Arjuna reports his own collapse reaching his hands: the bow itself will no longer stay in his grip.
This is Sanjaya's narration of what Arjuna says, not yet Krishna's teaching. Where the tradition comments on this exact line at all, it stays close to the bare list of symptoms rather than rushing to diagnose them.
Trembling runs through my body and my hair stands on end. The Gandiva slips from my hand, and my skin is burning.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Sanjaya is still narrating to the blind king Dhritarashtra. In the verse just before this one, Arjuna named the first signs of his collapse, slack limbs, a dry mouth. Here, still speaking, he continues the same catalogue, and the collapse now reaches further: into the whole body's trembling, and into the one thing a warrior's hand is supposed to hold steady above all else.
The teaching
The verse itself asks for very little interpretation. My body trembles, my hair stands on end, the Gandiva slips from my hand, my skin is burning: four plain reports, one after another, with no argument yet attached to any of them. Where comment on this exact line survives in the sources gathered here, it stays remarkably close to that plainness. Sridhara offers a single confirming sentence. Madhusudana restates the same four symptoms without yet sorting them into a diagnosis, saving that finer work for his treatment of the passage as a whole. Ramanuja does not pause on this verse at all, folding it instead into the single continuous reading he gives at 1.26, where the entire collapse, from the first slackening limb to this falling bow, is read together as the visible cost of a genuinely virtuous heart breaking under love and the fear of wrongdoing. Madhva and Abhinavagupta leave nothing here whatsoever: Madhva's surviving commentary begins only at 2.11, and Abhinavagupta's source records a plain absence with no wider passage offered as an anchor. What this leaves is a verse doing real, quiet narrative work almost without commentary at all. Two of its four details are new here, not carried over from the line before: the weapon slipping free, and the skin catching fire. Of the two, none of the sources that touch this verse pass over the falling bow lightly. It marks a threshold. Whatever has been happening inside Arjuna, in his thoughts and his grief, has now reached the one part of him his role as a warrior depends on completely: the steadiness of his own hand.
The doubt that rises
If the tradition itself comments so sparingly here, does that mean this verse matters less than the ones around it, or does it mean something else, that some moments in a person's unraveling are simply reported, not yet explained, because the explaining has not caught up with the body yet?
Where the paths divide
Read through Madhusudana's plain restatement, since Shankara left nothing here.
No comment from Shankara survives for this verse, as with the whole of chapter one. Madhusudana's brief entry stays close to the bare list of symptoms, trembling, rising hair, the falling bow, the burning skin, without yet naming a cause or a diagnosis. The fuller Advaita reading of delusion and lost discrimination belongs, in his hand, to the wider treatment of the surrounding verses, not to an extended judgment recorded on this exact line.
Read as part of a single passage anchored at 1.26.
Ramanuja gives no independent comment on this verse, folding it instead into the continuous stretch he treats fully at its opening. Read within that frame, this line's specific details, the failing grip, the burning skin, would fall under the same verdict he gives the collapse as a whole: not a fault to be corrected, but the visible mark of a great-souled man breaking under a love and a righteousness that were never in question.
Read as a complete gap in the surviving material.
Madhva's commentary does not reach chapter one at all, beginning only at verse 2.11. The whole of this verse, the trembling and the falling weapon included, passes without a word from him, and nothing offered here should be mistaken for filling that gap on his behalf.
Read as a stated blank, without even a range given as an anchor.
The source records plainly that Abhinavagupta offers no comment on this verse, with no wider passage given either. One could imagine, only as a labeled and conditional extension, the trembling body as consciousness registering, in its own flesh, a contraction into a narrow and threatened sense of self, but this is not his recorded word.
Read as the one confirming line that survives, and nothing more.
What remains attributed to Sridhara here is brief: the body trembles, the hair stands on end. It confirms the plain sense of the verse and ventures no reading of whether the collapse it names is fitting grief, delusion, or something else; this entry does not supply that verdict on his behalf.
Read as a shared mechanism, apart from any school's final verdict.
Set the doctrinal question aside and notice what the bare restatements still preserve: this is the verse where distress, already named in the mind and the limbs, reaches the hands, the one place a warrior's readiness cannot be faked. Whatever this collapse is finally called, the sources agree it has now reached the weapon itself.
This page does not invent a fuller reading for the acaryas who left none, and it does not pretend the sparse comment that does survive amounts to a settled verdict. What stays open here is real: is this bodily collapse itself already a kind of moral seeing, the body recognizing something the mind has not yet found words for, or is it simply the raw material that the coming teaching will have to work on and correct? The verse reports; it does not yet judge.
