Gita 01.26 – The brutality of the imminent fratricide sinks in

Thank you Krishna has taken Arjuna's chariot in the middle between two armies and has asked Arjuna see Parthapashyatan as was said in the previous verse so now Patraapashyat Krishna, Arjuna is seeing and what does he see over there? Itanpartha he sees a whole variety of relatives from various generations and this actually vision of Arjuna drives home irreversibly undeniably heart wrenchingly the reality that this is really a brutal fratricidal war in which many relatives over many generations are going to fight with each other so Pitranatha Pitamaha Pitamaha so Pitamaha normally refers to Bhishma it can also refer to Bhishma over here but then Bhishma has already been referred to in the previous verse so Bhishmadrona Pramuktha came over there it can refer to Bhishma and it can also refer to Somadatta so there were actually three generations elder to Arjuna who were fighting Balhika, his son was Somadatta and his son was Bhurishrava and all three were so Bhurishrava was actually in the generation of Arjuna's father and this Balhika was actually the elder brother of Shantanu and although he was the crown prince he decided to devote his life to try to expand the Kuru dynasty by conquering Balha so that is what is present in modern day Afghanistan and he was so caught up in that campaign that he felt that he would not be able to do the royal responsibility of administering the whole kingdom and that's why Shantanu became the king so he was actually in one sense older than the Pitamaha also because Bhishma Pitamaha's grandfather is the son of Shantanu whereas Balhika was the uncle of Shantanu elder brother of Shantanu and uncle of Bhishma so he was one generation older than even Bhishma so we could say not just a grandfather but a great grandfather so they are generically referred to as Pitamaha over there so in Bhishma's generation there was also the son of Balhika whose name is Somadatta so he also comes in the category of grandfather, Pitamaha so both son and father Somadatta and Balhika Pitamaha and Pitral in that generation of course his father is not there Pandu has passed away long ago and the Kauravas father Dhritarashtra being blind is not there in the fight so Pitral doesn't refer to any father directly it refers to those in the father's generation so there there is Bhurishrava so Bhurishrava is the son of Somadatta the grandson of Balhika and he is one of the commanders in the Kaurava army one of the eleven commanders of the Akshahunis so actually Balhika was killed by Bhima and Somadatta and Bhurishrava were killed by Satyaki Somadatta was killed by Satyaki in a one to one combat and Bhurishrava was wounded Bhurishrava while he was attacking and killing an unarmed wounded fallen unconscious Satyaki his arm was locked off with an arrow by Arjuna and then when Bhurishrava went into a mystic trance at that time Satyaki came to consciousness and killed him so the way Bhurishrava tried to kill Satyaki while unarmed and unconscious that is the way he ended up being killed by Satyaki so the point is Pitranatha Pitamahan and then there are also Acharyan Matulan Bratran so Acharyan can refer to Drona but it can also refer to Kripa Drona is mentioned in Bhishma Dronapramukta so here the emphasis is on Kripa who is also a teacher both of them used to teach the Pandavas although of course Drona was the most prominent teacher Kripa was an assistant teacher and in Matulan Matulan refers to maternal uncles there were two over there on the Pandavas side there was Shalya sorry both were on the Kauravas side but one was directly related to the Pandavas and the other was indirectly related through the Kauravas so Shalya had intended to come on the Pandavas side but Duryodhana tricked him by offering such hospitality that Shalya became very pleased and said that whoever has offered such hospitality I will give my life to him and Duryodhana appeared over there and he said oh it is I who arranged these arrangements so please fight on my behalf and Shalya realised he had been tricked but he had given his word and he was bound by his word so Shalya was the brother of Madri who was the step mother of Arjuna who is the mother of Nakula and Sahadeva so being her brother Shalya was like a maternal uncle for Arjuna similarly on the other side a mother like figure for him was Gandhari she was in that generation of a mother and her brother was Shakuni so Matulan refers to Shakuni then Bratran, brothers of course refer to all the hundred Kauravas are there and the five Pandavas are there so you can see the brothers about to fight Putran refers to now on the Kaurava side there is Duryodhana has married and he has got a son Lakshmana and significantly by that time Lakshmana had also married and he also had sons Putran, Pautran and then Sakhim Satha Sakhim refers to friends so who were these friends there are two similar words here Sakhims and then the next line there is Surudas so Sakhims means those who were not exactly friends but contemporaries so intimacy of friendship is conveyed by Surudas those who were actually his well wishers Sakhims were people like Jayadratha and Ashwathama whoever is contemporaries in age as well as in as well as in education both of them had also been educated in Drona's Gurukul and they had become some nominal level of friends then Swashuran Swashuran refers to father's-in-law Sasur Swashuran so this refers to Drupada the last line is so he is referring not just to the opponents he is seeing on the opposite side but he is also seeing those on his side because Arjuna's primary concern is not just to assess the strength of his opponents that he has already assessed but he wants to see the reality of the brutal war that is going to take place so he sees on his side father-in-law Drupada is there now so Vidhra's father Vasudev did not fight because the Yadavas decided to be neutral following what Balram did and so Swashuran so one of his wives Drupada, Draupadi's father was there then there is of course Virat, Virat is not exactly his father-in-law he is actually his son's father-in-law Abhimanyu was married to Uttara and Uttara's father was Virata so that kind of relationship is also there although not exactly the same way and then there is Surudas chai Surudha means well-wishers so actually this refers to Krutavarma Krutavarma and Arjuna were close friends Krutavarma was Yadava commander in fact he was the commander of Yadava army and when the Yadava army was given to given to the Kauravas by Krishna at that time Duryodhana also requested the Yadava commander Krutavarma to come in his side and although Krutavarma knew that the Pandavas cause but as a commander after being requested by Duryodhana and because his army had been handed over to the Kauravas so he had to fight on that side so Surudas, you know they were well-wishers Krutavarma did not actually wish any harm to the Pandavas so he sees all of them so in this way we see that actually this was a brutal war in which relatives over many generations were going to fight and this reality will sink into Arjuna and that will overwhelm him emotionally and how he becomes overwhelmed is depicted in the subsequent verses Thank you.