Thus I have heard this wondrous conversation between Vasudeva and the great-souled Arjuna — a dialogue that makes every hair stand on end.

Sanjaya, who has witnessed everything, now speaks for the first time in his own voice since the opening of the Gita. The word he chooses — romaharṣaṇam, hair-raising — is the Gita's own description of the effect of this sacred dialogue on a prepared heart. What Arjuna heard as a warrior on a battlefield, what Sanjaya transmitted in real time to a blind king, now arrives to us through the ages. The fact that it still produces that same effect of awe — across millennia, in readers of every background and culture — is its own testament to the living power of these words.