Sanskrit
तत्क्षेत्रं यच्च यादृक् च यद्विकारि यतश्च यत् । स च यो यत्प्रभावश्च तत्समासेन मे शृणु ॥
tat kṣetraṃ yac ca yādṛk ca yad vikāri yataś ca yat sa ca yo yat prabhāvaś ca tat samāsena me śṛṇu
Translation
What that Field is and of what nature, how modified, and whence it is, and what He is and what His powers, hear that now briefly from Me.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
A pure transition verse, but its structure previews the rest of the chapter’s method: describe the field concretely (verses 5-7), then describe the knower’s qualities (verses 8-12), then describe the object of knowledge itself (verses 13-18). Calling the coming description “brief” (samasena) is a recurring hedge whenever Krishna is about to compress a large body of doctrine — see also verse 5’s nod to the rishis who have “sung in manifold ways” what he’s about to summarize in a handful of verses. A pure transition, but its structure previews the method: describe the field (BG 13.5–BG 13.7), then the knower’s marks (BG 13.8–BG 13.12), then the object of knowledge (BG 13.13–BG 13.18). Samāsena, “in brief,” is the Gita’s recurring hedge before compressing a large body of doctrine.
Study deeper
Word by word
- tat kṣetraṃ yac ca yādṛk caतत् क्षेत्रं यच् च यादृक् च
- what that field is, and of what kind (tat + kṣetram + yat + ca + yādṛk + ca)
- yad vikāri yataś ca yatयद् विकारि यतश् च यत्
- what its modifications are, and from what, and which (yat + vikāri + yataḥ + ca + yat)
- sa ca yo yat prabhāvaś caस च यो यत् प्रभावश् च
- and who he [the knower] is, and what his powers (saḥ + ca + yaḥ + yat + prabhāvaḥ + ca)
- tat samāsena me śṛṇuतत् समासेन मे शृणु
- that hear from Me in brief (tat + samāsena + me + śṛṇu)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Verse 4 doesn’t argue for anything — it’s pure table of contents, telling Arjuna what’s coming and asking him only to listen. Compare that to verse 2’s answer or verse 3’s claim, both of which do actual definitional or argumentative work; a chapter this dense in content still needs a verse whose entire job is orientation, so the reader knows where the next fourteen verses are headed before wading in.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Before working through something genuinely dense — a long document, a new discipline — give yourself one deliberate orientation pass that does no work except mapping what's coming; don't expect it to convince or teach you anything, only to tell you where you're headed.
Professional
- Open a long technical proposal or a dense onboarding session with an explicit 'here's what I'm about to cover and in what order' — its only job is orientation, not persuasion, and skipping it because it feels like it says nothing costs your audience more than it saves you.
Family & Social
- Before a long, difficult family conversation — inheritance, a health decision — start by naming what you're about to cover and in what order; that orientation isn't the hard conversation itself, but skipping it leaves people bracing for the wrong thing.
Ask yourself
A few ways to take this verse past reading. Ticks and the note stay in this browser.