A question to carry
When your own hands have started to fail at something you are trained to do without thinking, do you take that as information worth trusting, or as a weakness to push through before you have understood what it is telling you?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Let the report stand honestly, in its own plain and physical terms, before reaching for a verdict on the heart, or the failure, behind it; the explaining will come, but it has not come yet.
Each school is voiced from the commentators named above. Their full words, every translation, and where the schools agree and differ wait in the reading desk just below. Open the commentary desk.
Arjuna has already named the slackening of his limbs and the dryness of his mouth in the verse just before this one; here the same collapse spreads further, into the trembling of his whole body and, most tellingly, into the failing grip on his own weapon.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
The list is exact and physical: trembling through the body, hair rising on end, the Gandiva slipping free, the skin on fire, reported in the same plain terms the verse itself uses.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
Where any comment on this exact verse survives at all, it stays remarkably close to the bare words themselves: trembling in the body, hair standing on end, the bow slipping from the hand, the skin burning. This is not yet the moment for interpretation. It is Arjuna's own report, echoed back by the sources rather than expanded by them.
Two of these four signs are new to this line: the bow is new, and the burning skin is new, marking an intensification beyond the slack limbs and dry mouth named just before.
Across Advaita, BhaktiMadhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Madhusūdana and Śrīdhara’s words
Two of the four physical symptoms named in this verse are new to this line specifically: the Gandiva slipping from the hand and the burning skin. The trembling and rising hair continue directly from the previous verse's catalogue, so this line is read as an intensification, the collapse spreading from the limbs and mouth into the grip on the weapon itself.
Where comment survives on this exact verse, it stays close to restatement rather than argument, letting the raw report carry its own weight before any verdict is reached.
Across Dvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, ViśiṣṭādvaitaMadhva · Abhinavagupta · RāmānujaIn Madhva, Abhinavagupta, and 1 others’ words
Three of the five acaryas surveyed here leave no independent comment isolated to this particular verse. Madhva's extant commentary does not reach chapter one at all; Abhinavagupta's source states plainly that he offers nothing here, with no wider passage given as an anchor; and Ramanuja folds this verse into a single continuous treatment beginning at 1.26, without pausing to gloss this line on its own.
Three of the five voices gathered here are silent or folded elsewhere on this precise line, and that thinness is recorded honestly rather than dressed up as a fuller agreement.
Across Bhakti, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚrīdhara · RāmānujaIn Śrīdhara and Rāmānuja’s words
Where the surviving material is thin, as with Sridhara's single confirming line, or folded into a wider passage, as with Ramanuja, or entirely absent, as with Madhva and Abhinavagupta, the verse still does real narrative work without needing a doctrinal gloss at all: it is the body finishing what the mind has already begun to feel.
The failing grip on his own weapon is read, across what little comment survives, as the moment private distress becomes impossible to argue away.
Across Bhakti, Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚrīdhara · Madhusūdana · RāmānujaIn Śrīdhara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
None of the sources that touch this verse, however briefly, treat the weapon slipping from Arjuna's hand as a small or incidental detail. Whether restated plainly, as Sridhara and Madhusudana do, or folded into the larger frame Ramanuja sets at 1.26, the failing grip on the Gandiva is carried as a meaningful sign that the warrior's readiness for battle, not only his composure, is giving way.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja leaves no comment isolated to this verse, folding it instead into the single continuous passage he treats fully at 1.26. Read within that frame, the specific symptoms named here would fall under the same verdict he gives the collapse generally: the visible sign of a great-souled, supremely righteous man breaking under love and the fear of wrongdoing, not a flaw to be corrected. This is an extension of his stated frame, not his own recorded word on this precise line.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's commentary does not address chapter one at all, beginning only at verse 2.11. There is no Dvaita reading of this verse's trembling, burning skin, or falling weapon in his own words to report; any extension of his teaching on the soul's radical dependence to this specific moment of collapse would be speculative and is not offered here as his position.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
The one line that survives from Sridhara here is a bare confirmation: my body trembles, and my hair stands on end. It settles the plain sense of the verse and offers no verdict on whether the collapse it describes is delusion, fitting grief, or something else; this entry does not supply one on his behalf.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Set the doctrinal question to one side and notice the mechanism the bare restatements still preserve: this verse marks a threshold where distress moves from the mind and limbs, already named in the verse before, into the hands themselves, where the weapon of the warrior's trade can no longer be held. Whatever the eventual diagnosis, the sources agree that the body's failure has now reached the very tool the moment requires.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Notice, the next time distress reaches your hands, that this is often the point where a private feeling stops being deniable. A racing heart can be argued with; a bow that will not stay in your grip cannot. Sit with that honestly for a moment; the body is not lying to you here, even if it has not yet told you the whole truth about what it means.
