The Mahabharata epic, composed in around 200 BCE, is the longest poem in the world, and about eight times as long as the combined Iliad and Odyssey. The most famous section is Chapters 25-42 of the sixth book, known as the Bhagavad Gita (Song of God) in which the god Krishna appears to the archer Arjuna in the midst of the Battle of Kurukshetra. Counterintuitively, Krishna advises Arjuna not to succumb to his scruples about killing his enemy cousins, the Kauravas, but to do his duty and fight on.

The Gita opens with the father of the Kauravas, the blind king Dhritarashtra, asking his advisor Sanjaya what is happening at Kurukshetra:

On the field of Truth, on the battlefield of life, what came to pass, Sanjaya, when my sons and their warriors faced those of my brother Pandu?

Sanjaya had received the gift of divine vision, enabling him to see the events from afar in the palms of his hands. The rest of the Gita consists of Sanjaya’s transmission of the philosophical conversation that took place between Krishna and Arjuna at the outset of the battle.

As the drums and conch shells are sounding, Krishna drives Arjuna’s chariot into the middle of the battlefield. From this vantage point, Arjuna can see his cousins, elders, and teachers, lined up on the Kaurava side. He throws down his great bow Gandiva: "Oh day of darkness! What evil spirit moved our minds when for the sake of an earthly kingdom we came to this field of battle ready to kill our own people?"

Arjuna presents Krishna with three arguments against fighting,........

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