Verse 11.27

Verse 11.27: “They hurry forward and enter Thy mouths of gruesome jaws, awe-aspiring. Some, caught within the interstices betwixt the teeth, are seen with their heads crunched to powder. (410)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

And then he said, “Oh look here; like clouds melting suddenly in the sky the armies on both the sides, with their swords and armours, have disappeared in thy mouth. Or, as at the end of the world-cycle, the great destroyer, all wroth with the universe, clasps in a single deadly embrace all the twenty one heavenly vaults along with the nether region to crush them out, -or as the pomp and prosperity of hoarded wealth of niggards vanish all of a sudden, the moment the fates become unpropitious, in the same way, the fully equipped armies assembled here, have disappeared into thy mouth: alas the pity of it, how relentlessly they are bound by karma? Not a single of these could escape (safe) from the mouths.

Like the tender shoots of the Ashoka tree which a camel grabs and chews, all these men are lost forever in the mouths. And see how the crowned heads are being pounded between the pincers of the jaws? Some of the pounded crowned jewels seem to have stuck up in the interstices between the teeth while some crunched to powder have spread out over the bottoms of the tongues, while others are stuck up to the pointed ends of the jaws. Indeed the great Destroyer the Omnipresent Deity has gulped down the able-bodied men and yet their heads He has kept together.

In truth the heads are the best part of the body and so could survive the wholesale slaughter in the destructive mouths. Arjuna went on “Earth-born creatures have no other course open to them and thus the whole world becomes an easy prey in the abyss of these mouths. The entire creation goes the way of this abysmal death and the Destroyer Omnipresent Deity is standing unmoved where He is, and is gathering in quietly everything that finds its way to his jaws. All the Gods of the heavenly region, including the creator himself, are entering into the upper mouths, while the common warriors are rushing into the mouths lower down. And myriad of smaller creatures are being finished just as they are born. So not one slips out of the strangle-hold of these mouths: