The Gandiva slips, the skin burns, the legs give way: the body finishes what the mind has already begun.
Half the acaryas gathered here are silent or fold this verse into a wider passage; where comment does survive, it looks past the trembling hand to what is actually producing it, a mind reeling toward a swoon, or a mistaken way of seeing the men now standing arrayed for war.
The Gandiva is slipping from my hand and my skin is burning all over. I cannot keep standing, and my mind feels like it is whirling.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Sanjaya is still narrating to the blind king Dhritarashtra. Arjuna has already told Krishna, by name, that his limbs are giving way and his mouth has gone dry; this verse carries that collapse to its final, physical extreme, the Gandiva itself no longer held.
The teaching
Arjuna names four things happening at once: the Gandiva, his own great bow, is slipping from his hand; his skin is burning all over; he cannot keep standing; and his mind feels like it is whirling. Where fuller commentary on this exact line survives, it reads these as more than a list of symptoms. Madhusudana reads the last two clauses as cause and effect: the mind's disturbance, a state like wandering, is what is producing the body's failure to stand, and together they name the onset of a swoon, compounded further by the adverse omens Arjuna reports feeling. Abhinavagupta, treating this whole speech as the view the teaching will go on to answer, locates the deeper cause one layer further back still: not in the mind's disturbance as such, but in a particular cognition laid over the men on the field, the thought these are my teachers and so on, which is what turns the act of fighting into something that seems to necessarily produce sin. Half the acaryas gathered here leave nothing isolated to this verse at all. Shankara's extant commentary does not reach chapter one; Madhva's begins only at verse 2.11; and Ramanuja treats this verse only as part of one continuous passage running from 1.26 to 1.47, with his full comment anchored at that opening rather than repeated here, though what he says there, the bow and arrow falling, the body sinking down, already describes exactly what this verse now names in its own words. Sridhara's one surviving line stays with plain confirmation, restating the verse without venturing further. What holds across the readings that do exist is this: the failing body is not treated as the real problem. It is where an inner disturbance, named differently by different readers, becomes visible enough for Sanjaya, and for us, to see.
The doubt that rises
If the body's collapse is only ever the visible surface of something happening further in, what is a person actually supposed to treat first, the shaking or the thought beneath the shaking? And can either be addressed while the bow is still in the hand, or must the hand open first?
Where the paths divide
Read through Madhusudana, since Shankara left nothing here.
No comment from Shankara survives for this verse; his extant commentary does not reach chapter one. Madhusudana's reading stands in its place: the inability to stand and the whirling mind are read as cause and effect, the reeling mind producing the body's collapse, together naming an oncoming swoon, further compounded by adverse omens felt as confirming signs of coming sorrow.
Read within Ramanuja's single passage, anchored at 1.26.
Ramanuja's full comment on this stretch treats verses 1.26 through 1.47 as one continuous unit rather than commenting on this verse alone. Within that account he already describes the bow and arrow falling from Arjuna's hands and his body sinking onto the chariot seat, undone by love for his kinsmen and a real fear of incurring sin, read throughout as the mark of a supremely righteous, great-souled man, not a flaw to be corrected.
Read as a complete gap in the source material.
Madhva's Gita commentary does not begin until verse 2.11. The whole of chapter one, this description of a failing body included, passes without a word from him, and nothing here should be read as filling that gap on his behalf; any Dvaita-flavored extension would be speculation, not his recorded word.
Read as the target of a coming cure, not the disease itself.
Abhinavagupta treats this whole speech as the prima facie position the teaching will answer, and locates the true flaw not in the trembling hand but in a particular cognition laid over the men on the field, these are my teachers and so on, which is what turns fighting into something that seems necessarily sinful. The coming answer will redirect that cognition, urging action simply as one's own dharma, rather than argue with the shaking itself.
Read as the one line that survives, and nothing more.
What remains attributed to Sridhara here is brief: the Gandiva slips from Arjuna's hand, his skin burns, he cannot stand, his mind whirls. It confirms the plain sense of the verse and offers no cause, no verdict, and no devotional gloss, and this entry does not supply one on his behalf.
Read as a shared structure, apart from either reading's named cause.
Set the specific diagnosis to one side for a moment and notice what both fuller readings agree on: a failing body is never treated here as the real event. It is where a disturbance further in, a mind reeling toward a swoon for one reading, a mistaken cognition for the other, finally becomes visible enough to be described at all.
This page does not invent positions for the acaryas who left none, and it does not force Ramanuja's wider passage into a comment he never made on this line alone. What stays open here is real: is the disturbance beneath this collapse best named as a mind slipping toward a swoon, or as a cognition mistakenly laid over the men on the field? Both readings, where they exist, take the collapse with total seriousness. Neither is manufactured to settle the other.
