি যাদব মোরা যুদ্ধ-অগ্নি নেত্রে চক্রঘোষে সিংহনাদে পূরব-উদ্দেশী। স্বদেশ-রক্ষার্থে ধর্ম্মরক্ষার্থে বিধাতা সৃজিয়াছে যুদ্ধ মর্ত্ত্যে। পুনঃ ধর্ম্মযুদ্ধে মাতি, ওহে যদুগণ। খুল্ল স্বর্গদ্বার, ডাকিছে অপ্সরাকণ্ঠ বৈজয়ন্ত-ধামে।” কহিল মহাত্মা। উরুচারী সিংহনাদে উত্তর করিল জাতি। এই দিকে কিন্তু উচ্চস্তম্ভ যেন উঠি ভ্রূকুটি ললাটে কহিল নিন্দিয়া কৃষ্ণে হার্দ্দিক সুধন্বী কৃতবর্ম্মা। “কৃষ্ণ কৃষ্ণ মহত্ত্ব পিপাসু কতদিন ভীমশ্রমে খাটাবি মোদের নির্ম্মম সমরে ফেলি। আয়সের পুত্র নির্ম্মম আয়স তুমি। পুরাকালে সুখী সুপ্রিয় মথুরাপুরী ভজিতাম মোরা নদীতীরে। ঝিল্লিকা-নাদিত বনরাজি মধুর জীবন ঘেরে, বৃন্দাবন-বায়ু বিতরি মৃদু সৌরভ ভ্রমে মথুরায়, — যমুনার কলস্বর বিলাসী শ্রবণে সৌরসেন বহুগ্রামে বাসিতাম সুখী। কে সম্রাট কে বিক্রান্ত বিশাল ভারতে নাই রাখিনু সে বার্ত্তা, সন্তুষ্ট রহিনু
