I offer my salutation to Yamunacarya by meditation on whose (holy) feet I have all my blemishes destroyed and attained to the status of (authentic) existence. THE ADVENT OF THE GĪTA

He (Narayana) is the Consort of Shri; He is wholly auspicious and is antagonistic to all that is evil; His essential nature consists purely of infinitude, knowledge and bliss, and thereby He stands distinguished by His superiority to all other entities. He is the great ocean of countless auspicious attributes which are both inherent in Him and beyond all limitations in excellence—some of them being knowledge, power, lordship, energy, potency and splendour; He has a divine form, which is both agreeable and worthy of Him—inconceivably divine, wondrous, eternal and flawless, a treasure-house of limitless perfections such as radiance, beauty, fragrance, tenderness, pervading sweetness and youthfulness. He is adorned with divine ornaments which are worthy of Him, manifold, variegated, infinite, wondrous, eternal, flawless, unlimited and divine; He is equipped with divine weapons which are appropriate to Him, countless, of wondrous powers, eternal, impeccable and surpassingly auspicious. He is the Beloved of Shri, whose eternal and impeccable nature, attributes, glory, sovereignty and virtues, unsurpassed and countless, are all agreeable and worthy of Him; His feet are incessantly praised by countless numbers of perfected devotees (Suris) whose nature, existence and activities are in accordance with His will and whose countless qualities such as knowledge, action and glory are eternal, impeccable and unsurpassed, all functioning joyously in complete subservience to Him. His nature and qualities transcend all thought and words. He dwells in the divine and imperishable supreme Heaven which abounds in manifold, wondrous and countless objects, means and places of enjoyment. It is an abode appropriate to Him and is infinite in its wondrous glory and magnitude. His sportive delight brings about the origination, sustentation and dissolution of the entire cosmos filled with multifarious, variegated and innumerable objects and subjects of mundane existence. Such is He, the Supreme Brahman, the Supreme Person, Narayana. After creating the entire world, beginning from Brahma down to immobile things, He—being inaccessible in His transcendent form to the meditation and worship of all creatures from Brahma down to gods, men etc., and being also a shoreless ocean of compassion and loving condescension, paternal affection and generosity—He shaped His own figure into the likeness of the various kinds of creatures without giving up His own supreme nature, and got incarnated in the worlds of creatures and received their worship and granted them their lives’ fulfilments comprising Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, in accordance with their desire. Under the pretext of relieving the earth of its burdens but really in order to make Himself available for us (men) to take refuge in Him, He incarnated on the earth as Shri Krishna. He thus became the visible object for the sight of all men, and did divine actions that captivated the minds and eyes of all, high and low. He vanquished demoniac persons such as Putana, Shakata, the two Arjuna trees, Arishta, Pralambha, Dhenuka, Kaliya, Keshin, Kuvalayapida, Canura, Mushtika, Tosala and Kamsa. He spread soothing happiness over the entire world with the ambrosia of His glances and speech, conveying His boundless compassion, friendliness and love. He made Akrura, Malakara and others the most ardent devotees by the manifestation of His unsurpassed qualities such as beauty and loving compassion. With the ostensible intention of imparting to the sons of Pandu the fighting spirit, he brought about the descent of the Yoga of Bhakti directed to Himself, promoted with the aid of Jñana and Karma—the Yoga which has been promulgated by the Vedanta as the pathway to the supreme goal of release. When the war between Pandavas (or the sons of Pandu) and the descendants of Kuru broke out, He, the Lord, the Supreme Person, the Lord of all gods, who had taken upon Himself a mortal human form for helping the world, overwhelmed by His love for those devotees who have taken refuge in Him—that Supreme Person made Arjuna the master of the chariot and Himself the charioteer, so that He could be seen by all the people. Even knowing that Krishna was the Supreme Being, Dhrtarashtra, who was blind in every way, wanted to hear about the victory of his son Suyodhana (Duryodhana) and questioned Sañjaya thus: