Sanskrit
य एनं वेत्ति हन्तारं यश्चैनं मन्यते हतम् । उभौ तौ न विजानीतो नायं हन्ति न हन्यते ॥
ya enaṃ vetti hantāraṃ yaś cainaṃ manyate hatam ubhau tau na vijānīto nāyaṃ hanti na hanyate
Translation
He who regardeth this as a slayer, and he who thinketh he is slain, both of them are ignorant. He slayeth not, nor is he slain.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
A near-quotation of a famous line from the Katha Upanishad (a Vedic text older than the Gita), doing double duty: it restates the immortality argument one more time in its sharpest form, and quietly signals that Krishna’s teaching here isn’t new revelation but a restatement of established Vedic wisdom Arjuna could, in principle, already know. Both errors are named as errors: thinking you can kill, and thinking you can be killed. That symmetry is what BG 2.21 exploits when it asks how such a person “slays or causes to slay” — the verse dismantles the category of killing on both ends at once.
Study deeper
Word by word
- ya enaṃ vetti hantāraṃय एनं वेत्ति हन्तारं
- one who knows this as a slayer (yaḥ + enam + vetti + hantāram)
- yaś cainaṃ manyate hatamयश् चैनं मन्यते हतं
- and one who thinks this slain (yaḥ + ca + enam + manyate + hatam)
- ubhau tauउभौ तौ
- both of them (ubhau + tau)
- na vijānītoन विजानीतो
- do not understand (na + vijānītaḥ)
- nāyaṃनायं
- this one does not (na + ayam)
- hantiहन्ति
- slay
- na hanyateन हन्यते
- nor is slain (na + hanyate)
Commentary
Site Commentary
The verse corrects two mirror-image errors, not one. Arjuna has been worried only about the slayer’s side of the equation — what it means for him to kill; this verse names the exact same confusion in imagining oneself as the one slain. Both errors share a root, mistaking the self for something that can occupy the position of agent or victim in an act of destruction at all.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Notice when you're only examining your own role in a painful situation — the guilt of having caused harm, say — while ignoring the mirror-image confusion in how you're framing the other side. Often both framings share the same underlying mistake.
Professional
- When investigating an incident, don't only interrogate the actions of whoever triggered it — check whether the 'victim' side of the system (the service that went down, the team that got paged) is being framed just as confusedly. Symmetric errors often share one root cause.
Family & Social
- In a conflict, don't only question your own part as the one who caused harm — check whether you're also misreading the other person's part just as badly. The two distortions frequently come from the same underlying misunderstanding.
Ask yourself
A few ways to take this verse past reading. Ticks and the note stay in this browser.