According to the calculation of time, your birth was indeed later, contemporaneous with our births. And the birth of Vivasvan was at an earlier time, reckoned as twenty-eight cycles of units of four Yugas each. How can I understand as true that you taught it in the beginning? Now, there is no contradiction here, for it was quite possible that He had taught Vivasvan in a former birth. The memory of what was done in former births is quite natural for great men. This should not be taken to mean that Arjuna does not know the son of Vasudeva, the speaker, as the Lord of all. Because he (Arjuna) says later on: ‘You are the Supreme Brahman, the Supreme Light and the Supreme Purifier. All the seers proclaim You as the eternal Divine Purusha, the Primal Lord, unborn and all-pervading. So also proclaim the divine sage Narada, Asita, Devala and Vyasa. You Yourself also are saying this to me’ (10.12-13.) Arjuna had heard repeatedly from Bhishma and others during the Rajasuya sacrifice of Yudhishthira, ‘Krishna alone is the cause of creation and submergence of all the worlds. This universe, consisting of things both animate and inanimate, was created for the sake of Krishna’ (Ma.Bha., 2.38.23) ‘The entire universe is subservient to Krishna’ is the meaning of ‘For the sake of Krishna.’ This apparent contradiction may be explained as follows: Arjuna surely knows the son of Vasudeva as the Bhagavan. Though knowing Him as such, he questions as if he did not know Him. This is his intention. Can the birth of the Lord of all, who is antagonistic to all that is evil and wholly auspicious, omniscient, whose will is always true and whose desires are fulfilled—can the birth of such a Person be of the same nature as that of the gods, men etc., who are subject to Karma? Or can it be false like the illusions of a magical show? Or could it be real? In other words, is the birth of the Supreme Being as the incarnate a real fact or a mere illusory phenomenon produced by a magician’s art? If His birth is real, what is the mode of His birth? What is the nature of His body? What is the manner of His birth? What is the nature of this body of His? What is the cause of His birth? To what end is He born? The way in which Shri Krishna answers Arjuna’s question, justifies the construing of his question in this way.