Sanskrit
यद्यद्विभूतिमत्सत्त्वं श्रीमदूर्जितमेव वा । तत्तदेवावगच्छ त्वं मम तेजोंऽशसम्भवम् ॥ ४१ ॥
yad yad vibhūtimat sattvaṃ śrīmad ūrjitam eva vā tat tad evāvagaccha tvaṃ mama tejo'ṃśasambhavam
Translation
Whatsoever is glorious, good, beautiful, and mighty, understand thou that to go forth from a fragment of My splendour.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Generalizes the whole vibhuti teaching into a single criterion: anything glorious, beautiful, or mighty, wherever found, springs from a fragment of Krishna’s splendor. This effectively hands Arjuna a rule for extending the list indefinitely on his own — no further named example from Krishna is required, any encountered instance of glory or beauty already qualifies. Tejo-‘ṃśa-sambhavam — “arisen from a fragment of [My] splendour” — is the portable rule: wherever you meet the glorious, the beautiful, the mighty, you have met a shard of Krishna. The list can now grow on its own.
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Word by word
- yad yad vibhūtimat sattvaṃयद् यद् विभूतिमत् सत्त्वं
- whatever being has glory (yat + yat + vibhūti-mat + sattvam)
- śrīmad ūrjitam eva vāश्रीमद् ऊर्जितं एव वा
- is beautiful or mighty (śrī-mat + ūrjitam + eva + vā)
- tat tad evāvagaccha tvaṃतत् तद् एवावगच्छ त्वं
- know that, you (tat + tat + eva + avagaccha + tvam)
- mama tejo'ṃśasambhavamमम तेजोऽंशसंभवं
- as sprung from a fragment of My splendour (mama + tejaḥ-aṃśa-sambhavam)
Commentary
Site Commentary
The three qualifiers — glorious, beautiful, mighty — are joined by vā, “or,” not “and.” Something doesn’t need all three at once to qualify as a fragment of Krishna’s splendor; excelling in any single one of the three is sufficient. The bar is lower than a first reading suggests, which matters for how far the rule Arjuna is being handed actually extends.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Site Commentary — Second Reading
The word doing the real work is aṃśa — fragment. Whatever glory or beauty you encounter is being described here as already derivative, a piece breaking off from somewhere else, before you’ve even had a chance to treat it as somebody’s private possession. That undercuts the usual reflex toward someone else’s excellence — envy assumes the thing is theirs alone to have gotten; this verse treats it as evidence of a shared source showing up in one particular place.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
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Lessons
Personal
- You don't need to excel in every dimension of a thing to call it genuinely excellent — meeting one criterion fully can be enough. Don't hold yourself, or what you value, to an unnecessarily conjunctive standard that no real thing could ever satisfy.
Professional
- When defining what counts as a strong result for your team, check whether you're silently requiring several criteria at once when excelling on any one was actually meant to qualify — an unnecessary 'and' quietly raises the bar past what was intended.
Family & Social
- When judging whether a shared moment or effort with family 'counted,' don't require it to check every box at once — meeting even one criterion of care fully, attention, presence, or effort, can be enough on its own.
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