Arjuna grants that the Kauravas are deadly aggressors, and still refuses the killing as sin.
He has just been reminded, in effect, that destroying wrongdoers should bring relief. He denies it flatly, and then goes further: even the lawful exception for a deadly aggressor does not, for him, clear the deed of its cost.
What joy could we have, Krishna, from killing these sons of Dhritarashtra? Even though they are murderous aggressors, killing them would bring us nothing but sin.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Sanjaya is narrating to the blind king Dhritarashtra. Arjuna has already looked across both armies and named, one by one, the ruin that war on kinsmen brings. Here his general grief sharpens into something more exact: a specific objection about sin, aimed at a specific and lawful exception.
The teaching
The verse makes two claims, in order of increasing weight. First, no joy would come from killing the sons of Dhritarashtra, even granting that they are wrongdoers; the very idea that their defeat should gladden him, Arjuna simply denies. Second, and heavier, only sin would come to the killers, whatever the standing of the ones killed. Arjuna then does something more precise than pure lament: he names the Kauravas atatayins, deadly aggressors, the very category that would normally excuse a killing without fault to the one who does it, and he grants that the label fits. Duryodhana and his allies have done what the law names: threatened harm, seized what was not theirs, moved against Arjuna's own house. And still Arjuna refuses the conclusion the label would ordinarily license. A recognized legal exception, he insists, is not the same thing as a full moral clearance. Where fuller commentary on this exact line survives, it stays close to this same plain sense: Sridhara's one surviving line and Madhusudana's own comment here both restate the verse's shape rather than build a separate argument beyond it. Three of the six acaryas gathered in this collection leave no independent word on this line at all. Shankara's extant commentary does not reach it. Madhva's does not begin until 2.11. Ramanuja and Abhinavagupta each fold this verse into a wider passage, their full remarks given at that passage's opening verse, 1.26 and 1.35 respectively, rather than freshly composed here. What can honestly be carried forward from them is only what those neighboring verses actually say: Ramanuja reads Arjuna's whole grief, this line included, as the mark of a noble heart, not a clouded one; Abhinavagupta names sin itself the true doer in such killing, a failure to see the fault in destroying one's own family. Both extend cleanly toward this verse's own claim, but neither was written fresh for it, and this reading keeps that distinction honest rather than blurring it.
The doubt that rises
If a lawful exception truly excuses a killing, where does the sin Arjuna fears actually come from? Is it a real moral fact the law simply fails to capture, or is it something closer to what several sources elsewhere in this chapter suggest, a grief dressed up as principle because the men in question are also kin? The verse itself does not resolve this, and Krishna has not yet spoken.
Where the paths divide
Read through what little survives, since Shankara left nothing here.
No comment from Shankara survives for this verse. What stands under the Advaita heading is only a close paraphrase attributed to Madhusudana, confirming that no joy and only sin would follow the killing, without the fuller argument his school develops on other lines.
Read as part of a wider passage, not a fresh comment.
Ramanuja folds this verse into his treatment of 1.26 through 1.47 as one continuous passage, with his full remark given at its opening. There, Arjuna's grief, this specific refusal included, is read as the visible mark of a great-souled, supremely righteous man breaking under real love and a real fear of sin, not a judgment awaiting correction.
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 verse's argument about lawful aggressors included, passes without a word from him, and nothing here should be read as filling that gap on his behalf.
Read as an extension from his stated remark at the passage's opening.
Abhinavagupta's comment is folded into his treatment of 1.35 through 1.44, given fully at 1.35, the verse just before this one: sin itself is named the true doer in slaying an assailant, a contraction of seeing caused by greed. Extended forward, this would frame Arjuna's joylessness and his fear of sin as two faces of that same contracted seeing, though this is a labeled extension of his actual words, not fresh composition for this line.
Read as the one line that survives, and nothing more.
What remains attributed to Sridhara here is brief: killing the sons of Dhritarashtra brings no joy, only sin. It confirms the plain sense of the verse and ventures no further argument about the atatayin exception, and this entry does not supply one on his behalf.
Read as the mechanism the verse itself displays.
Set the question of which acarya said what to one side for a moment, and notice what Arjuna's own reasoning does: he grants that a recognized exception applies to these men, and still refuses to let that exception settle the deeper question of what the deed will do to him. A legal label and a moral cost, he insists, are not automatically the same thing.