Let the report stand as it is, in its own plain and physical honesty, before any verdict is reached about the heart, or the failure, behind it.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
here any comment on this exact verse survives at all, it stays remarkably close to the bare words themselves: trembling in the body, hair standing on end, the bow slipping from the hand, the skin burning. This is not yet the moment for interpretation. It is Arjuna's own report, echoed back by the sources rather than expanded by them.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Two of the four physical symptoms named in this verse are new to this line specifically: the Gandiva slipping from the hand and the burning skin. The trembling and rising hair continue directly from the previous verse's catalogue, so this line is read as an intensification, the collapse spreading from the limbs and mouth into the grip on the weapon itself.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Three of the five acaryas surveyed here leave no independent comment isolated to this particular verse. Madhva's extant commentary does not reach chapter one at all; Abhinavagupta's source states plainly that he offers nothing here, with no wider passage given as an anchor; and Ramanuja folds this verse into a single continuous treatment beginning at 1.26, without pausing to gloss this line on its own.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Rāmānujācārya
Where the surviving material is thin, as with Sridhara's single confirming line, or folded into a wider passage, as with Ramanuja, or entirely absent, as with Madhva and Abhinavagupta, the verse still does real narrative work without needing a doctrinal gloss at all: it is the body finishing what the mind has already begun to feel.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya
None of the sources that touch this verse, however briefly, treat the weapon slipping from Arjuna's hand as a small or incidental detail. Whether restated plainly, as Sridhara and Madhusudana do, or folded into the larger frame Ramanuja sets at 1.26, the failing grip on the Gandiva is carried as a meaningful sign that the warrior's readiness for battle, not only his composure, is giving way.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
No comment from Shankara survives for this verse or for chapter one generally. What stands here under the Advaita heading is Madhusudana's brief restatement, which stays with the plain list of symptoms, trembling, rising hair, the slipping bow, the burning skin, without yet sorting them into a diagnosis of delusion. That sorting, where it appears in the wider Advaita reading of this passage, belongs to his treatment of the surrounding verses, not to an extended judgment recorded on this exact line.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja leaves no comment isolated to this verse, folding it instead into the single continuous passage he treats fully at 1.26. Read within that frame, the specific symptoms named here would fall under the same verdict he gives the collapse generally: the visible sign of a great-souled, supremely righteous man breaking under love and the fear of wrongdoing, not a flaw to be corrected. This is an extension of his stated frame, not his own recorded word on this precise line.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's commentary does not address chapter one at all, beginning only at verse 2.11. There is no Dvaita reading of this verse's trembling, burning skin, or falling weapon in his own words to report; any extension of his teaching on the soul's radical dependence to this specific moment of collapse would be speculative and is not offered here as his position.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The source records that Abhinavagupta offers no comment on this verse, and no wider range or anchor is given for it either. A conditional Kashmir Shaiva extension might read the trembling and the burning skin as consciousness registering, in the body, the shock of contracting into a narrow and threatened sense of self, but this is only a labeled extrapolation, not his recorded word.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
The one line that survives from Sridhara here is a bare confirmation: my body trembles, and my hair stands on end. It settles the plain sense of the verse and offers no verdict on whether the collapse it describes is delusion, fitting grief, or something else; this entry does not supply one on his behalf.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Set the doctrinal question to one side and notice the mechanism the bare restatements still preserve: this verse marks a threshold where distress moves from the mind and limbs, already named in the verse before, into the hands themselves, where the weapon of the warrior's trade can no longer be held. Whatever the eventual diagnosis, the sources agree that the body's failure has now reached the very tool the moment requires.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
A Seeker Asks
So many of the acaryas gathered here leave no real comment on this exact verse. What is a seeker meant to take from a line the tradition treats so lightly?
Take the thinness itself as honest information. Three of the five sources on file leave no independent word here, and this reflects real facts about what survives from their commentaries and how they chose to structure their treatment, not a judgment that this verse lacks importance.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Rāmānujācārya
Where comment does survive, however brief, it agrees on something worth noticing: the collapse has now reached the hands. Trembling and dry mouth were named already; the weapon slipping free is new, and no source treats that detail as incidental.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A verse can matter to the unfolding scene even when the commentators pass over it briefly. This line is doing narrative work, showing the body finishing what the mind began, before Krishna has said a single word in reply.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya
Contemplation
Notice, the next time distress reaches your hands, that this is often the point where a private feeling stops being deniable. A racing heart can be argued with; a bow that will not stay in your grip cannot. Sit with that honestly for a moment; the body is not lying to you here, even if it has not yet told you the whole truth about what it means.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, open a tradition in the doorways below, or add a voice by name above.
Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.