आख्याहि मे को भवानुग्ररूपो
नमोऽस्तु ते देववर प्रसीद।
विज्ञातुमिच्छामि भवन्तमाद्यं
न हि प्रजानामि तव प्रवृत्तिम्।।11.31।।
।।11.31।। (कृपया) मेरे प्रति कहिये? कि उग्ररूप वाले आप कौन हैं हे देवों में श्रेष्ठ आपको नमस्कार है? आप प्रसन्न होइये। आदि स्वरूप आपको मैं (तत्त्व से) जानना चाहता हूँ? क्योंकि आपकी प्रवृत्ति (अर्थात् प्रयोजन को) को मैं नहीं समझ पा रहा हूँ।।
The Supreme Lord Krishna manifested His visvarupa or divine universal form of wonderful and terrible visage to exhibit His unlimited and absolute sovereign power. Now that Arjunas request of seeing the visvarupa has been granted he beseeches further to know Lord Krishnas intention and purpose for exhibiting it and he desires to know who Lord Krishna truly is apart from the visvarupa. He addresses Lord Krishna as deva-vara meaning Lord of all lords and is curious as to the reason why He exhibited to His surrendered bhakta or devotee the terrible visages with many mouths and teeth along with His wonderful form of cosmic glory. Arjuna is now desiring to see Lord Krishnas pleasing and charming, sublime humanlike form. Lord Krishna exhibited His all powerful visvarupa to show Arjuna in no uncertain terms that without any effort He will destroy all the kings and warriors that are arrayed in the Kaurava army and this does not depend at all upon Arjuna and the Pandava army. Lord Krishna is prepared to annihilate the complete Kaurava army if need be and to assert this conviction He exhibited the terrible visages of the visvarupa is to remind Arjuna of this.
