Verse 2.19
य एनं वेत्ति हन्तारं यश्चैनं मन्यते हतम् ।
उभौ तौ न विजानीतो नायं हन्ति न हन्यते ॥
Transliteration
ya enaṃ vetti hantāraṃ yaścainaṃ manyate hatam |
ubhau tau na vijānīto nāyaṃ hanti na hanyate ||
By Sanskrit System · Machine draft · @indic-transliteration/sanscript 1.3.3
Translation
He who takes the Self to be the slayer and he who thinks It is slain, neither of them ï1knowsï1. It slays not, nor is It slain.
From the owner's sheet · +1 more
One who thinks this one a slayer, and one who thinks it slain, both fail to understand. It does not slay, and it is not slain.
By Sanskrit System · Machine draft · claude-opus-5-5 · 2026-11-08 · +1 more
Word by word
By Sanskrit System · Machine draft · claude-opus-5-5 · 2026-11-08
Explanation
Krishna addresses the two ways of thinking that trouble Arjuna: seeing someone as a killer and seeing someone as killed. Both, he says, misunderstand the self, which neither kills nor is killed. The verse does not claim that bodies are unharmed or that actions have no consequences; later the Gita gives careful attention to how one should act. Its point is that the deepest identity of a person stands outside the event of killing. Arjuna's horror rests on treating the self as something a weapon could reach.
By Sanskrit System · Machine draft · claude-opus-5-5 · 2026-11-08