Arjuna's Dejection

This is the beginning of another book. Unfortunately, I hadn't read these types of books in English for a long time, so I feel pretty lost.

What I took from this first chapter was that Dudyodhana said the names of all the people fighting for him, and said that all these people where in the war because of him, so they had to protect Brishma very good. Then they explained how everyone blew their conches in turn, and made the king happy.

Arjuna, who I guess is one of the warriors, saw something in the other people and asked if his chariot could be stopped. He started talking about what he thought of the other army:

"Arjuna saw them standing there:
fathers, grandfathers, teachers,
uncles, brothers, sons,
grandsons, and friends."

He said how he found no happiness in killing his kinsmen in battle, even if it was for "kingship, delight, and pleasure." He said that he wouldn't kill anyone and that if he himself was killed, it would be his reward. He laid down his bow and arrow.

Something that I really liked that I think inspired me and really made me think was this:


"When the family is ruined,
the timeless laws of family duty
perish; and when duty is lost,
chaos overwhelms the family.

In overwhelming chaos, Krishna,
women of the family are corrupted;
and when women are corrupted,
disorder is born in society."


I really liked this, and I think that it is very true, that while killing soldiers in war, you are also corrupting society, in an indirect way.

Sometimes you can know how old a book is by how it is written, but also by what happens in it. Most of the books written in the same era as the Bhagavad-Gita are about war. Because the first one of those that I really read was the Iliad, now all of the war books remind me of it, so this one does too. It's a little like the Iliad because of the war-is-what-drives-our-society view, but it is different in the fact that in this one someone doesn't want to fight, and in the Iliad they all fought.

For now, I like this book!