Chapter 4 · Knowledge and the renunciation of action
Bhagavad Gita 4.7
Whenever dharma declines, I come.
Shri Bhagavan
यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत ।
अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥
yadā yadā hi dharmasya glānirbhavati bhārata / abhyutthānamadharmasya tadātmānaṁ sṛjāmyaham
Whenever dharma grows weak and what stands against dharma rises up, Bharata, at that time I send myself forth into the world.
हिंदी · जब-जब धर्म क्षीण होता है और अधर्म सिर उठाता है, भारत, तब-तब मैं स्वयं को प्रकट करता हूँ।
What it means
Whenever dharma declines, I come.
Whenever righteousness weakens and unrighteousness rises, Arjuna, I bring Myself into being.
This is the Trust’s own reading, written for this site. The verse above it is the text.
Where this verse stands
Ancient teaching and avatara
Chapter 44.1–9
Krishna places the yoga in a lineage; Arjuna asks about chronology; Krishna speaks of divine manifestation.
This verse belongs to the middle development of the movement.
Why divine manifestation is discussed
Krishna speaks of manifestation when dharma declines and adharma rises. The passage is theological, not merely motivational: it concerns divine relation to cosmic and moral order.
Read deeper · Read with 4.8–9, 7.24–26, 9.11 and 11.3–8.
Hansi Gita Bhawan Trust · The Gita for Life
Verses that share its vocabulary
Near it in the text’s own words.
- 4.8To protect those who are good, to put an end to those who do harm, and to set dharma firmly in place again, I come into being age after age.
- 9.31He soon becomes a person of dharma and reaches a peace that lasts. Know this for certain, Kaunteya: no devotee of mine is ever lost.
- 1.1Tell me, Sanjaya: gathered on the field of dharma, the field of the Kurus, eager to fight, what did my sons and the sons of Pandu do?
- 1.40When a family is destroyed, the ancient duties of that family perish with it; and when those duties are gone, lawlessness overtakes the whole family.
- 1.41Krishna, when lawlessness prevails, the women of the family are corrupted; and when the women are corrupted, Varshneya, the mixing of social orders follows.
- 1.43By these wrongs of the destroyers of a family, wrongs that bring about the mixing of social orders, the lasting duties of caste and of family are wiped out.
Chosen by shared uncommon vocabulary, weighted so that a rare word counts for far more than a common one. A reading aid, not a claim that these verses mean the same thing.
Common questions
What does Bhagavad Gita 4.7 mean?
Whenever dharma declines, I come. Whenever righteousness weakens and unrighteousness rises, Arjuna, I bring Myself into being.
Who speaks Bhagavad Gita 4.7?
Shri Bhagavan. The speaker is taken from the text’s own उवाच line as transcribed, not inferred from the verse number.