Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Bhīṣma · 30 of 50
30. Arjuna will not fight
Bhīṣma (भीष्म)
Arjuna asks Kṛṣṇa to draw the chariot into the middle, so he can see whom he is about to fight. He sees teachers, a grandfather, cousins, the sons of a blind uncle. The bow slips. He says he would rather beg than win a kingdom by this. He sits down. The refusal is not cowardice inside the poem. It is a horror that has finally become stronger than training.
Kṛṣṇa speaks. The speech is the Bhagvad Gītā, eighteen short chapters, and it is already sat on its own shelf, one verse at a time. This page does not repeat it and does not summarize it into a slogan. The hour is what the chronicle needs. A man who can win has refused to fight, and the god who is his charioteer answers him there, between the two armies, with the horses still.
When the speech is over Arjuna takes the bow up. The war, which had paused for a teaching, begins. Nothing in the next seventeen days is clean enough to be an illustration of the teaching. The poem knows that. It puts the highest speech at the start, and then it lets the war fail the speech, day after day, so that a reader cannot pretend the Gītā was a blessing laid over a tidy victory.
नेपालीमा
अर्जुनले कृष्णलाई रथ बीचमा लैजान भने। उनले गुरु, हजुरबुबा, दाजुभाइ देखे। धनु खस्यो। उनले यसरी राज्य जित्नुभन्दा भिख माग्नु राम्रो भने। बसे। कृष्णले बोल्नुभयो। त्यो भाषण भगवद्गीता हो, अठार अध्याय, आफ्नै खण्डमा एकपछि अर्को गरी श्लोक प्रस्तुत गरिएको। यो पृष्ठले दोहोर्याउँदैन, र नारामा खुम्च्याउँदैन। भाषण सकिएपछि अर्जुनले धनु उठाए। अर्को सत्र दिन शिक्षाको सफा उदाहरण होइनन्। कविताले सबैभन्दा अग्लो कुरा सुरुमा राख्छ, अनि युद्धलाई दिनदिनै त्यो कुराबाट चुक्न दिन्छ।