Who is who in the Gita
Arjuna
Pandava prince, warrior, student of Drona, beloved companion of Krishna.
Arjuna is one of the four who actually speak in the Gita. How many verses, and where they turn →
Who is Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita?
Pandava prince, warrior, student of Drona, beloved companion of Krishna. He is the human centre of the Gita. His movement is from confident readiness, to seeing relationships, to collapse, to questioning, to discipleship, to direct vision, and finally to restored clarity and chosen action.
Hansi Gita Bhawan Trust · The Gita for Life
Where this person stands in the house
Third of Pandu’s five sons, and the middle child of Kunti’s three. His father-in-law is Drupada; his teacher is Drona; the man he calls grandfather is Bhishma, who is strictly his great-uncle, and the relation is real enough that the Gita gives him the word at 1.12. His son Abhimanyu is on this field. His wife Subhadra is Krishna’s sister. There is almost no one on either army he is not related to, which is the plain fact 1.26 is reporting when it says he saw fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons and friends in both armies.
Family and formation
Third Pandava, son of Kunti in the epic genealogy, brother of Yudhishthira, Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva; husband of Subhadra and father of Abhimanyu. He is Drona’s celebrated pupil and an accomplished warrior long before the Gita begins.
Why the crisis is serious
Arjuna is not discovering that war is unpleasant. He has come prepared to fight. His crisis begins when the opposing army ceases to appear as a military formation and becomes a field of grandfathers, teachers, cousins, friends and descendants. Chapter 1 therefore changes what he sees before Chapter 2 changes how he understands.
Transformation arc
1.20–27: asks to see. 1.28–47: collapses under the consequences he foresees. 2.7: becomes a disciple. Chapters 3–17: repeatedly questions, objects and asks for clarification. Chapter 11: asks to see the cosmic form. 18.63: is given room to reflect. 18.73: says his delusion has gone and his memory/understanding is restored.
In the text
What the Gita calls Arjuna
20 names, across 163 verses. Every reference below was checked against the Devanagari of the verse it cites, and the build fails if one of them stops matching.
पार्थ Pārtha42
Son of Pritha — Kunti’s birth name. The Gita’s commonest name for him.
1.25 · 1.26 · 2.3 · 2.21 · 2.32 · 2.39 · 2.42 · 2.55 · 2.72 · 3.16 · 3.22 · 3.23 · 4.11 · 4.33 · 6.40 · 7.1 · 7.10 · 8.8 · 8.14 · 8.19 · 8.22 · 8.27 · 9.13 · 9.32 · 10.24 · 11.5 · 11.9 · 12.7 · 16.4 · 16.6 · 17.26 · 17.28 · 18.6 · 18.30 · 18.31 · 18.32 · 18.33 · 18.34 · 18.35 · 18.72 · 18.74 · 18.78
अर्जुन Arjuna26
His own name: bright, clear, silver-white.
1.4 · 1.47 · 2.2 · 2.45 · 3.7 · 4.5 · 4.9 · 4.37 · 6.16 · 6.32 · 6.46 · 7.16 · 7.26 · 8.16 · 8.27 · 9.19 · 10.32 · 10.39 · 10.42 · 11.47 · 11.50 · 11.54 · 18.9 · 18.34 · 18.61 · 18.76
कौन्तेय Kaunteya25
Son of Kunti. The same mother as Partha, under her other name.
1.27 · 2.14 · 2.37 · 2.60 · 3.9 · 3.39 · 5.22 · 6.35 · 7.8 · 8.6 · 8.16 · 9.7 · 9.10 · 9.23 · 9.27 · 9.31 · 13.1 · 13.31 · 14.4 · 14.7 · 16.20 · 16.22 · 18.48 · 18.50 · 18.60
भारत Bhārata20
Descendant of Bharata — the dynasty, not the parents.
2.14 · 2.18 · 2.28 · 2.30 · 3.25 · 4.7 · 4.42 · 7.27 · 11.6 · 13.2 · 13.33 · 14.3 · 14.8 · 14.9 · 14.10 · 15.19 · 15.20 · 16.3 · 17.3 · 18.62
The same word names Dhritarashtra elsewhere in the Gita. How the two are told apart →
धनञ्जय Dhanañjaya11
Winner of wealth — earned by conquest, before the war.
1.15 · 2.48 · 2.49 · 4.41 · 7.7 · 9.9 · 10.37 · 11.14 · 12.9 · 18.29 · 18.72
महाबाहो Mahābāho11
Mighty-armed. Said to the man who has put his bow down.
2.26 · 2.68 · 3.28 · 3.43 · 5.3 · 5.6 · 6.35 · 7.5 · 10.1 · 14.5 · 18.13
The same word names Shri Krishna elsewhere in the Gita. How the two are told apart →
परन्तप Parantapa10
Scorcher of enemies.
2.3 · 2.9 · 4.2 · 4.5 · 4.33 · 7.27 · 9.3 · 10.40 · 11.54 · 18.41
पाण्डव Pāṇḍava8
Son of Pandu. Five men answer to it; all eight times the Gita uses it in the singular it means only him — five as an address, three as description.
भरतर्षभ Bharatarṣabha7
Bull of the Bharatas.
गुडाकेश Guḍākeśa4
Thick-haired; read traditionally as the one who has mastered sleep.
अनघ Anagha3
Without fault, unstained.
कुरुनन्दन Kurunandana3
Joy of the Kurus — said to a man about to fight Kurus.
भरतसत्तम Bharatasattama1
Best of the Bharatas.
भरतश्रेष्ठ Bharataśreṣṭha1
Finest of the Bharatas.
धनुर्धर Dhanurdhara1
Bearer of the bow. The last word about him in the Gita.
कुरुप्रवीर Kurupravīra1
Foremost hero of the Kurus.
कुरुसत्तम Kurusattama1
Best of the Kurus.
कुरुश्रेष्ठ Kuruśreṣṭha1
Finest of the Kurus.
पुरुषर्षभ Puruṣarṣabha1
Bull among men.
सव्यसाचिन् Savyasācin1
The left-handed archer — who draws with either hand.
Twenty names, and the two commonest — पार्थ forty-two times, कौन्तेय twenty-five — are both the name of his mother. The Gita names Arjuna as Kunti’s son sixty-seven times, and sixty-two of those are Krishna addressing him; the other five are Sanjaya describing him. By his own name, twenty-six. Whatever else is happening in this conversation, the text keeps returning him to where he came from.
The verse this presence makes hard
Bhagavad Gita 2.9
एवमुक्त्वा हृषीकेशं गुडाकेशः परन्तप ।
न योत्स्ये — “I will not fight” — and then, says Sanjaya, he fell silent. Everything else in the Bhagavad Gita is spoken into that silence. The verse is hard because it is a completed sentence: Arjuna is not asking a question here, he has made a decision and stopped talking, and seventeen chapters of teaching arrive as an answer to a man who has already finished speaking.
What this page will not say
The Trust does not call Arjuna’s condition anxiety, depression, a panic attack or a breakdown, and will not. Those are clinical words with clinical meanings, and using them here does two kinds of harm: it converts a moral crisis about killing kinsmen into a symptom to be managed, and it quietly implies that the Gita is a treatment. Arjuna gives his own account at 1.28–1.46 and it is an argument, with premises — the family will be destroyed, the women corrupted, the ancestral rites will fail. The Gita answers the argument. It does not prescribe.