Partha-sarathiपार्थसारथि

Partha-sarathi (पार्थसारथि), the charioteer of Pārtha, is Krishna in the role he chose for himself in the Mahābhārata war: driver of Arjuna's chariot. Offered the choice between Krishna's armies and Krishna alone and unarmed, Arjuna chose the person over the power — and so the supreme deity entered the great war holding not a weapon but the reins. From that driver's seat, between the two arrayed armies, he spoke the Bhagavad Gītā.

The meaning

The image is a compact theology. God does not fight the devotee's battle in his place; he guides, counsels and steadies while the human being acts. The charioteer was, in the epic world, the warrior's intimate — witness, adviser, keeper of his courage — and the tradition read the arrangement allegorically almost at once: the body the chariot, the senses the horses, the mind the reins, and the self a passenger safe only when the divine holds them. Krishna's vow to remain weaponless bent once, in the famous moment when, provoked past bearing on Bhīṣma's behalf, he leapt down wheel in hand — and Bhīṣma, delighted, welcomed death from him.

Worship

The form has its own shrines, most notably the Pārthasārathy temple at Tiruvallikkeni (Triplicane) in Chennai, one of the 108 divya-deśams sung by the Āḻvārs, where the deity bears only a conch, his vow of weaponlessness kept in stone; temple tradition sees on the image's face the marks of arrows taken in the war. In the moustached, battle-marked icon the tradition preserves its most human portrait of God: not enthroned, not reclining, but seated in front of a frightened man, turning to speak. The scene itself — Krishna turned on the chariot seat, Arjuna bowed behind him, the white horses stilled between the armies — became the standard image of the Gītā's delivery, endlessly reproduced in sculpture, painting and popular print, the emblem of counsel at the edge of action.