This page does not invent positions for the acaryas who left none here, and it does not blur an extension of a neighboring verse's remark with a fresh word actually composed for this one. What stays open is real: does the sin Arjuna names come from a genuine gap the law cannot close, or is it, at least in part, the shape grief takes when the ones the law excuses happen to be family? Both readings take his words seriously. Neither is manufactured to settle the question for him.
A question to carry
When a rule would clear you of fault, do you ever still feel a cost the rule does not mention, the way Arjuna does here, and if so, whose accounting do you trust: the rule's, or the feeling's?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Let the honesty of this moment stand: a lawful exception was granted, and still refused as insufficient. Sit with that refusal a while before deciding whether it was wisdom or only grief wearing the shape of an argument.
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 gathers up Arjuna's earlier words, that he sees no good in the war, into a sharper and more specific case, adding the charge that the killing would settle sin on those who do it, whatever the standing of the ones killed.
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.
You have been told their fall should gladden you, and still you find no joy in it; they are your own people, and their deaths bring nothing worth having.
Across Advaita, BhaktiMadhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Madhusūdana and Śrīdhara’s words
Arjuna's first claim is that killing the sons of Dhritarashtra would bring no real joy, even granting that they are wrongdoers. He has, in effect, been told that destroying the wicked Kauravas should gladden him, and he flatly denies it: these are his own people, and their deaths cannot be a happiness, whatever the case against them.
Heavier than the missing joy is the sin you fear would settle on you, the killer, whatever wrong the ones killed have done.
Across Advaita, BhaktiMadhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Madhusūdana and Śrīdhara’s words
His second and weightier claim is that the killing would load sin onto the killers regardless of the victims' standing. Joy is absent and sin is present, so the act stands doubly refused. This is the verse's real center of gravity, more than the denial of pleasure that precedes it.
You call them deadly aggressors, the very label the law would use to excuse the act, and grant it, and still refuse the conclusion that follows from it.
In the commentators’ fuller words
Arjuna names the Kauravas atatayins, deadly aggressors, and concedes the category the law of statecraft would use to excuse killing them without fault, then refuses the conclusion anyway: naming them aggressors does not, for him, clear the deed of its sin.
A recognized exception and a full moral clearance are not, in your reasoning, the same thing, and you will not let the first stand in for the second.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Three of the six acaryas surveyed here leave no independent word on this exact line: Shankara's extant commentary does not reach it, Madhva's begins only at 2.11, and both Ramanuja and Abhinavagupta fold this verse into a wider passage whose full remark is given at its opening verse rather than developed fresh here.
This is your own case, made before any answer has come; three of the six voices gathered here fall silent at exactly this line, and that silence is left standing, not filled.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
Where the surviving material is thin, as with Sridhara and Madhusudana's own paraphrase-level comment, or entirely absent, the verse still does real work without invented doctrinal weight: it is the moment Arjuna turns his general grief into a specific, answerable objection about sin and lawful killing.
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 comment on this verse is folded into his treatment of 1.26 through 1.47 as one passage, given fully at 1.26: Arjuna's grief, this line's specific refusal included, is read as the visible mark of a great-souled, supremely righteous man breaking under love and the fear of sin, not a clouded judgment 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's argument about lawful aggressors and inherited sin in his own words; any extension of his teaching on the soul's dependence to this line would be speculative and is not offered as his position.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's comment is folded into his treatment of 1.35 through 1.44, given fully at 1.35: sin itself is named the real doer in the slaying of assailants, a failure to see the fault in destroying one's own family through greed. Read forward, this frames Arjuna's joylessness and his fear of sin as two faces of one contracted seeing, though this is an extension of his stated words at 1.35, not fresh composition for this line.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Set apart from doctrinal school-building, what can be noticed plainly in the surviving material is the mechanism Arjuna names: a label that would normally excuse an act, deadly aggressor, does not by itself settle whether the act stains the one who performs it. The verse works as a case study in how a legal exception and a moral cost can both be true at once.
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
Sit for a moment with the shape of Arjuna's refusal rather than its verdict. He does not deny that these men have wronged him; he denies that the label 'aggressor' settles, by itself, what the deed will do to him. Notice, the next time a permission or an exception seems to clear your own path, whether it actually answers the question you are really asking, or only answers a narrower one standing next to it.
