Gita 01.17 – Weapons are warrior’s ornaments

Hare Krishna The warriors on the side of the Pandavas are being listed for a second time although not exactly the same warriors names are applicated but more or less similar are the names first the names were listed when Duryodhana was comparing the relative strengths of the two sides and now it is when the warriors are blowing their conches so first Nishmabhru is conch shell and then other Kaurava warriors blew and then the scene shifted from the 14th wars onwards to the Pandava warriors and here after describing the Pandavas who blew their conches verse 15 described Krishna and Arjuna blowing their conches verse 16 described Yudhishthir and Yudhishthir and Nakula and Sahadeva of course verse 15 also described Bhima and so now it is going on to the other warriors so the great archer the king of Kashi now in those times often the kings if they were especially kings of famous kingdoms they would be known primarily by the kingdom and the individual name was often subordinated to the kingdom's name so in some places the name will be emphasized for example king of Madri, king of Madras Shalya but sometimes he is referred to just as the Madra king so like that here rather than giving the specific name Kashistha he is described as the king of Kashi and his Parameshwara his skill is described as being extremely powerful archer now the Parameshwara here is not a literal supervative it is not that he was the greatest archer it is a generic superlative the greatest archer we know was Arjuna and there were others also like Bhishma, Drona, Karna who were powerful and Shalya king and the Kashi king was definitely not in their league but still he was a formidable warrior in his own right and so Parameshwara is more of a generic superlative than a specific superlative that means he was as compared to the general level of warriors he was extraordinary but because the Kurukshetra war involved an assembly of many extraordinary warriors so within that he may not have been Parameshwara but he was otherwise extraordinary Shikhandi as we know was another of the sons of Drupada he had been born as a female Shikhandini and had been converted into a male and he was assigned to be the cause of the death of Bhishma he was born from he was actually the Ramzan Amba who had reincarnated feeling that she had been ruined in her previous life by Bhishma and he wanted to take her away Shikhandini or Shikhandi wanted to take her away so Shikhandi Shikhandi also blew his conch shell along with that Dhrishtadyumna Virata's job so Dhrishtadyumna of course was the commander of the Pandavas and he is actually the first warrior mentioned on the Pandava side in the Bhagavad Gita he is when Duryodhana starts speaking he is the first warrior that he refers to and Dhrishtadyumna has been this time to be the cause of the death of Drona so Dhrishtadyumna Virata's job Virata was of course an elderly monarch he was also a Maharatha he was also the commander of one of the divisions of the Pandavas and Satyaki Satyaki as we discussed earlier was a student of disciple of Bhima and also a student of Arjuna and Satyaki fought heroically on many occasions defeating Duryodhana at one particular point in a narrow fight and also he especially assisted Arjuna on the 14th day and Arjuna penetrated into the Kaurava rank in order to avenge the death of Abhimanyu by killing Jayadratha now so this word is a compound word and its sandhi vigraha it can be separated in two words and accordingly the meanings will vary that is how it is translated by Sri Prabhupada is undefeated so he was a formidable warrior Satyaki and he had a reputation of being undefeatable that is indicated by the other sandhi vigraha means to be decorated is bow so he was decorated by a bow in different occasions what is considered decoration will vary generally we think of ornaments and things like that as decorations they are true especially for people who are dressing themselves for artistic beauty or aesthetic beauty in a particular conventional sense but when somebody is skilled in a particular field then normally that person's tools of that expert skill are considered to be the decorations so if you see champion batsman say then generally that batsman will be seen with a bat and that bat would be like the decoration of that batsman if a champion golfer is there often that golfer will be depicted with a golf stick a champion chess player will be maybe shown in front of a chess board so like that a great warrior is considered a decorator and when he is with the paraphernalia which is used for decoration which is used by him in his particular skill area of expertise so for satyaki cha parajita the bow is his decoration and this way the pandava warriors responded to the challenge which the kauravas had issued by blowing their conch shells they also responded by blowing their conch shells again so in one sense every kshatriya's blowing of a conch shell indicated his personality his virility his vigor to engage in battle of skills battle of strengths wherein as they say in james let the better man prevail so they were signaling the sign signaling the start of a competition of a confrontation and they were actually celebrating this beginning by blowing their conch shells thank you.