Pātra No. 5
The Gītā begins with a blind king's question.
“O Sañjaya, what did my people and the Pāṇḍavas do…?”
The Gītā opens with Dhṛtarāṣṭra asking Sañjaya what happened on the field. It is the only verse he speaks. Every verse after it is the answer to his question.
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.
धृतराष्ट्र उवाच
धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे समवेता युयुत्सवः।
मामकाः पाण्डवाश्चैव किमकुर्वत सञ्जय।।
dhṛtarāśtra uvāca dharma-kṣetre kuru-kṣetre samavetā yuyutsavaḥ māmakāḥ pāṇḍavāścaiva kimakurvata sañjaya
Dhṛtarāṣṭra said: “O Sanjaya, what did my people and the Pāṇḍavas do, gathered together on the holy field of Kurukshetra, eager for battle?”
1.1 is verse 1 of 700, and verse 1 of 47 in chapter 1.
Dhṛtarāṣṭra (named in the verse text, not in a speaker label), in any form, appears in exactly one verse of the 700, 11.26.
Dhṛtarāṣṭra speaks 1 of the 700 verses, by the printed speaker labels.
Counted by Vāṇi on the 700-verse text at getvani.app/gita.
The first verse of the Gītā is a question from a blind king. In 1.1 Dhṛtarāṣṭra asks Sañjaya what his people and the Pāṇḍavas did when they gathered on the holy field of Kurukṣetra, eager for battle. It is the only verse he speaks. 1.2 is the start of the answer, and the speaker changes: Sañjaya reports that King Duryodhana, seeing the Pāṇḍava army in battle array, approached his teacher Droṇa and spoke. From there the book is Sañjaya's reply, carrying the dialogue between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna to the king who asked. Notice how the question is put: my people and the Pāṇḍavas. The king's first words already divide the field in two. The opening is in chapter 1, and what the Gītā says about dharma follows the idea the book opens on.