2.22 Worn-out clothes Krishna speaks
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही
vāsānsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya
navāni gṛihṇāti naro ’parāṇi
tathā śharīrāṇi vihāya jīrṇānya
nyāni sanyāti navāni dehī
As a person lays aside worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, so the embodied one lays aside worn-out bodies and takes up others.
Explanation
Worn-out clothes.
Of all the images available, the Gita picks laundry.
The plainness is doing work. A grander metaphor would make death solemn; this one makes it domestic and slightly boring, which is a much stranger thing to say to a man weeping on a battlefield.
Going further
Word by word
- vāsānsi
- garments
- jīrṇāni
- worn-out
- yathā
- as
- vihāya
- sheds
- navāni
- new
- gṛihṇāti
- accepts
- naraḥ
- a person
- aparāṇi
- others
- tathā
- likewise
- śharīrāṇi
- bodies
- vihāya
- casting off
- jirṇāni
- worn-out
- anyāni
- other
- sanyāti
- enters
- navāni
- new
- dehī
- the embodied soul
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Worn-out clothes. Of all the images available, the Gita picks laundry.
That plainness is doing work. A grander metaphor would invite awe, and awe is not what Arjuna needs — he needs the terror scaled down to something domestic enough to hold. You have taken off a shirt you had worn to death. It was not a catastrophe.