Know, Prince! it is the Lust which springs of contact with the Qualities; the vast all-swallowing foe, the wicked, the unclean
How translators render 'kama' (desire/lust) reveals their moral framework. Arnold gives 'the Lust which springs of contact with the Qualities'--capitalizing Lust to make it an allegorical figure, almost Bunyanesque. Wilkins chooses 'lust' but glosses rajas as 'the passion called Rajas,' keeping the Sanskrit term for his curious British readers. Swarupananda splits the compound: 'it is desire--it is anger,' preserving the Sanskrit's startling equation of kama and krodha as twin enemies. The triple simile (fire/smoke, mirror/dust, embryo/membrane) shows the widest divergence: Wilkins turns 'ulbena' (embryonic membrane) into 'its membrane,' Telang writes 'the womb' (anatomically imprecise), while Swarupananda gives the clinical 'secundine'--a medical Latin term revealing his engagement with Western scholarship.
Having established that desireless action is the ideal, Arjuna asks the obvious: if we know what is right, why do we still do wrong? Krishna identifies the culprit: kama (desire, lust, greed) and krodha (anger). These are the twin enemies that cloud judgment and drive humans to act against their own wisdom.
Arjuna asks: what compels a person to sin, even against their will? Krishna’s answer is devastating — it is kama (desire/lust), born of rajas, the all-consuming enemy that veils wisdom like smoke veils fire.
