Pātra No. 6
Before the battle, the eldest roars.
“…the grandsire Bhīṣma… roared like a lion and blew his conch.”
Before a single arrow flies, Bhīṣma, the eldest of the Kurus, roars like a lion and blows his conch. He loved the Pāṇḍavas as much as the Kauravas, and still fought for one side.
Arjuna asked his. Samvāda answers yours with the Gītā's own verses.
Samvāda is software, an AI companion tuned to the Bhagavad Gītā. It is not a person. It answers from the verse and shows you which one, and it never pretends to be Kṛṣṇa.
तस्य संजनयन्हर्षं कुरुवृद्धः पितामहः।
सिंहनादं विनद्योच्चैः शङ्खं दध्मौ प्रतापवान्।।
tasya sañjanayan harṣaṁ kuru-vṛddhaḥ pitāmahaḥ siṁha-nādaṁ vinadyoccaiḥ śaṅkhaṁ dadhmau pratāpavān
Then the valiant grandsire Bhisma, the senior-most of the Kuru clan, roared like a lion and blew his conch with the intention of cheering up Duryodhana.
1.12 is verse 12 of 700, and verse 12 of 47 in chapter 1.
Bhīṣma, in any form, appears in 7 verses of the 700, first at 1.8 and last at 11.34.
1.12 falls under the speaker label of Sañjaya.
Counted by Vāṇi on the 700-verse text at getvani.app/gita.
1.11 is Duryodhana's instruction to his commanders: take your places in your divisions and guard Bhīṣma at all costs. 1.12 answers it with sound. The grandsire Bhīṣma, the eldest of the Kuru clan, roars like a lion and blows his conch to cheer Duryodhana. 1.13 then fills the air: conches, kettledrums, trumpets and horns all sound at once, and the noise is terrific. That Bhīṣma is first to sound his conch, and that he does it to lift Duryodhana's spirits, is in the verse itself. Later, in 2.4, Arjuna names Bhīṣma and Droṇa as the two he cannot bring himself to aim at. The Gītā shows him first as a loud, steady presence and then as the person Arjuna most hesitates to face. See chapter 1, and what the Gītā says about courage.