Sanjaya
अथ व्यवस्थितान् दृष्ट्वा धार्तराष्ट्रान्कपिध्वजः । प्रवृत्ते शस्त्रसंपाते धनुरुद्यम्य पाण्डवः ॥
atha vyavasthitān dṛṣṭvā dhārtarāṣṭrānkapidhvajaḥ | pravṛtte śastrasaṃpāte dhanurudyamya pāṇḍavaḥ ||
Then, seeing Dhritarashtra's sons standing arrayed, and as the exchange of weapons was about to begin, the son of Pandu, whose banner bore a monkey, raised his bow…
Explanation Sanjaya is describing the battlefield of Kurukshetra to the blind king Dhritarashtra. The conches have just sounded, and the armies are poised to begin fighting. Arjuna, called monkey-bannered (kapidhvaja) because Hanuman was on his flag, raises his bow and is about to speak to Krishna. The sentence continues into the next verse.
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About the Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita, in Sanskrit श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता (Śrīmad Bhagavad Gītā ), “the song of the Lord”, is a dialogue of 18 chapters and 700 verses from the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata. On the battlefield of Kurukshetra, as the war is about to begin, the warrior Arjuna loses heart at the thought of fighting his own kin, and his charioteer Krishna answers him: on duty, on acting without attachment to the results, on knowledge, meditation and devotion. Sanjaya recounts the conversation to the blind king Dhritarashtra. The name is also written Bhagwad Gita, Bhagvad Gita, Bhagavat Gita or Bhagavad Geeta; with the honorific, Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavad Gita or Shrimad Bhagwat Geeta; and often simply the Gita or Geeta.
Every verse is here in the original Sanskrit, with a Roman (IAST) transliteration, a plain-language translation and a short explanation, in English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, French and Tamil. The translations were made from the Sanskrit for this site and reviewed; they follow no published translation. Reading is free, with no account or advertising, and your progress stays in your browser. The verses are numbered 1.1 to 18.78, 701 in all, counting the question that opens chapter 13.
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