A question to carry
When your own body starts to fail you under pressure, shaking hands, a mind that will not hold still, do you reach first for what is happening in the body, or do you ask what thought, underneath it, is failing first?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Let the body's report be heard in full, honestly and without rushing past it, before any verdict is reached about what is producing it; the teaching that answers this collapse has not yet been spoken.
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.
This is the last line of Arjuna's bodily collapse, the physical description Sanjaya has been building since the omens and the eight sorrow-marks named just before; the verses that follow will turn from symptom to argument.
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 verse names four things at once: the bow slipping, the skin burning, the legs failing, the mind whirling, read as a literal, escalating collapse.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Abhinavagupta, and 2 others’ words
Read plainly, this verse names the bottom of Arjuna's collapse: the Gandiva, his great bow, is slipping from his hand, his skin is burning all over, he cannot keep standing, and his mind is whirling. Where any commentary on this exact line survives, it treats these as a literal report of a warrior coming apart, not as figures of speech, and the collapse follows directly from what the two verses before it have already begun to describe.
Half the acaryas surveyed leave no comment isolated to this exact verse, and that absence, or Ramanuja's folding of it into a wider passage, is recorded honestly rather than filled in.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Madhva · RāmānujaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 1 others’ words
Half of the six acaryas surveyed here leave no comment isolated to this particular verse. Shankara's extant commentary does not reach chapter one at all; Madhva's begins only at 2.11; and Ramanuja treats this verse only as part of a single continuous passage running from 1.26 to 1.47, with his full comment anchored at its opening rather than repeated here. Their absence or their folding of this verse into a wider unit is itself part of the honest record, not a gap quietly filled.
Where fuller comment survives, it traces the collapse to an inner cause: a mind already reeling toward a swoon, for one reading; a mistaken cognition laid over the men on the field, for another.
Across Advaita, Kashmir ŚaivaMadhusūdana · AbhinavaguptaIn Madhusūdana and Abhinavagupta’s words
Where fuller comment does survive, it locates the cause of the bodily collapse in the mind rather than in the body alone. Madhusudana reads the inability to stand and the whirling mind as cause and effect, the mind's disturbance producing the body's failure, the whole sequence naming the onset of a swoon. Abhinavagupta locates the deeper cause one layer further back, in a mistaken cognition laid over the men on the field.
Two of the readings that do address this stretch agree the collapse itself is not the flaw to be corrected, whatever else they disagree about.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaRāmānuja · AbhinavaguptaIn Rāmānuja and Abhinavagupta’s words
Two of the acaryas who do address this stretch, Ramanuja and Abhinavagupta, agree that the collapse itself is not the flaw to be corrected, even though they read its deeper meaning very differently. Ramanuja reads it as the visible mark of a genuinely virtuous nature meeting an unbearable moment; Abhinavagupta reads the shaking hand as merely a symptom, with the real target of the coming teaching being the cognition underneath it, not the trembling itself.
This verse completes a body's undoing; nothing here yet says whether that undoing is weakness or the mark of an unusually tender heart.
Across BhaktiŚrīdharaIn Śrīdhara’s words
This verse does real work in the narrative even where no interpretive comment survives at all. Sridhara's one surviving line, a bare confirmation of the Sanskrit, still marks this as the verse where Arjuna's crisis becomes fully physical, the last body-symptom named before he turns, in the verses that follow, to giving his despair its reasons.
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's full comment on this stretch is anchored at verse 1.26 and treats 1.26 through 1.47 as one passage, so no comment addresses this verse alone. Within that wider account, though, he already describes the bow falling from Arjuna's hands and his body sinking down, undone by love for his kinsmen and fear of incurring sin, and reads the whole collapse as the mark of a supremely righteous, great-souled man, not a flaw awaiting correction.
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 in his own words to report; any extension of his broader teaching on the soul's dependence, even in bodily things like the grip on a bow, to this particular moment would be speculative and is not offered as his position.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
The one line that survives from Sridhara here stays entirely with the plain sense: the Gandiva slips from Arjuna's hand, his skin burns, he cannot stand, his mind whirls. No cause, no verdict on delusion or virtue, and no devotional gloss is offered in what remains of his comment; this entry does not supply one on his behalf.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read without theological framing, what both fuller readings converge on is a layered account of breakdown: an outer symptom, the failing body, produced by an inner cause, whether that cause is named as a mind reeling toward a swoon or as a self-referring cognition laid over the men one must now fight. Either way, the body is not treated as the real problem; it is only where an inner disturbance becomes visible to Sanjaya's eye, and to ours.
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 shows up in your own body, tight chest, shaking hands, a mind that will not settle, that the body is rarely the whole story. Before treating the symptom alone, ask what cognition or fear is riding underneath it, the way the sources here look past Arjuna's failing grip to the thought that is failing him first.
Let the body's report be heard in full before any verdict is reached about what has produced it; the teaching that answers this collapse has not yet been spoken.
