Gita 01.18 – The Pandavas’ illustrious sons gallantly serve their parents

Hare Krishna Drupada Sarvashah Prithvi Prithak Drupada Drupada here Sanjay narrator of the Bhagavad Gita is describing the response of the Pandava warriors to the Kauravas Kauravas blowing of conscious and he is describing Pandavas response to the response of the other prominent warriors so Drupada Drupada Sarvashah Prithvi so Drupada so there is a father and his grandsons are described Drupada his daughter had got the name from him this is the Pandavas were named after their father Pandu similarly Draupadi was named after her father so sometimes the sons would be named after their fathers and sometimes the daughters would be named after their fathers so in this case Draupadi was named after her father it indicated her love her father's love for her and her sons were Draupadeya sure Draupadeya this refers to the five sons of the Pandavas through Draupadi and these five sons were actually themselves formidable warriors also although of course they were not in the same class as the Pandavas the Pandavas were divinely empowered but they too were significant warriors and they are mentioned over here although they were young they had joined the Pandavas cause and their parents cause and they were fighting vigorously just like Abhimanyu was young so too were Draupadi's sons young now of course Draupadi is the wife of all the five Pandavas so she had sons through all of them one one son to each of them and they were referred to as the Draupadeyas now these five sons were actually brutally killed by Ashwatthama while they were sleeping on the 18th night in the Saptik Parva and they were the Pandavas were just thus left in one sense airless at least through their primary queen Draupadi these five Draupadeyas were there was Prativindhya who was the son of Draupadi with Yudhishthira Sutasoma was the son of Draupadi through Bhima then Shrutakarma was her son through Arjuna then Shatanika was her son through Nakula and Shrutasena was her son through Sahadeva so Prativindhya, Sutasoma, Shrutakarma, Shatanika and Shrutasena these were the five sons Draupada, Draupada, Draupadeyas and then Sarvashaha Prithvipate Prithvipate Lords of the Earth now the word Prithvi has multiple meanings nowadays it is used often it is used to refer to the earth planet and the earth has one of the celestial objects but the word Prithvi also refers to one of the elements so one of the seven elements is Prithvi and Prithvi also refers to land so these were not kings of the whole world so it is not referring to Prithvi as a entire planet rather it is referring to Prithvi as the land is obviously not referring to the elements the ultimate lord of all the elements is Krishna but here it is referring to one particular manifestation of the earth element, one particular part of the earth planet that is the kingdom of these particular kings the area of jurisdiction of those kings now the Pandavas sons may not have been kings in their own rights right now they were princes but as princes they shared in the power and glory of their parents so in that sense because they belong to the royal family so in that generic inclusive sense they are also Prithvipati, they are also like kings and although ultimately the Prithvipati is Krishna but functionally in this world the Mahipati or Prithvipati are the words which are used to describe kings because they had operational control during their reigns and then Saubhadrasya Mahabahu so the son of Subhadra is singled out over here among the various members of the younger generation of Pandavas now Iravan was the son of Arjuna who was also there in the battlefield and of course Bhima's formidable son Ghatotkach was also there and Ghatotkach especially exhibited his might on the 14th night when he fought so ferociously that Karna and the Kauravas were practically fleeing in terror and Karna was forced to use his Shaktiastra which he had reserved for Arjuna he had to use it because he realized that without this I will not be able to check Ghatotkach in order to speak of eventually killing Arjuna with this weapon I may not even live till that time to kill Arjuna so when the word churn refers to the other sons such as Ghatotkach Saubhadrashch Mahabahu Saubhadra refers to the son of Subhadra that is Abhimanyu now among the sons of Pandavas Abhimanyu and Ghatotkach were especially famous they both fought fiercely now Ghatotkach had grown up so much that because he was a Rakshasa he could grow up fast so he actually had his own son also fighting in the war and Anjani Parva was killed by Ashwathama and Ghatotkach was enraged and Ghatotkach fought and wounded Ashwathama in return and of course Ghatotkach also became wounded because of the power of Ashwathama and both the warriors had to retreat from the battlefield Ghatotkach also at one time defeated Bhima sorry defeated Duryodhana the arch rival of Bhima and it was only because of Bhima's vow that Ghatotkach spared Duryodhana and that was this defeat was especially intolerable for Duryodhana because Duryodhana thought that I can easily defeat the father and here I have been defeated by the son so Ghatotkach also did formidable deeds and so he was outstanding on the first day itself he excelled by checking the unstoppable Bhishma and within a few days he was deemed as one of the foremost warriors on the Pandava side and Dronacharyam said of Chakravyuha he too had told that Duryodhana that either we will capture Yudhishthir or we will entrap one formidable warrior from the Pandava side and that formidable warrior who was entrapped was Abhimanyu so the point is that although he was young he is also considered to be a formidable warrior one of the foremost warriors on the Pandava side and so he is mentioned separately in a separate line although he was young in age his strength was formidable his strength was not so much in wrestling as was Siddhima's but it was in the same area as was his father's that was in archery, expert archery and all these warriors Shankham Prathak Prathak they all had their conches and they blew their conches individually so this list is indicative, it is not exhaustive there are warriors like this and they all blew their conches this doesn't claim that it exhausts the list of all the warriors but it just indicates the prominent among the warriors on the Pandava side who responded to the Kauravas blowing of the conches by blowing their own conches and in that way they signaled the beginning of the hostilities the war had started off in dead earnest that was what was indicated by the blowing of these shells conches, thank you.