Before you let a permission or an exception settle a question for you, pause and ask whether it has actually answered the question you meant to ask, or only a narrower one standing beside 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
rjuna's first claim is that killing the sons of Dhritarashtra would bring no real joy, even granting that they are wrongdoers. He has, in effect, been told that destroying the wicked Kauravas should gladden him, and he flatly denies it: these are his own people, and their deaths cannot be a happiness, whatever the case against them.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
His second and weightier claim is that the killing would load sin onto the killers regardless of the victims' standing. Joy is absent and sin is present, so the act stands doubly refused. This is the verse's real center of gravity, more than the denial of pleasure that precedes it.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Arjuna names the Kauravas atatayins, deadly aggressors, and concedes the category the law of statecraft would use to excuse killing them without fault, then refuses the conclusion anyway: naming them aggressors does not, for him, clear the deed of its sin.
Three of the six acaryas surveyed here leave no independent word on this exact line: Shankara's extant commentary does not reach it, Madhva's begins only at 2.11, and both Ramanuja and Abhinavagupta fold this verse into a wider passage whose full remark is given at its opening verse rather than developed fresh here.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Where the surviving material is thin, as with Sridhara and Madhusudana's own paraphrase-level comment, or entirely absent, the verse still does real work without invented doctrinal weight: it is the moment Arjuna turns his general grief into a specific, answerable objection about sin and lawful killing.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
No comment from Shankara survives for this verse; his extant commentary does not treat it. What can honestly stand under the Advaita heading here is only Madhusudana's close paraphrase, that no joy and only sin would follow from the killing, without the fuller apparatus of argument his school builds on other verses.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's comment on this verse is folded into his treatment of 1.26 through 1.47 as one passage, given fully at 1.26: Arjuna's grief, this line's specific refusal included, is read as the visible mark of a great-souled, supremely righteous man breaking under love and the fear of sin, not a clouded judgment 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's argument about lawful aggressors and inherited sin in his own words; any extension of his teaching on the soul's dependence to this line would be speculative and is not offered as his position.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's comment is folded into his treatment of 1.35 through 1.44, given fully at 1.35: sin itself is named the real doer in the slaying of assailants, a failure to see the fault in destroying one's own family through greed. Read forward, this frames Arjuna's joylessness and his fear of sin as two faces of one contracted seeing, though this is an extension of his stated words at 1.35, not fresh composition for this line.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
The one line that survives from Sridhara here stays with plain restatement: killing the sons of Dhritarashtra brings no joy, only sin. No further argument about the atatayin exception, or about why lawful killing still stains, is offered in what remains of his comment, and this entry does not supply one on his behalf.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Set apart from doctrinal school-building, what can be noticed plainly in the surviving material is the mechanism Arjuna names: a label that would normally excuse an act, deadly aggressor, does not by itself settle whether the act stains the one who performs it. The verse works as a case study in how a legal exception and a moral cost can both be true at once.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If the Kauravas really are deadly aggressors who tried to burn, poison, and rob Arjuna's family, why should killing them be a sin at all rather than simple justice?
Arjuna himself grants the objection rather than dodging it. The rule that a deadly aggressor may be struck down without fault to the slayer is real, and he does not pretend otherwise; the concession is built into his own words, not something a commentator has to supply for him.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
But he treats a narrow legal permission and a full moral clearance as two different things. Even granting the label fits and the lawful exception applies, he still names sin as the outcome, which shows he is weighing something the bare category of 'aggressor' does not, on its own, resolve.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
What weighs on him past the legal question is that these aggressors are also kin, teachers, and people he would grieve regardless of what the law permits. The verse's honest gaps here, where three of the six voices gathered leave no independent word, are themselves part of the record: this is Arjuna's own reasoning, offered before Krishna has answered it at all.
Contemplation
Sit for a moment with the shape of Arjuna's refusal rather than its verdict. He does not deny that these men have wronged him; he denies that the label 'aggressor' settles, by itself, what the deed will do to him. Notice, the next time a permission or an exception seems to clear your own path, whether it actually answers the question you are really asking, or only answers a narrower one standing next to it.
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.