Sanskrit
आचार्याः पितरः पुत्रास्तथैव च पितामहाः । मातुलाः श्वशुराः पौत्राः श्यालाः सम्बन्धिनस्तथा ॥
ācāryāḥ pitaraḥ putrās tathaiva ca pitāmahāḥ mātulāḥ śvaśurāḥ pautrāḥ śyālāḥ sambandhinas tathā
Translation
Teachers, fathers, sons, as well as grandfathers, mother's brothers, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, and other relatives.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Arjuna repeats, now in his own argumentative voice, the same census Sanjaya narrated back in verses 26–27. The repetition is the point: this isn’t new information, it’s Arjuna insisting on it out loud, converting what he saw into the explicit premise of the argument he’s building.
Study deeper
Word by word
- ācāryāḥआचार्याः
- teachers
- pitaraḥपितरः
- fathers
- putrāsपुत्रास्
- sons
- tathaiva caतथैव च
- and likewise
- pitāmahāḥपितामहाः
- grandfathers
- mātulāḥमातुलाः
- maternal uncles
- śvaśurāḥश्वशुराः
- fathers-in-law
- pautrāḥपौत्राः
- grandsons
- śyālāḥश्यालाः
- brothers-in-law
- sambandhinas tathāसंबन्धिनस् तथा
- and kinsmen by marriage
Commentary
Site Commentary
Read on its own, this verse is barely a sentence — just a list of relations with no independent verb, borrowing its grammar from what precedes it. Arjuna doesn’t construct a new clause here, he only enumerates; the syntax itself seems to run out of the capacity to argue and can only name.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When you're overwhelmed, notice if your thinking has dropped from full reasoning into just listing facts over and over — that's not weakness, it's often what a mind does under real strain, and naming it as such can help you get back to actual thinking.
Professional
- If you catch a colleague under pressure only repeating facts rather than reasoning through them, recognize that as a sign of overload, not stubbornness — they may need space to recover before they can argue again, not more pushback.
Family & Social
- If someone in your family keeps repeating the same list of grievances rather than building toward a resolution, recognize that repetition itself as distress — they may not be ready to reason yet, only to be heard naming what's wrong.
Ask yourself
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