Arjuna’s despondency

The Gītā opens not with an answer but with a collapse. Arjuna, the finest archer of his age, puts down his bow between two armies and says he will not fight. Everything that follows is a response to that refusal.

This lesson stays with the collapse itself — who is present, what Arjuna actually says, and why the text treats his despair as the right place to begin rather than a failure to get past.