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
ead plainly, this verse names the bottom of Arjuna's collapse: the Gandiva, his great bow, is slipping from his hand, his skin is burning all over, he cannot keep standing, and his mind is whirling. Where any commentary on this exact line survives, it treats these as a literal report of a warrior coming apart, not as figures of speech, and the collapse follows directly from what the two verses before it have already begun to describe.
Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Half of the six acaryas surveyed here leave no comment isolated to this particular verse. Shankara's extant commentary does not reach chapter one at all; Madhva's begins only at 2.11; and Ramanuja treats this verse only as part of a single continuous passage running from 1.26 to 1.47, with his full comment anchored at its opening rather than repeated here. Their absence or their folding of this verse into a wider unit is itself part of the honest record, not a gap quietly filled.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Rāmānujācārya
Where fuller comment does survive, it locates the cause of the bodily collapse in the mind rather than in the body alone. Madhusudana reads the inability to stand and the whirling mind as cause and effect, the mind's disturbance producing the body's failure, the whole sequence naming the onset of a swoon. Abhinavagupta locates the deeper cause one layer further back, in a mistaken cognition laid over the men on the field.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Two of the acaryas who do address this stretch, Ramanuja and Abhinavagupta, agree that the collapse itself is not the flaw to be corrected, even though they read its deeper meaning very differently. Ramanuja reads it as the visible mark of a genuinely virtuous nature meeting an unbearable moment; Abhinavagupta reads the shaking hand as merely a symptom, with the real target of the coming teaching being the cognition underneath it, not the trembling itself.
Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
This verse does real work in the narrative even where no interpretive comment survives at all. Sridhara's one surviving line, a bare confirmation of the Sanskrit, still marks this as the verse where Arjuna's crisis becomes fully physical, the last body-symptom named before he turns, in the verses that follow, to giving his despair its reasons.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
No comment from Shankara survives for this verse; his extant commentary does not reach chapter one. What stands under the Advaita heading here is Madhusudana's reading, and it is exact: the inability to stand and the whirling mind are cause and effect, together naming the onset of a swoon, with adverse omens named as a further, compounding cause. He also reads the address Krishna, properly belonging to the previous verse, as an implicit plea: make me, who am full of grief, free of grief as you are.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's full comment on this stretch is anchored at verse 1.26 and treats 1.26 through 1.47 as one passage, so no comment addresses this verse alone. Within that wider account, though, he already describes the bow falling from Arjuna's hands and his body sinking down, undone by love for his kinsmen and fear of incurring sin, and reads the whole collapse as the mark of a supremely righteous, great-souled man, not a flaw awaiting correction.
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 in his own words to report; any extension of his broader teaching on the soul's dependence, even in bodily things like the grip on a bow, to this particular moment would be speculative and is not offered as his position.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta treats this whole speech, this verse's bodily collapse included, as the prima facie position the teaching will go on to refute. The flaw he names is not the trembling hand itself but a particular cognition laid over the men on the field, these are my teachers and so on, which turns the act of fighting into something that necessarily produces sin; the coming answer will target that cognition, not the shaking body it produces.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
The one line that survives from Sridhara here stays entirely with the plain sense: the Gandiva slips from Arjuna's hand, his skin burns, he cannot stand, his mind whirls. No cause, no verdict on delusion or virtue, and no devotional gloss is offered in what remains of his comment; this entry does not supply one on his behalf.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read without theological framing, what both fuller readings converge on is a layered account of breakdown: an outer symptom, the failing body, produced by an inner cause, whether that cause is named as a mind reeling toward a swoon or as a self-referring cognition laid over the men one must now fight. Either way, the body is not treated as the real problem; it is only where an inner disturbance becomes visible to Sanjaya's eye, and to ours.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
A Seeker Asks
If half the acaryas here leave nothing on this exact verse, and one only restates it, what is actually being taught by a verse this thinly commented on?
Take the absences as honest information about how these commentaries are actually built, not as a sign this verse lacks weight. Shankara's silence and Madhva's each reflect real facts about where their surviving commentaries begin; Ramanuja folds this verse into a wider passage rather than repeating himself at every line within it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Rāmānujācārya
Where comment does survive, notice it does real interpretive work even on a verse this physical: Madhusudana traces a precise causal chain from mind to body, and Abhinavagupta locates the true target one layer further back, in a cognition rather than in the trembling itself.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
A verse can matter as a narrative hinge even where interpretation is thin. This is the moment Arjuna's collapse becomes fully bodily, the last physical symptom before he turns to argument; Sridhara's bare line marks that turning point plainly, without needing to argue for it.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
Notice, the next time distress shows up in your own body, tight chest, shaking hands, a mind that will not settle, that the body is rarely the whole story. Before treating the symptom alone, ask what cognition or fear is riding underneath it, the way the sources here look past Arjuna's failing grip to the thought that is failing him first.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
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Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.